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About ten years ago I began thinking about how to respond to those who believe a border fence, to protect the United States from Mexicans coming to work and live here, is a shield. Instead, the idea of a border garden to bind our neighboring countries together in important new ways took root.
At first I thought only about the southern border, separating Mexico and the U. S. But soon I was thinking about the northern frontier with Canada.
In the southern borderland, a fragrant blooming area, with exotic and useful vegetation, windmills, solar panels, and hydra-turbines for sparkling water is not only possible but the right thing to do. Rivers could irrigate and provide water-driven energy and solar-generated power could also transform how we think about the land and how we use it.
Since the idea first occurred to me, great advancements have been made in solar-panel technology, major improvements in wind energy, and in biofuels from plants. So now the idea of creating a blossoming border-garden is no longer far-fetched the way it might have seemed ten years ago.
In fact, a creative use of non-edible plants, used as fuel, could help us emulate the work being done in other countries. Brazil’s use of sugar cane as a fuel source, for instance, is well-known, but what about the development of jatropha, known in the tropical and subtropical climates of India, Africa and elsewhere, which has tremendous potential as a future biodiesel fuel source.
Imagine the Southern border as a great wind-farm and solar-panel region. Oilman T. Boone Pickens has been making some noise with his idea for huge wind-farming in Texas. I would simply urge Pickens to move his planning to the Rio Grande border and also test it in North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. And why not a solar-panel industry alongside the Pickens windmills?
The border region would have gardens with healthy plants like aloe vera and cactus, which have been used for decades as a poor man’s cure for diabetes.
The idea is to mix the new energy from the border gardens into a national electric power grid. The extra energy would not be wasted but would be rewound into a national or
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