Warm-up: “Oilman’s energy plan more than hot air”
The last Texan to put so much of his money into a campaign was Ross Perot, who entertained the political world in 1992 with charts and rants of impending doom.
But his message about the budget deficit was serious, and he helped push the U.S. government into the black for a fleeting stretch of the late 1990s. Now comes T. Boone Pickens, an 80-year-old Texas oilman who is pushing, of all things, the power of wind. Pickens promises to be nearly as recognizable as the presidential candidates on TV this fall, which may be a tall order given Barack Obama’s fundraising prowess.
Like Perot, Pickens brings a serious message worth listening to.
The oilman-entrepreneur-takeover artist has sponsored nationwide ads with a clearer, more declarative energy proposal than either Democrat Obama or his Republican rival, John McCain, has offered. Obama would sink $150 billion into alternative energy research and raise car fuel standards. McCain would offer a $300 million bounty for the developer of a better electric car battery and favors more oil exploration. But each campaign has spent so much time attacking the other’s plan that it has muddied the energy debate and left a wide opening for Pickens’ straightforward, unifying message.
“It’s our crisis,” Pickens says in his new ads, “and we can solve it.”
Do not underestimate the power of can-do in this political moment. Most Americans are made aware of the problems facing the country every time they fill a gas tank, pay a light bill or worry about health insurance. Stipulate that no one in the government, Democrat or Republican, deserves an energy policy star over the last 35 years. Stipulate that expensive choices lie ahead. But quit pointing fingers and tell us how this can be fixed.
Pickens, a self-described oilman through and through, is an unlikely messenger for the moment. He’s gone from boom to bust and back, the Oil Patch’s equivalent of Al Gore. So Pickens embracing wind is tantamount to Nixon going to China. He says the country can’t “drill its way out of this problem,” that his plan is doable “with the right kind of leadership” and with “everyone pulling together.” Besides proposing a big wind-turbine construction plan, he wants Congress to either extend construction tax credits set to expire at year’s end or establish other incentives for new wind generation.
Oilmen may be the most despised romantics in the American West. But as big dreamers, they have rarely sold short on the possibility of America. Pickens is putting his money behind his idea, funneling big bucks to a TV ad campaign and building a $10 billion wind farm near Pampa, Texas.
His plan, available on www.pickensplan.com, is a relatively simple but big step. Over the coming decade, he wants to build enough turbines in the nation’s “wind belt” from Texas to North Dakota to provide more than 20 percent of the nation’s electricity needs. Pickens says that would free up enough natural gas to reduce foreign oil imports by 38 percent, ostensibly accelerating the trend to cars powered by something other than oil.
Such a plan would cost $1.2 trillion, he estimates, but it would allow the United States to keep at least a third of the $700 billion it annually sends abroad for oil. He says the potential is there. This is one of the windiest countries on the planet, and that’s no commentary on our perpetual campaigns. As the cliche goes, the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of wind.
Pickens’ Web site is Perotesque in its use of charts and chalk and Texas talk. On his explainer video, you half expect Pickens to mention crazy aunts or vow to get under the hood, as the bantam billionaire Perot often did in the ‘92 and ‘96 elections.
Wind is already catching on in flyover country, where gigantic trucks can be seen hauling massive components of the 1- to 3-megawatt turbines headed for hillsides and bluffs in the wind belt from Washington state to Texas.
About 50,000 Americans are now employed in the wind generation industry, but Pickens’ plan could boost that figure to 500,000, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Reaching 20 percent of the nation’s electrical needs through wind also would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation by 25 percent by 2030, something that could put power behind the 50 percent greenhouse gas reductions agreement at the just-concluded G-8 meetings in Japan.
Last year, I heard Pickens tell a class of high school graduates that he would trade all the money he ever made, all the fancy things he ever enjoyed, for their futures. He urged the 18-year-olds to learn from their failures as much as their successes.
This capacity to correct is an unheralded power of America. The nation’s energy thirst will have to be quenched by something other than oil, and soon. If it takes an oilman to push the politicians out into the wind, so be it.
Public Discussion Forum for Pickens Plan : http://www.pickensenergyplan.com See you there !
As to what is in, in this country, saving the planet is one of the top priorities on everyone’s mind. Whether you believe in global warming or not, i believe that Picken’s plan is a great idea and a great start to a healthier planet. This will cost a fortune, but i really believe that the benefits will out weigh the risks. The amount of money estimated for a project of this size is extremely shocking to the public and the government, but if by going forward with this project we can save the one third of the 700 billion dollars that the US sends abroad for oil then in only 10 years the US would save around 2,330,000,000,000 and would be more than enough to make up for the money spent. Not only could we save money, it would put an extra 450,000 people to work and with an increasing unemployment problem, this would help immensely. The US is now in recession and i believe this could give our economy and the American population the boost it needs. It has come to my knowledge that even now many are trying to disprove global warming with irrelevant facts. Yet in my opinion it does not matter whether you believe that the earth is warming naturally or whether we are causing it, it is a known fact that the emissions that we omit are doing damage to many things. Why not act in a way that reduces harm to the environment and stimulates the economy as well. It is really reassuring to me that someone that is caught up in the oil industry any way can see the extreme benefits to changing the ways of our business and energy.