ABSTRACT
Driving along I–80 west from Cheyenne, Wyoming, you arrive in Laramie via the “Gangplank,” a gradual route across the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains that made the transcontinental railroad possible. It is a barren and windswept landscape, described by some as almost lunar. You see some antelope and cattle, a few oil and gas rigs on the way, but the dominant new feature is a forest of towering white wind turbines. As you drive, large tractor-trailers pass by at high speeds, carrying the disassembled pieces of the giant machines—a blade here, a tower piece there; dwarfed by their transports, you begin to appreciate the massive size of these machines—and they are only middling in the scale of wind turbine possibilities.
