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Changing Our Tune to Natural Gas
Robyn Blumner
Author
Pickens is not someone I'm predisposed to liking. He was a supporter of fellow
This doesn't seem like someone concerned with weaning America off its addiction to oil. Just the opposite. Had the man been a couple of generations younger he might have tattooed "Drill, Baby, Drill" across his pecs. But as the maxim goes, there is no zeal like that of the converted, and, now at age 82, Pickens is hobnobbing with noted green activist
Pickens is still not opposed to domestic drilling -- although he acknowledges that it's no answer -- but he says we have to get off foreign oil for the sake of our economic future and national security, and his "Pickens Plan" moves the country in that direction. Initially the plan envisioned thousands of wind turbines, but financing such a project isn't feasible during this time of inexpensive gas and a credit crunch.
Pickens is instead pushing natural gas. He wants
"You've got to get an oar in the water. All we do is drift, drift, drift."
If all of America's tractor trailers, garbage trucks and buses were replaced with vehicles that run on domestic natural gas, within seven years we'd "reduce our need for
Only when pressed does he fess up to being a stockholder "in several companies in the natural gas business."
But Pickens characterizes what he's doing as a cause not a business. He has invested
You do get the feeling that he's sincerely trying to move us toward a more sustainable energy future. From Pickens' perch, he sees better than most the proverbial and literal barrel that
In Pickens' straightforward style he puts out a challenge. For 40 years, we have had no energy plan for America. A fool with a plan can a beat a genius with no plan. Anyone who doesn't like my plan needs to offer up one of their own.
He's right. We need a plan. If Pickens and people like him had been more politically responsible in past years -- supporting candidates like
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Changing Our Tune to Natural Gas
(c) 2010 Robyn Blumner