Wind, Cattle and Politics

This is one of my favorite photographs of all time.  I have used it before, although it has been a few years.  It was taken near Vega, Texas, at a wind farm.

I suppose it is a favorite because it shows energy and beef side-by-side on the Texas Plains not far from where I was raised.  Texas has long been known for both, although normally it is oil and gas that comes to mind.  These generators sit on the edge of the Canadian River breaks.  If you could look across the river to the north you would see plenty of the oil and gas production.

It is also a favorite because it shows the two enterprises as being complementary.  The land is being used in a sustainable way for cattle grazing on native pasture while the ever-present wind generates electricity that is sent through the power grid to cities far down state.  The last I checked, Texas still leads the nation in wind-generated power.

Those generators are becoming a problem though.  As time passes, that problem will become even bigger.  What do you do with one when it is broken and no longer can be fixed?  There are quite a few beginning to accumulate around the world.  The proponents of wind energy don't acknowledge the problems with it because it isn't in their backyard -- it's in "flyover" country. 

Food production, energy production, mining/extracting of minerals -- all, for the most part, are in "flyover" country.  The people driving for changes in how these things are done are located on the coasts in their elite enclaves of energy-sucking mansions, dining at high-end restaurants and flying around the world in their private jets.  They dictate policy through their manipulation of the political machinery (which includes the press) but don't have to live with the consequences.  They just enjoy the fruits.

There is always room for improvement, but out here in the country we get a lot of things right.  The wind generators in the photo wouldn't exist without large subsidies extracted from the taxpayers of this nation and passed on to already wealthy individuals who invest in the wind-capturing technology.  What we got right is that it didn't really disrupt the production of protein too much as evidenced by the cattle grazing beneath the generators and it brought a portion of those tax dollars out into the countryside in the form of jobs.

I really didn't intend to bring the political aspects into this brief commentary this morning, but it is a fact of life that the "fat cats" in Washington tend to find ways to make life difficult for the rest of us.  It's all about power and money -- it doesn't matter which political party, they're all essentially the same.