{"id":30069,"date":"2018-06-02T00:25:52","date_gmt":"2018-06-02T00:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=30069"},"modified":"2018-06-02T00:25:52","modified_gmt":"2018-06-02T00:25:52","slug":"waiting-for-the-wind-to-become-part-of-our-energy-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=30069","title":{"rendered":"Waiting for the wind to become part of our energy policy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/wind-energy.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-30070\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/wind-energy-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/wind-energy-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/wind-energy.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>SNYDER, Texas<\/strong> &#8212; This picture really doesn&#8217;t do justice to the subject of this blog post, but I thought I&#8217;d show it anyway.<\/p>\n<p>I snapped this shot Thursday as we sped along U.S. Highway 84 on our way to Interstate 20. I intended for it to show the seemingly endless array of wind turbines along this stretch of West Texas highway.<\/p>\n<p>It begs a question I have had kicking around my noggin for some time: Where is U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry and why isn&#8217;t he using his new federal platform to carry the message of wind power to the nation?<\/p>\n<p>I ask the question for what I believe is a valid reason. He served for 14 years as Texas governor and on his watch as the state&#8217;s leader, Texas became a model for alternative energy production through the use of wind turbines. Texas and California moved to the head of the line in the promotion of wind energy.<\/p>\n<p>Think about that for a moment: Two states with wildly different political profiles had this one important energy-related matter in common!<\/p>\n<p>You see them everywhere in West and South Texas. For as far as you can see &#8212; and even if you stand up on your tip toes &#8212; you see the turbines blowin&#8217; in the wind. They are cranking out megawatts of electrical power. For every megawatt of wind-generated electricity, that&#8217;s a megawatt that is not necessarily produced by fossil fuels.<\/p>\n<p>Wind energy is as clean as it gets. &#8220;Clean coal&#8221; is a misnomer, yet the Donald Trump administration keeps harping on its plan to &#8220;save&#8221; coal jobs by producing clean coal energy.<\/p>\n<p>Those of us who live &#8212; or have lived &#8212; in West Texas also know that wind energy is the ultimate <em>renewable<\/em> energy source. Those fossil fuels? They&#8217;re finite, man! You pull the oil out of the ground, it&#8217;s gone forever. The wind keeps coming. It keeps blowing. It keeps providing &#8220;fuel&#8221; to make those turbines turning and making energy.<\/p>\n<p>Rick Perry knows how this system works. If only he would use his Cabinet post as a bully pulpit to promote it to the rest of the energy industry.<\/p>\n<p>His silence is quite unbecoming.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SNYDER, Texas &#8212; This picture really doesn&#8217;t do justice to the subject of this blog post, but I thought I&#8217;d show it anyway. I snapped this shot Thursday as we sped along U.S. Highway 84 on our way to Interstate 20. I intended for it to show the seemingly endless array of wind turbines along &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=30069\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Waiting for the wind to become part of our energy policy<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7022,1781,3951,5272],"class_list":["post-30069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environmental-news","tag-department-of-energy","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-rick-perry","tag-wind-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30071,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30069\/revisions\/30071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}