My uncle worked the oil patch, and his hands looked like it. When I was small he’d let me hold the heavy ring the company gave him for his years of service, and he’d say, that’s what a barrel of crude looks like when you finally get to take it home. I believed him. I still do.
Texas is a major oil and gas producer, and I’m grateful for every drop of it. That industry paid for schools and churches and the road I drive into town. If you’re reading this, you probably agree with me so far. I’d ask you to stay with me for the next part.
Texas is also a major wind and solar producer. You can see the turbines from the highway out west, turning slowly over the cotton and the cattle, and in some places the panels stretch across a pasture like a pond that’s lost its water. Other folks look at that and see Texas doing what Texas has always done, which is make power out of what it’s got. I look at it and feel uneasy.
Here is why. Oil and gas come out of the ground, and the ground is something a man can own. Wind and sun come out of the sky, and the sky belongs to everybody, which is to say it belongs to nobody I know. I’ve always believed you should trust what you can hold in your hand. You can’t hold a breeze. You can’t fence the sun. Something that free makes me wonder what it really wants.
People tell me it doesn’t have to be one or the other. They say a sensible man keeps more than one kind of tool in his truck. I understand the principle. But a man who carries every tool there is has told you he doesn’t know what job he’s going to do. I know what job I’m going to do. I’ve known since I was a boy holding that ring.
So when the wind blows hard and somebody tells me it’s helping keep the lights on, I don’t celebrate. I wait. Power from the sky feels like a stranger picking up your check at the diner. You enjoy the meal, but you check your wallet on the way out.
A rancher I know near Abilene leases part of his land for turbines, and he says it’s the only reason his family still has the place. I’m happy for him, the way you’re happy for a cousin who married into money. It is real money. It just isn’t the kind I was raised on.
It is the reason I’ll be voting for the Republican for Senate this fall. I have the feeling the other side would like Texas to keep making power out of everything it’s got, wind and sun included, and I would rather we didn’t.
Some loyalties aren’t about what works. I would rather pay whatever it costs for the energy I love than take the energy that shows up anyway.
D. M.