I have a new post up at the Deep Green Conversation blog – Seeing the Past and the Future Along a Texas Highway. It’s inspired by this West Texas sight –
Over the holidays we loaded the kids in the car and made our way from Texas to a family gathering in New Mexico. It’s been decades since I last made that drive, so I wasn’t expecting the site that greeted us in West Texas. Expecting miles and miles of rugged and mindnumbingly boring terrain, we encountered instead the juxtaposition of the past and the future.
Across the expanses of cotton fields, there rose, side by side, oil wells and wind turbines. Little did I know that Texas is the country’s leading producer of wind energy and that I was driving through the second largest wind farm in the country. What I saw simply were hundreds of turbines spinning steadily while towering over still oil pumpjacks In short, a spectacular sight to give one pause.
Texas was once synonymous with oil. My own grandfather made and lost his fortune as a supplier to oil companies. But that world is changing. Another family member who has oil wells on his property (a result of the “drill here, drill now, pay less” push), is seeing them run dry. The oil is running out. Some are drilling deeper at enormous expense, only to deplete the oil in a few months. The oil tycoons realize this—the petroleum-dependent way of life that made them rich is ending. The average person might not see it yet, but those with a serious stake in it sure do.
So while the environmentalists and hippies have pleaded for clean energy for years, it is finally being actualize as the rich and powerful big oil people seek out alternatives. These wind farms in Texas are mostly the creation of businessmen who know that the world’s brief dalliance with oil is almost over. Clean, sustainable alternatives are where they are placing their bets. Hence the scene in West Texas—still oil jacks, representing relics of the past, being dwarfed by the sleek gleaming wind turbines ushering in the future.
Of course I considered this and rejoiced in a future of clean energy as I drove past in my gas-guzzling car. The irony there is almost too palpable. I’m grateful though that some people, whatever their reason, are pushing forward in developing clean technologies and making them accessible. Those of us who admire that possibility, but who have yet to escape conventional options, need the help of others to create the infrastructure for clean energy. I can’t exactly stick a turbine in my backyard, and don’t have the cash at the moment to install solar panels or buy an eco-car. But I can support projects that are paving the way to making such options available to all.
Needless to say, finding a hopeful vision of the future made the drive through West Texas much more intriguing than I expected it to be.