Blown Away

Everywhere I go, people are complaining about the price of gas and its impact on how they live. I feel their pain. For the first time in life, I have to put off grocery shopping, waiting for the next payday to arrive. I look for little ways to reduce my own waste, drive economically, and plan ahead in order to stave off the inevitable expenses. But when I hear others talk about what we should do to make things better, I am disturbed by some of the ideas I'm hearing.
Is drilling more oil wells--in places where the risk is mighty high--really the answer? Something is broken, and it needs to be fixed. Until now, I haven't seen a commitment to a solution that didn't involve simply using more oil. T. Boone Pickens' plan is aimed at harnessing the natural power that has always existed in our own backyard, in a real and exciting way. The fact that it took an oil man to wake us up to the end of the oil era is more than a little ironic.

When I was a kid growing up in rural western Kansas, the wind was both a blessing and a curse. With the horizon a straight line, and nothing to stop it, the wind ripped through our lives like a runaway train, day in, day out. As a child, I used to stand outside and listen to the rustle and roar of it blowing through the tops of giant ash trees. Its music was magical, its power undeniable. Tired old windmills had been used to water cattle for ages; yet I knew of only one windmill growing up that was used to generate electricity. It was pointed and laughed at by many who passed it. They saw no wisdom in counting on a resource that came and went as it pleased.

The fact is, in that part of the country, the wind comes more than it goes. It comes enough to now warrant a few giant wind farms, which dot the landscape like giant toothpicks on a bare yellow cake. When I recently asked my parents, who struggle to keep the family farm going--mostly because of energy prices--why they didn't pursue putting windmills on the property, they pointed out that the infrastructure to support it still doesn't exist. This is inexcusable.

We can do better. There are too many excuses being made for why we do what we do, and most of them boil down to the old standby, "That's just the way we've always done it." But the way we've always done it is no longer working.

Together, we can come up with new ideas and brighter solutions. Pickens has called us to action, and we must respond with a resounding, Yes, We Can.