Bob Dylan never really met any Crees, given his age and stature as a musician and entertainer, but his famous song is starting to ring true in Cree world. Another fluid dynamic is proposed to be harnessed by the Cree, not in a sail but in a rotating wing that churns a generator and produces electricity.
The windmill, a clever Dutch invention that pumped water out of the low-lying lands of Holland, (also known for a little boy who was historically known to use his finger to plug a hole in a leaking dam and saving his country as a result) is now being used to generate much needing cash from thin air.
This invention has somewhat taken the wind out of the sails out of the traditional methods of damming rivers to create much needed energy for the south, and in doing so, caused a stir in the stalwart halls of Hydro Quebec.
“How dare anyone else do what we do without our permission or consent?” rings out from the south. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Yet for Holland, the windmills were always situated right next to the dikes, pumping out the water from the land and back into the North Atlantic, and should be rightfully the same today.
History dictates that when the right to create one’s own independence and ability to generate one’s own wealth is awarded exclusive to one company, the price of things tend to go upwards. I say, let there be competition. Who owns the air anyways? Is it contained within a certain area, no, it tends to be everywhere. Maybe one day when technology and industry goes so far as to limit the amount of breathable atmosphere available to air breathers, perhaps buying air by the pound per square inch might become a reality. “I’d like to have two litres of water and 10 pounds of air to go, please” might accompany your Big Mac in the next century.
I like to think that all air is valuable and benefits should be maximized. It’s the same philosophy that Hydro had when they looked at all the water resources, claiming that the rivers were just wasted energy. We could say the same: the kinetic energy of the air is being wasted, so let’s tap into it. After all, most air from the south is contaminated and hazardous to your health. Why not sell air to the south with a bottle of water? After all, we all need air and water to stay alive, and we have both resources in abundance. When you put all your eggs in one basket, you take risks of having all your eggs broken or going rotten, so we should diversify our potentials for creating our own independent economy.
Suppose of all the windmills were up and put in place in strategic windy areas, would we then be outnumbered by propellers? Let’s see now, three Cree per prop, .5 megawatts per child, and hopefully, enough money left over to pay the Hydro bill. Seems to me that everyone will benefit from this arrangement, except for a few blind birds that might mistakenly crash into a windmill. Hey accidents do happen, even to air route kill.
Maybe in the future during the spring migration, we just have to hang around the towering windmills and pick up the geese, partially dismembered, but still fresh, just like the hillbillies from the deep south, who depend a lot on possums, deer and the occasional farm animal who inadvertently wander the highways at night and get run over. In this case, it’s the birds that do the crashing. But hey, geese are smart enough to fly around or over obstacles aren’t they?
