Berlin’s Godzilla-size windmills, 1932
“Berlin rests in the shadow of a monstrously tall steel tower with a hydra head of spinning fans, each about 500 feet in diameter. A medium-sized town’s population climbs over the 1,400-foot-high structure, noshing in a cavernous cafeteria and peering off a cloud-shrouded viewing deck. The city is aglow with great gouts of energy pouring out of the windmill – as much as 130,000,000 kilowatt hours a year – illuminating the anguished faces of once-profitable oil barons now crying into their beer.
This was the ambitious 1930s-era vision of Hermann Honnef, a German engineer with a lifelong obsession with high towers and wind power.”
Found this interesting bit over at The Atlantic – Cities – click through for the full article.
On the other end of the scale, scientists are working on windmills so tiny that 10 of them could fit on a grain of rice, with a view toward using such small devices to recharge cell phones and such.
More on the idea can be read at The Verge.
While some ideas are phantasmagorical and others are yet futuristic, thinking out of the box and along these lines is both admirable and necessary. Anything we can do to get the oil industry crying into their beer steins is a good thing.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Playing in the World Game 
If I were an oil company executive, I’d be researching alternate energy sources like mad. Then I’d recast my company as an energy company, not just an oil company. And I’d sponsor some very visible and philanthropic solar and wind stuff, maybe in a poor, formerly off-grid area, with the proviso that I’d get to film the living daylights out of the people who benefit.
I’m an unrepentant capitalist, but I’d like to think I have a soul, too. I think it is up to the 1% to help the 99% raise itself up, not increase the wealth divide even more—but let’s not get started on that!
Such would be the economics of Heaven, if any such existed. 😀