 it mythology." But
industry officials, he contended, will "take things out of context."
Mike Tidwell, the director
of Chesapeake Climate Action Network and one of Mr. Boone's
adversaries, bristles at the attack. "Wind industry guys are the
straightest-shooting people," Mr. Tidwell said. "Most got into it
because they had an environmental ethic."
But Mr. Boone has plenty of
allies, too. "He's the greatest naturalist I've even known," said
Betsy Johnson, chairwoman of the Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club. "Dan
has been very helpful in educating us with what problems there can be with an
energy source like wind."
The industry Mr. Boone
regards so suspiciously is on a roll. The total share of energy that wind farms
generated nationwide in 2004 was tiny about one-third of 1 percent, according
to the Energy Department. But by 2020, according to industry estimates, wind's
share of the county's energy portfolio could grow ten- or twentyfold.
For the environmental
movement, wind supporters say, the transition from the protection of place to
the protection of planet is bound to be wrenching.
conversations are spiritual," said David Hamilton, the Sierra Club's
national director of global warming and energy programs. "We've always
been a place-based organization, protecting places," but "protecting
our climate" is "just looking at it from a different angle and a
3) Instant Expert: Energy and Fuels
Pickrell, New Scientist, 26 May 2006, http://www.newscientist.com/popuparticle.ns?id=in158
cheap energy is a linchpin of modern industry and civilisation. Energy, mostly
from fossil fuels, allows us
to heat homes, and power factories and transportation systems. Worldwide every
day, we devour the energy
equivalent of about 200 million barrels of oil, but much of this energy comes
from coal, gas and nuclear fuel too.
Starting with coal, and then oil and
gas in the 1800s, we have plundered our fossil fuel riches to drive development. But
now, an energy crisis looms. New oil sources are dwindling,
and smothering greenhouse gases
threaten the Earth - yet energy demands will rise by 50% to 60% by 2030. We
need to rapidly develop sustainable solutions - from hydrogen cells to wind turbines - to fuel
Most of the energy on Earth
comes from the Sun. In fact enough
energy from the Sun hits the planet's surface each minute to cover our needs
for an entire year, we just need to find an efficient way to
harness it. So far the energy in oil has been cheaper and easier to get at.
But as supplies dwindle, this will change, and
we will need to cure our addiction to oil.
Thirst for oil
satisfied most energy needs until the steam-driven industrial
revolution, when energy-dense coal became the fuel of choice. Coal is
still used, mostly in power stations, to cover one-quarter of our energy needs,
but its use has been declining since we started pumping up oil. Coal is the
least efficient, unhealthiest and most
environmentally damaging fossil fuel, but could make a comeback, as
supplies are still plentiful: its reserves are five times larger than oil's.
(derived from oil) provides around 40% of the world's energy needs, mostly
fuelling automobiles. The US guzzles up a quarter of
all oil, and generates a similar proportion of greenhouse gas
emissions. The first wells were drilled 2400 years ago,
but the modern oil industry was born in the 1850s.
The majority of oil comes
from the Middle East, which has
half of known reserves. But other significant sources include Russia, North America, Norway, Venezuela and
the North Sea. Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
could be a major new US source, to reduce reliance on
foreign imports, but drilling there is currently prohibited.
Most experts predict we
will exhaust easily accessible reserves within 50 years, though opinions and estimates vary. We
could fast reach an energy crisis in the next few decades; when demand outstrips supply.
As conventional reserves become more difficult to access, others such as oil shales and tar sands may be used instead. Petrol
could also be extracted from coal.
Since we started using