Ain’t no wind in T. Boone Pickens’ sails

The oil tycoon’s support of John McCain for president demonstrates that his heavily advertised plan for wind power is only hot air.

The epic struggle over clean energy that will define this century has been joined by the unlikeliest of Don Quixotes, ultraconservative oilman T. Boone Pickens. As Pickens tilts at billion-dollar windmill farms, he advocates the federal government enact multi-year renewable energy tax credits, require private companies to purchase alternative fuel vehicles and help build a renewable energy transmission grid.

While one can argue with some of the details of his plan, there can be no doubt his core idea is correct. To break its oil addiction, a country must embrace strong government policies, much as Brazil employed to create a transportation system with 40 percent alternative fuels.

What has driven a major backer of the Swift boat attacks on John Kerry to embrace policies that Kerry and Barack Obama strongly support but that conservatives from President Reagan to John McCain have bitterly opposed? Simply put: the impoverishment that Americans face if we continue our laissez-faire policies. As Pickens argues in a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, and in a recent interview, U.S. consumers in the next decade will engage in “the largest transfer of wealth in human history,” some $10 trillion, to oil-producing nations.
“It’s absolutely stupid that we’re pouring out that kind of money and getting nothing for it,” Pickens tells me. “There’s no jobs created, no taxes paid and no profit made.”

The threat to our security is equally grave, as we’re importing almost 70 percent of the oil used in this country. Should our supply line fail for any reason, it would bring the U.S. to its knees. “We should have never gotten that vulnerable to that kind of a problem,” Pickens says. Even without a stoppage, oil prices will soar by the end of the next decade. “I can guarantee you,” asserts the lifelong oilman, “it’ll be $300 a barrel.”

Salon.com