"Good news on the alternative energy front: Texas managed to break the U.S. wind energy generation record last Friday morning when it produced 6,272 MW of power–19% of the total electricity mix. The state, which is the country’s wind power leader, got just 6.2 percent of its electricity from wind overall last year." - Kurt Starnes

It should be noted that the 19% is likely not a sustainable number, but it's still impressive. Worldwide Denmark generates about 19% of electrical needs from wind and Spain and Portugal about 11%. ( See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... ) I read the Denmark, Spain and Portugal numbers as being sustained power generation, but I could be misinterpreting the stats. - Kurt Starnes

And yet, Texas still has one of the worst records for air pollution out of the 50 states. This is good, but not good enough. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Alex: I don't dispute your claim, but would love to see the source. My first take is that Texas produces and refines a good percentage of the oil that is used by lots of folks across the Country. That seems like it might be a contributor to Texas air pollution. - Kurt Starnes

Just looked it up -- Texas is the #1 oil refiner in the US at about 4.7M barrels a day: [pdf warning!] http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub... - Kurt Starnes

Hey winckel, careful, I'm a Texan. :-> - Kurt Starnes

If Texas oil refining operations are a significant contributor to its air pollution problem, do we go after the *dealer* or the *addicts*? - Kurt Starnes