LONDON (MarketWatch) -- An energy company's greedy quest for politically correct power is putting a world celebrity heritage site at risk of being lost forever.

A subsidiary of Conergy (604002), a German renewable energy firm, has announced plans to construct an enormous wind farm in the Australian outback. See related story.

The proposed location, the Mundi Mundi plains in New South Wales, was the backdrop for parts of "Mad Max II," one of the films that launched Mel Gibson's career.

Conergy wants to put up 500 wind turbines to harvest the energy generated by the incessant winds that blow through the area.

The argument in favor is that the wind farm will cut Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by millions of tons a year, thus saving the world from the ravages of global warming.

But at what price to Australia's cultural heritage?

The setting helped put Australian actors on the map, created an entire genre of post-apocalyptic films, and introduced the world to a series of unforgettable characters including the Feral kid -- a precocious youth with a penchant for throwing a boomerang with razor sharp edges. The mayhem of that child will be as nothing compared with what happens if one of those wind turbine blades lets fly!

Of course the desolation of the area is part of its attraction as a location for an operation that will supposedly power 400,000 homes. Low population density is cited as one of the chief benefits of putting the turbines in the region.

But instead of low population density, Conergy should reconsider and put its wind farm someplace where there's no population density, you know, some place like Nantucket Sound.

Because, as Tina Turner might have sung "We don't need another wind farm."

- Tom Bemis, assistant managing editor, commentary