Saw this today on Salon:

“A stunning new report just issued by the Bush administration finds that for under 2 cents a day per household, Americans could get 300 gigawatts of wind by 2030. That would:

• Reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation by 25 percent in 2030.
• Reduce natural gas use by 11 percent.
• Reduce cumulative water consumption associated with electricity generation by 4 trillion gallons by 2030.
• Support roughly 500,000 jobs in the U.S.

The report doesn’t mention that this would require adopting policies the Bush administration opposes. But that’s what elections are for.

Wind power is coming of age. In 2007, some 20,000 megawatts of wind were installed globally, enough to power 6 million homes. Sadly, most wind power manufacturers are no longer American, thanks to decades of funding cuts by conservatives. Still, new wind is poised to be a bigger contributor to U.S. (and global) electricity generation than new nuclear power in the coming decades.”

Read the full article here.

It’s a longish article, but it’s well worth the read. (Even if you have to watch an advert to get a day pass to the site.) What I find interesting is the history of how our nation’s efforts in wind-energy were sidelined and ultimately stymied by policy decisions which focused on existing industries. We, as a nation, would have been much better served by intentionally seeking to broaden and diversify our energy sources from the get go.

Perhaps now is the time to start that transition.