A renewable-energy boom is changing the politics of global warming

OVER THE PAST few years Dewey Engle, an 81-year-old retired highway worker who lives on the outskirts of Tahoka, a small farming town in west Texas, has acquired a new view from his back porch. Dozens of wind turbines hum 300ft over the cotton fields behind his bungalow. Some people might be disturbed by the sudden arrival of such monstrous machines practically in their garden. Mr Engle says that his only problem with them is that they are not on his modest patch of farmland, so he does not get any royalties. “I would love to have that money coming in,” he says. “I’d like to have ten of them.”