When the Clean Air Act became law 36 years ago, ushering in an age of increasing environmental sensitivity, ecological controversies had a bracing simplicity: There were the good guy environmentalists trying to protect the air and the water from bad guy big businessmen who wanted to keep dumping whatever the heck they wanted.

Today, not so much.

There the needs of bats, birds and wildlife aficionados are competing with the need to find energy sources that don't pollute the air and water or fuel global warming.

Before long the exact same battle will be coming to Hampton Roads. The only place in Virginia with greater potential for wind development than the mountains is Virginia's Atlantic coast.

Wind farms are far from the first issue to pit competing environmental interests against one another, but growing consensus about the danger of global warming is giving the issue a much higher profile.

Recent research prepared for the United Nations has revealed that the 1980s-era effort to ban chemicals that damage the Earth's protective ozone layer pushed industry to use different chemicals in refrigerators and air conditioners that worsened global warming.

That data comes on top of the news that environmental rules vastly reducing levels of soot and sulfur dioxide, the chemical that causes acid rain, have made the Earth's atmosphere absorb more heat from sunlight, resulting in - you guessed it - stronger global warming.

The system built to deal with environmental disagreements over the last four decades is focused on weighing economic benefits against potential environmental damage, not comparing competing environmental needs.

The breakdown can clearly be seen in Richmond where 11 different state agencies have reviewed the Highland project in seeking out every potential environmental flaw no matter how small, but neglecting to analyze the proposal's major benefits. In the wake of all that analysis, the state is requiring "mitigation" for any damage to the "viewshed," while the state has done no analysis of the proposal's impact on global warming or potential to improve public health through cleaner air.

The result of state rules bent on finding environmental hazards but blind to environmental benefits is a system tilted against projects like wind farms. That has to change. If global warming shifts from nuisance to catastrophe, nobody is going to thank state regulators for making sure we all have a good view.