Economically speaking the Wind energy culture is great. I live in the area of colorado where most of these turbines are coming up, and it is good for our local economy. In terms of actual energy, its not all that practical Tons of these things have been put up yet it creates less than 1% of the energy used even in the realitively rural area that it is around. The hope is that it will eventually create 5% of the energy for our state. If it does great, how realistic is it? I don't know. That said, it is certainly better than nothing, and even if the only true gains of "going green" will be the economy its probably worth it. Most green ideas, are not realistic or even feasible on the most basic level, but if they create more jobs, its not all bad.

Remember that the apparently most favored future for Colorado consists of using up all your water as solvent? coolant? while grinding up great gobs of your land to extract kerogen, which is sort of like oil, or at any rate can be processed into oil. Any preference?

You probably just wrote this quickly, or maybe I'm dim, but I'm really not sure exactly what you're saying.

There is a major push by the large energy companies to mine Colorado's so-called oil-shale to extract a compound called kerogen which can be processed into a substitute for crude oil. Unfortunately, the process requires a lot of energy and a lot of water. Because it is an energy intensive process, the net energy to be produced will be low. Because it is water intensive, it means that Colorado's agricultural industry will have to shrink to yield the water needed for the process. These two points alone make the proposition rather unattractive. You can read up on oil-shale here at Wikipedia.

I'd prefer we do research before we waste our land or our water, but thats not the way energy companies, and "green" pushers work. They want you to do what they say is the best bet right now, and to hell with the actual facts.

How many of the oil shale areas also have lots of wind? Using wind or sunpower to extract the kerogen would deal with two problems at once.

Unfortunately, it still leave the water issue unless there's some way to recycle the wastewater.