Everyone knows it's windy.

It's obvious that renewable energy sources will play a substantial role in the future of our planet. We simply have no choice.

What's not so obvious, but expertly highlighted in Carbon Nation, an upcoming film from local director/producer Peter Byck recently previewed in its entirety at the Carnegie Center, is that many other countries are actively preparing for the inevitable, ramping up the production of devices - often most fully developed by U.S. scientists and engineers - that will mercifully and necessarily bring our reliance on fossil fuels to an end.

Economic opportunities abound but we thus far seem collectively content to leave the money making to others while we senselessly lollygag, allowing ourselves to become beholden to foreign producers again.

Luckily, not everyone has put their reasoning ability to bed. A press release, alternately credited by various media sources to the Indiana Economic Development Corp. and One Southern Indiana, recently let us know that Windstream Technologies, Inc., a company focused on the development of small, energy capturing wind turbines for urban markets, will be moving its research and production headquarters from California to the Purdue Technology Center and Research Park in New Albany. 260 jobs are forecast by 2012.

The creative economy is coming ever faster, led by the small, independently owned businesses that account for over half the jobs in this country and the cities and towns that actively create the physical and intellectual environments in which they want to live and work. The global question is how to better mark the path and to whom to hand the orange spray paint can. Be sure to ask it each time you read a report of local government.