Windfarms

A windfarm is a beautiful thing. Seriously.

Over the past few years, I've dipped my toes into the renewable energy shallows. I've invested in solar companies, backed eco-friendly Kickstarter campaigns, replaced my home energy usage with wind credits, and bought an electric vehicle I'd love to charge with green energy. One person's efforts cannot change the world, but we can all start somewhere. This is my beginning.

Climate change and global warming are pressing issues. Capitalism does not protect the environment without regulation, but regulation is being ignored, deconstructed, or altogether avoided. Climate justice has always been a necessity, but it becomes an even greater one when business-friendly political forces like the Trump Administration and the Republican Party defund, dismantle, and intentionally mismanage entities like the Environmental Protection Agency. Books like This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate by Naomi Klein and What We're Fighting for Now Is Each Other: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Climate Justice by Wen Stephenson detail the battles being fought around the world, and we must all be aware of them.

But this isn't meant to be a political post. It's a comment on the majesty and grace and engineering prowess displayed in today's renewable energy farms.

Far from blights on the landscape, far from nuisances, these installations should be considered beautiful attempts by humankind to save itself from itself.

Sure, there are legitimate environmental concerns about how wind or solar installations might impact flora and fauna. Humans, I have no doubt, will find solutions to those problems as they arise. For example, companies are inventing wind turbines without spinning blades to save birds. Regardless of the obstacles to be overcome, let's continue to advance this technology. Let's search for new and better ways to access the natural energy sources around us.  The naysayers will invent nonsensical arguments about economic impacts and job losses, and they'll lie and deceive about scientific facts. If they win, we all lose.

So the next time you see a windmill or a solar panel or, like in the photo above that I snapped while driving through Indiana, USA, a massive miles-long windfarm, think about what it signifies: an attempt to save the planet, to save humankind, and to power our ambitions into the future. Impressive. Glorious. Ingenious.

Beautiful.