By now you’ve all heard of the
Pickens Plan, laid out by the famous oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens. Once you move past the absurdly egotistical title, the idea actually has a lot of merit that enviros can get behind. For the past two weeks we’ve been enamored by this towering figure who proclaims himself to be an oilman and publicly states that we cannot drill our way out of this crisis. We swoon when we hear about his plan to push for wind energy and renewable alternatives. We’ve been thinking to ourselves, here’s an authoritative voice that may be able to quell the drumbeat for more drilling. We may disagree slightly over his push for natural gas-powered cars, but in these dark and troubled times we sometimes have to align ourselves with strange bedfellows.
But the honeymoon’s over. Yesterday, Pickens made himself very clear. He has no interest in conservation and no interest in greening our energy supply. He’s merely interested in energy independence and if that involves renewable energy, not to mention if he can make billions off of it, then so be it. He made it clear that he wants more domestic drilling than even John McCain. In his own words: “McCain says, ‘OK off the east and west coast.’ I say east, west coast and ANWR—get it all!”
So let me get this straight. We can’t drill our way out of this problem, but we should drill everything anyway? Could there perhaps be some lingering vested interests for T. Boone?
Just to remind ourselves how little oil is truly available read pages 50-52 of Bush’s own
Energy Information Administration for the numbers on the Outer Continental Shelf. And of course we all know that drilling in
ANWR is a moot point.
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videoTreehugger 
Great Article! Granted T. Boone has oil in his veins, and will be so enbalmed; yet let's still praise him for the wind blowing through his hair. I would not even castigate Exxon for erecting wind turbines!
landlubber
Seems strange that this story came out of FoxNews, but what about the eminent domain and water issues? A Municipal Water district with only 2 residents both tied to Pickens ( Wife, Ranch Manager) Gets eminent domain powers, the wind farm is just a smokescreen built for transmission line right of way which would coincidentally also accommodate the water pipeline? Is there any truth to this stuff?
"In March 2002, the Sierra Club opposed the construction of a slaughterhouse in Pampa, Texas, because it would require a mere 275 million gallons per year from the Ogallala Aquifer. Yet Pickens wants to sell 65 billion gallons of water per year -- to Dallas alone. In a 2004 lamentation about local government facilitation of Pickens’ plan for the Ogallala, the Sierra Club slammed Pickens as a “junk bond dealer” who wanted to make “Blue Gold” from the Ogallala.
But while the Sierra Club can’t seem to do anything about Pickens’ influence with state legislators, they do have enough influence to make his water politically unpotable. This opposition may soon abate, however, now that Pickens has buddied up with Sierra Club president Carl Pope.
As noted last week, Pope now flies in Pickens’ private jet and publicly lauds him. The two are newly-minted “friends,” since Pope needs the famous Republican oilman to lend propaganda value to the Sierra Club’s anti-oil agenda and Pickens needs Pope to ease up on the Ogallala water opposition."
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