Boing­Bo­ing points to a sto­ry about the Span­ish Wind boom:

Over the past decade, 500 wind machines have sprout­ed around the lit­tle ham­let, which lies 15 miles (25km) from Zaragoza. Once a for­got­ten vil­lage in one of Spain’s poor­est regions, La Muela has become a cap­i­tal of wind-assist­ed ener­gy pro­duc­tion. And the wind­mills have not only trans­formed the land­scape. From the moment the first blades began to whir, the good times for La Mue­la’s 3,000 inhab­i­tants began to roll.

Each year, the giant elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­nies that run the wind­mills pay about L1m (E600,000) to La Mue­la’s local coun­cil in roy­al­ties and land rents, and anoth­er E500,000 to pri­vate landown­ers, who receive E2,000 or E3,000 annu­al­ly per wind­mill, accord­ing to their pow­er. Most tur­bines gen­er­ate between 600 and 800kw per hour but some as tall as 24-storey sky­scrap­ers pro­duce 2,000kw/h.

After know­ing only hard­ship for gen­er­a­tions, La Mue­la’s res­i­dents have stum­bled on a wind­fall that has changed their lives. The fierce north wind that gives La Muela its Siber­ian win­ters has also made its fortune.

Any­one who knows Kansas feels a cer­tain sym­pa­thy with a rur­al region plagued by con­stant wind. The Kansa indi­ans were “the Peo­ple of the South Wind.” I’m opti­mistic about wind pow­er in Kansas. The goal should be elec­tri­cal inde­pen­dence in 20 years, and entire­ly achiev­able goal. If 5% of the state had wind­farms on it, we’d gen­er­ate 30 times the pow­er we consume. 

That would be gen­uine inno­va­tion. That would attract busi­ness, espe­cial­ly man­u­fac­tur­ing. Cheap elec­tric­i­ty is key to all sorts of indus­try, and cheap, green ener­gy is good for some pos­i­tive buzz. It would also revi­tal­ize the rur­al areas by cre­at­ing a new rev­enue stream to landown­ers, and mak­ing it cheap­er for farm­ers to work the land.

Instead, Kansas spends its time and mon­ey on a car­ni­val sideshow.