Builders in southern New Mexico - in the entire southwest, actually -- should take a very close look at what's happening in (of all places) Philadelphia. Yes, Philadelphia. The one where disgusted football fans once threw snowballs at Santa Claus. The one where a hopelessly lost motorist took a picture of the intersection of Gulph Road and Gulph Road. The one that actually had a "Billy Penn's Hat Brim Ordinance" to limit the height of buildings. That Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia whose professional football team, the Eagles, is infamous for breaking fans' hearts by coming oh, so close to the championship but always losing the one game they have to win to get there.

Now, at last, the Eagles are first not just in the National Football League, but in the entire world of sport, in something.

The something is environmental responsibility and energy conservation. The team is adding wind turbines, solar panels and a cogeneration plant to its home base, Lincoln Financial Field. The project will make the entire stadium self-sufficient and even enable the team to sell back energy to the electric grid. Construction is expected to be finished next September.

"The Linc," as it's known in Philadelphia, is less than 10 years old, a $63 million venue that seats nearly 70,000 people, including 3,040 "luxury suite" seats. It feeds and waters these beer-swilling, cheese steak-ingesting hordes from 308 concession stands, and provides a men's room for each 58 of them in which to relieve themselves before it's time to boo Santa.


There are two lounge areas totaling 80,000 square feet that dispense food and beverages. There are three enormous video screens (two 27x96 feet, one a mere 14x25 feet). Imagine, if you can, the energy required to stage an event there.

Now consider that the wind and solar project will make the entire shootin' match self-sufficient from natural, self-renewing energy sources - with juice left over to sell back to the power grid.

This is Philadelphia, where what qualifies as "strong wind" would be classified as a gentle breeze here in the Southwest. Where the sun vanishes the day after Thanksgiving and does not reappear until the day after Easter. Here in southern New Mexico, a day without sunshine is worse than a day without wine in Paris.

Savvy folks, including the scientists who did feasibility studies years ago, have long advocated the use of our most abundant renewable resources, wind and sun, to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels before we exhaust the planet's supply of fossil fuels.

Confronted with this advocacy, our once and future congressman sneered that this kind of energy was impractical "for aesthetic reasons." Bovine excrement, sir.

Jeffrey Lurie, who owns the Eagles and is putting up big bucks for the wind and solar project at The Linc, boasts that the wind-turbine and solar panel design is not only "aesthetically gorgeous," but also "bird-friendly and iconic."

Granted, the aesthetic considerations for an NFL football stadium and the low-profile, faux adobe Santa Fe style buildings favored in southern New Mexico may vary somewhat -- a lot of somewhat, even. But the point is that good architects and designers, working with determined builders and their customers, can render the aesthetic "question" bogus and put wind and sun to work for us. And in fact, there's noting very "aesthetic" about those ugly drinking bird gas and oil pumps that dot the Southwest, with their 75-foot diameter "pads" destroying wildlife habitat as well as our views. Not to mention the damage the extraction process does to our groundwater. The water under Otero Mesa could slake the thirst of Las Crucens for the next century -- if we don't allow drilling there. But that's another issue.

For the nonce, let's study what the Eagles are doing and look earnestly for ways to apply what we learn to securing a green energy future for the next generations of New Mexicans.

There was a reason that W.C. Fields, in considering what his epitaph should be, chose, "Frankly, I'd rather be in Philadelphia." There's something to be learned from Billy Penn's old town, and it's not Brotherly Love.

It's energy, stupid. Low cost and green.

Thomas Wark was an editor with the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer before retiring to Las Cruces with his wife Lois.