| Compared to recent history, it's been a relatively wet | | | | Texas has made major strides in capturing the wind |
| winter in Texas, with hopes that timely spring rainfall | | | | for electrical power, as Texas pioneers used it to |
| will continue to boost crops and refill lakes, ponds and | | | | bring water up from below parched range. |
| reservoirs. These were all but dried up in the | | | | The wide-ranging, sometimes intense sunlight of |
| devastating drought of 2008 and 2009. Despite this | | | | Texas can be an energy bonanza when the |
| year's reprieve from Mother Nature, the safest thing | | | | technology catches up to it. Already, solar panels in |
| is to anticipate that Texas water will continue to be | | | | home applications are paying off. |
| short most of the time and in many places. | | | | None of this is to say that we should abandon our |
| Harvesting rainfall as human drinking water is an | | | | traditional sources of energy. Fossil fuels—hopefully |
| ancient practice taking on new life in water deficient | | | | free from the regulatory insanity of cap and |
| areas of Texas. | | | | trade—are in our future for many decades to |
| Check out this excellent story written for the Texas | | | | come. We should look for it, and drill for it anywhere |
| Farm Bureau publication by Texas Agriculture Field | | | | we can, in an environmentally responsible way. This |
| Editor Matt Felder. | | | | of course, we now have the technology to do. We |
| Harvesting rainfall for drinking water demonstrates in | | | | must also forge ahead in developing biofuels, which |
| a compelling way how ideas as old as history itself, | | | | will help alleviate our thirst for foreign oil and will |
| combined with new technologies and old fashioned | | | | benefit consumers, agriculture and rural Texas. |
| American ingenuity, can go a long way toward solving | | | | A mix of the old and new, responding to market |
| some of our perpetually troubling resource problems. | | | | forces is happening here in Texas—in response to |
| Water is only one of them. Capturing that gift of the | | | | resource crisis. That's why, when you come right |
| Almighty—precious rainfall—to alleviate | | | | down to it, Texas' greatest resource is—Texans. |
| shortages has an almost poetic connotation to it. | | | | |