ECONOMY
Since this particular trip was to be undertaken and financed during the Great Recession of 2009, the rule was to economize. Luckily, we had purchased a Toyota Prius in 2007 at a time when dealers couldn’t give them away. This wonderful gas/electric hybrid allowed us to average about 50 miles per gallon on the trip. So Mary Ann and I packed up the Prius early on a Wednesday morning and headed out west for Carlsbad, New Mexico with no reservations—hotel or otherwise. By then, our preparation had left us with just the right balance between knowing enough about the Park to have great expectations and being blissfully ignorant enough not to turn around and head east instead. So we happily embarked on our autumn adventure to the Guadalupe Mountains.
 |
| Windmill and Wind turbines (not in Sweetwater, but it makes the point) Photo from flickr.com/photos/marvinok/401419420/ |
The eight hour trip from Dallas took us through Weatherford, Ranger, Abilene, and Sweetwater on Interstate 20. As expected, the west Texas landscape wasn’t much to see for miles and miles, and it was growing progressively less attractive with each mile to the west. Texas has the misfortune of receiving adequate rainfall only in the east, while all of its rivers flow from the west, carrying away the meager supply of runoff water from the western dry lands and delivering it to east Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. However, west Texas does have an abundance of wind, and we saw a remarkable sight around Sweetwater—miles and miles of wind farms dotted with hundreds of enormous windmills! I should refer to them by their proper name, “wind turbine”, but it’s hard for me to abandon the quaint historical name given to their prototype. However, these streamlined modern structures are a far cry from the small squeaky wood and metal windmills that have kept the water troughs filled for generations in rural Texas. These new machines are freakishly tall white monolithic towers topped with enormous 3-blade turbines that turn in slow motion. As we cruised past them at a smooth 65 miles per hour listening to a gentle country tune, the windmills seemed to drift lazily past us, keeping time with the music as each blade reached its nadir on the beat.
I thought that the wind turbines were beautiful, but I wondered how many of the locals hated their appearance—marring the familiar landscape of their childhood. Not being a native to the area, or caring much for the landscape in the first place, the sight of them made me feel happy to see power being generated from thin air. They seemed like signs of hope for the Earth, showing that there are people who have the foresight and will to solve problems. Of course, the more realistic incentive is that the owners of the turbines expect to make a killing from their investments—low rent, low maintenance, free fuel (the wind), government subsidies, etc. Why else would an oilman like T. Boone Pickens want to build so many of them? If Pickens follows through with the original plan, his Sweetwater Wind Farm may be dwarfed by the size of the one that is slated for the Texas panhandle near Pampa. Unfortunately, the Pampa wind farm is on hold and the project may be jettisoned. The reason according to Pickens is the lack of sufficient transmission lines, but I fear that the real reason is that the wind farm may not be as profitable as he originally thought. It would be easy for me to take a shot at Pickens’ motives, but I do admire him for building these wind farms, whatever his reasons may be. The day before our trip, I had watched a PBS Nova documentary about human origins that explained how during a period of rapid environmental change in Africa, several hominid species became extinct except for the ancestors of Homo sapiens. They survived because they were the only species that could solve problems. I hope that the coming changes will not be as extreme as those in prehistoric Africa, but if so, we will have to be smart enough to pass another such test. It will take forward-thinking intelligent and resourceful people of all political persuasions working together to solve the problem of global warming. I already see history being written in the rolling plains of Sweetwater, Texas.
No comments:
Post a Comment