Business | Schumpeter

Go to Texas to see the anti-green future of clean energy

Lessons for liberals from climate-sceptic wind ranchers 

For more than 140 years John Davis’s family has owned the Pecan Spring Ranch on the prairie lands of West Texas. He has a photo of his great-great-grandmother, known as “the sheep queen of Texas”, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage beneath a tree that still stands in front of the hay barn. It’s a tough business to maintain, even with a valuable herd of Wagyu beef cattle to raise. Yet when a renewable-energy developer offered Mr Davis a large payment to put wind turbines on his land, at first the staunch Republican—and former state congressman—turned it down.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Not green but clean”

From the January 14th 2023 edition

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