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Originally Posted by Eric5273
But that can be changed. For example, in the Southwest, they have something called the Hoover Dam that provides most of the power for Arizona and Nevada. Up in the Western New York area, they use water power as well with the Niagara River. And out on Long Island, they just started a project to build a number of large wind mills, which they say will provide all of Long Island with polution-free power. There are many ways to do it without burning fossil fuels. The problem is that pressure must be put on the politicians to initiate this change. Most of them receive large campaign contributions from the oil companies, and they are not about to give that up to support a bill that will most likely get voted down anyway. But if they think they will lose many votes over an issue, they will go against their backers in order to keep their elected offices.
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The Hoover Dam
does not supply most of the power for NV and AZ. Both states use coal as their primary energy source. Arizona also operates the nation's largest nuclear plant, Palo Verde, equipped with 3 reactors. In reality, over 50% of the hydroelectric power generated by Hoover Dam comes to California (thank you very much).
Windfarms is strictly a supplemental source of power on a wide scale basis with some limited ability to power small localized areas. The biggest issue with turbines is that they do not generate on-demand power - they generate power only when the wind is blowing. As a result, energy created by the turbines must be stored in a grid energy storage facility in order to feed large urban areas. These storage facilities are very high tech, the CAP-X is huge, and there is a loss of energy during the storage process. Windfarms is one of many small scale solutions to the energy problem, but by itself, it will not change energy landscape. However it does change the physical landscape (as in creating a major eye sore).