Making the wind work

I had to drive to La Grande the other day and as I rolled past North Powder I noticed that the new forest of wind turbine towers enlivens the view to the east when, as on that day, clouds hide the Eagle Caps.

Actually I didn't have to drive.

I could have walked.

Except then I would have had to leave the day before to get to my meeting on time, and I dislike walking on the freeway shoulder at night.

Or during the day.

Anyway, I enjoyed watching the turbines spin in their slow, graceful, seemingly lazy fashion.

And this despite the day being so sluggish that even in Ladd Canyon — an uncommonly blustery place — the little cups on the ODOT anemometer beside the freeway stood as still as a winter dawn.

I feel optimistic when I watch the turbines' massive vanes rotate. I like to know they are out there among the sagebrush, transforming even gentle zephyrs into energy that fries our eggs and warms our homes with equal aplomb.

Wind alone won't rescue us from our power predicament, of course.

Yet the breeze, like sunshine and ocean tides and the molten rock that bubbles beneath us, are all, unlike petroleum, basically limitless.

Besides which, they take no vacations, are immune from control by cartels and other brands of despot, and they don't foul pristine waterways with noxious slime.

Wind power and other sources of renewable energy are as yet immature industries. Combined they make up a relative pittance of our power supply, and as often as not they require tax breaks or other government incentives.

Of course the internal combustion engine was pretty revolutionary, yet even now, more than a century after cars began bumbling along unpaved paths, people still ride horses for work as well as for pleasure.

What I'm getting at is that we ought to be patient.

Today it might seem inconceivable that waves, wind and the sun could power the world — or even its microwave ovens.

But who in, say, 1920 — save Einstein and a handful of similarly rare geniuses — would have believed that within a generation we would split something as small as an atom and by that release sufficient force to push something as massive as an aircraft carrier through the water at 30 knots.

And with air-conditioning besides.

History aside, I suspect that so long as I'm capable of driving, I'll own at least one vehicle that requires me to pump a fossil fuel into its tank to get the thing moving.

(Or, to be absolutely accurate, I'll pay someone to pump the fuel. I intend to stay in Oregon until the end of my days, and if I'm certain of anything it's that I'll not survive long enough to celebrate that day when Oregonians can legally dispense fuel all by themselves.)

Still, when I look at a thicket of turbines, like the ones out by Thief Valley Reservoir, I can foresee a future in which the very gusts that we grumble about today because they muss our hair will power the handheld dryers we use to tease our locks back into place.

As feats go that's not quite on the level of splitting atoms.

But it's a pretty fair trick, and worth the effort.

I for one would appreciate harvesting something from the wind besides grit, which tends to lodge behind my contact lens. And that stings.

Jayson Jacoby is the editor of the Baker City Herald.