The new Shepherds Flat project in Oregon will be the largest wind farm in the world, but hopefully not for long.
It'll cost $2B and it's financed largely by GE and two Japanese companies, Sumitomo and Itochu Corp's, who have also invested in wind farms in Texas and Oklahoma. Google will also own a sizeable share, investing about $100M.
To put that $2B into context, investors are looking to spend about $1B to build a new NFL stadium in Los Angeles. The stadium will be built for a city without an NFL team - in the hope of attracting one. This is an important priority.
All in all, the new installation will provide enough power to run 235,000 US homes. That's a little more than 16% of Oregon.
So, divide $38B by $2B per installation and how many homes would 19 Shepherds Flat installations power? Three Oregons.
Three.
For the amount of money that Republicans cut out of our budget (the amount the Tea Party says is negligible and unimportant) - for $38B, we could have taken the housing in three states with populations the size of Oregon off of the fossil fuel power grid.
When Republicans talk about trimming the budget because Exxon can't afford higher taxes, take a look at the next kid you see puffing on that asthma inhaler and then think about the wealthy's tax rates.
It's time to wake up and join the 21st Century, America. You're getting punked out of the healthy prosperous future you deserve.