ENERGY: You can get with this, or you can get with that

This summer, if you find yourself lazily sedated upon hot sands, staring vacantly into the great blue horizon full of natural wonder, think of Delaware, and think of this:

From WaPo, an artist's mathematically-sound rendering shows what a newly-approved wind farm could look like to northern Delaware beachcombers. Imagine 413-ft-tall white monstrosities, with blades stretching taller than the Statue of Liberty.

It seems that wind power is really picking up momentum. A report by the U.S. Dept of Energy claims the U.S. produces roughly 16% of the total world wind market, and has the fastest-growing wind capacity in the world, with over 61% of the total wind power capacity installed since Bush took office in '01. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, over 153 million people (over half the total U.S. pop) live in 673 coastal counties; this includes the Great Lakes region--that's a lot of potential beachcombers, many of which assuredly will hold a strong sense of a "not in my backyard" mentality. As strange and discomforting as this view may appear, I think I'd rather look at some creepy white blades than oil rigs, like the ones shown in this shot off the Gulf of Mexico:


Plus, there's the whole getting off the oil thing. That too.