  Cosmic Rays escaping the Galaxy exert a force on the interstellar medium
directed away from the Galactic disk. If this force is larger than the
gravitational pull due to the mass embedded in the Galaxy, then galactic winds
may be launched. Such outflows may have important implications for the history
of star formation of the host galaxy, and in turn affect in a crucial way the
transport of cosmic rays, both due to advection with the wind and to the
excitation of waves by the same cosmic rays, through streaming instability. The
possibility to launch cosmic ray induced winds and the properties of such winds
depend on environmental conditions, such as the density and temperature of the
plasma at the base of the wind and the gravitational potential, especially the
one contributed by the dark matter halo. In this paper we make a critical
assessment of the possibility to launch cosmic ray induced winds for a
Milky-Way-like galaxy and how the properties of the wind depend upon the
conditions at the base of the wind. Special attention is devoted to the
implications of different conditions for wind launching on the spectrum of
cosmic rays observed at different locations in the disc of the galaxy. We also
comment on how cosmic ray induced winds compare with recent observations of
Oxygen absorption lines in quasar spectra and emission lines from blank-sky, as
measured by XMM-Newton/EPIC-MOS.
