Salt In the Wound

Where can I get some of these state of the art Wind Turbines? England, of course! While BP was busy drilling off our shores, and might I add, screwing it up, they were building a Wind Farm!

While we handed out billions in incentives to lure foreign companies to drill off shore here in the United States, the English and the Dutch have been quietly embracing the future, while taking some of our cash.

These wind driven turbines are at the mouth of the Thames River in England. There are 100 units which went into operation yesterday, and can supply electricity for 200,000 homes. That's 2,000 homes per unit. They are set 7 miles offshore and occupy an area of 22 square miles. The total cost to build the Wind Farm was $1.4 billion. It will take more than 20 times that amount to clean up the mess that British Petroleum created while drilling 1 mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico. By comparison, the Wind Farm pictured here is anchored in waters that are about 80 feet in depth.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, with most mysteries revealed. But while we are looking backward, it would seem prudent to ask why the British, and the Dutch, have been looking forward without us? Was it the lack of regulation on our part? Or was it the desire to take advantage of the loopholes that we ourselves left in the regulations concerning the drilling? I don't have the answers, but I do have to wonder - with friends like these, who needs enemies? And while it would be easiest to lay the blame at their feet, I have to remember Pogo and his assertation that, "We have met the enemy - and he is us!"