Desert Sky Wind Farm in West Texas is thriving as the oil starts to run out.

Desert Sky Wind Farm in West Texas is thriving as the oil starts to run out.

Everything is bigger in Texas, even the wind turbines.

They stand twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades as wide as the wings on a jumbo jet. Each one can earn hundreds of dollars every year for landowners, a whole wind farm can generate hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's hardly a surprise then that new turbines are popping at a rate of three to four a day.

Texas and oil go together like hound dogs and huntin', as the saying goes, but the black stuff that made George Bush and many other oil men rich is now running out and something else is needed to keep the lights on. From sneering at the country's green movement, pragmatic Texans have suddenly embraced wind power as the answer to their prayers.

Once known as America's oil patch, Texas now calls itself the nation's wind-power capital. Big Oil is turning into Big Wind.

For Sweetwater, known for its annual spring rattlesnake round-up, the wind-power bonanza produces enough energy to power a large city. Today you can drive for 240 kilometres either side of it without losing sight of a wind turbine.

Sweetwater is also home to T Boone Pickens, 80, a legendary Texas oil wild-catter, corporate raider, philanthropist and Republican hit man, whose personal worth has reached US$2.7 billion.

From the prairie town of Holdenville, Oklahoma, his father made his fortune gambling on oil leases. As a child, Pickens had a paper round, which is where he says he learnt the aggressive approach to work that would make him infamous on Wall Street in the 1980s. He started oil company Mesa Petroleum in 1956, with US$2500, turning it into one of the most feared companies in the US.

A hate figure of the liberal left, many blame him for Bush's do-nothing legacy on the environment. Although he lives smack in the middle of one of the windiest places in America, as recently as 2005 he dismissed the idea of wind energy out of hand: "I was in wind energy for a minute ... I hate it. And when I got to looking at those damn things I said, I don't want to be a part of putting that on the horizon. We took a loss and got out of it and I'm glad I did."

Spool forward three years to find a country on the verge of a nervous breakdown with oil heading towards US$200 a barrel. Americans do not worry much about global warming, but they care a lot about filling up their gas-guzzling pick-up 4WDs and worry more and more about how they are going to get to work and back.

Over the coming months Pickens is spending enough to ensure that his face will be seen on American television screens as much as either John McCain's and Barack Obama's as he bankrolls what he says is the most expensive public policy advertising campaign ever.