TOUR BLOG: Day Three

Sep 7th, 2009 in Featured Articles, Newswire, Tour Blog

North Dakota’s promise and lethal challenge were both on display today along my 100-mile bus route from Minot to Bismarck.

Lethal Challenge: The highway went past the entrance to a large surface coal mine. The crane used to bucket the coal from the earth was simply the biggest piece of machinery I have ever seen. Its boom thrust up toward the clouds as if it owned them, too. In masterful stillness (today is Labor Day), the crane dominated the landscape.

But this machine provides the ore that powers the generators that make the electricity that keeps most North Dakotans alive. Not just warm and comfortable—but alive. Pull the plug on coal today, and many in North Dakota would face a life-and-death reality.

Keep the coal mines in operation and the rest of the planet faces a life-and-death reality.

The Promise: My bus sped past two wind turbine farms. The first, just south of Minot, was a lonesome, two turbine affair. See the picture. The second, another 50 miles south toward Bismarck, arrayed hundreds—maybe thousands—of wind turbines in an alley that stretched to the hazy horizon. Wow. These sleek, blue-and-white, three-bladed machines looked like they had been dropped from the future onto the endless Dakotan wheat fields. Their huge blades seemed to turn slowly from a distance—an illusion that can lure birds to their death. But an exotic, new crop necessary for human civilization is growing from the fertile grounds between Minot and Bismarck.

Comments are closed.