Offshore wind could power all of North Carolina

According to a new study released by Oceana:

Offshore wind power in Atlantic waters could supply nearly half the current electricity generation of the East Coast and create up to 200,000 jobs or more, an environmental group concludes in a study released Tuesday.

Delaware, Massachusetts and North Carolina could exceed all their current energy needs through offshore winds, while New Jersey, Virginia and South Carolina could achieve 64 percent or more of their energy needs.

But going from "could" to "is" requires vision and leadership that has (so far) been lacking on the energy front.

Again, we're not talking about a "theoretical" source of clean energy; Europe has been eating our lunch on this for years:

Many of the assumptions, such as job generation, are based on experience in Europe, which has a far-advanced offshore wind industry.

Great Britain opened the world's largest offshore wind farm last week. The huge site in the North Sea has 100 turbines, which including previous capacity gave Britain the ability to power all the homes in Scotland.

And yet we continue to blast off mountaintops, clog streams with the refuse, and poison our air, land and aquaculture, all because we can't break our addiction to coal and other fossil fuels.