On Oct. 14, 2008, Rahm Emanuel (D-5, IL) who is the model for Bradley Whitford's character Josh Lyman, in The West Wing TV series, sheepishly acknowledged that he was an unlikely person to introduce T. Boone Pickens. But for Emmanuel, the "game changer" is natural gas.
 |  | |  T. Boone Pickens waits to be introduced by Rep. Rahm Emanuel | | | ©2008 Barbara Iverson | He used the hockey term "hat trick" to describe the role of natural gas in the politics of energy, "good for the environment, good for the economy, and good for policy." Emanuel noted that he sponsored energy legislation which touched on issues in the Pickens Plan, which was passed in the House of Representatives, but failed in the Senate.
T. Boone Pickens is a polished and likeable speaker who retains enough twang of Texas accent to relax an audience, and help him tell a folksy story or two, masking the ruthless corporate raider beneath the skin. He alternated writing on a white board, pacing amiably back and forth on the stage and stopping to tell a story or two, as he explained that he's a "just a geologist who agrees that climate change is real."
 | | | T.Boone Pickens looms large over stage and whiteboard | | | ©2008 Barbara Iverson | | Pickens has been raising the issue of the end of the oil era for longer than other oil industry executives. In 1995, Pickens told the Christian Science Monitor that "It almost borders on insanity to believe that we are not going to confronted by a crisis in supply -- it's going to happen."
Addressing the question of "Why now?" as far as his efforts with the plan go, Pickens claims he's been to Washington explaining how and why dependence on foreign energy sources is bad for the economy and the country for 40 years. He paused to tell one of his stories."This fella told me, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago." Then I asked, "when is the next best time to plant a tree? "Now" was the answer. Continuing, he said that in his 80th year, he wants to enlist millions of citizens to get political support to establish a national energy plan. He explains the "transmission corridors" for wind and solar run through the middle of the continental US, and are thus safer from terrorists than coastal corridors. Describing the US as "the Saudi Arabia of Wind," he is right that it is a renewable resource.
The Pickens Plan appears to be the "big tent" social networking site for the alternative energy. The site is aimed at "greens" who are old hippies, and libertarians who like self-reliance, at entrepreneurs who look to do good and make money on "green" technology, too, and at folks with rural ties who look to wind power as an economic revitalizer. Carl Blay, of Oak Lawn, IL, came out because he is concerned that the price of oil is driving down the dollar.
The Pickens Plan is simple on the face of it: American is addicted to foreign oil, world oil production peaked in 2005, but America is the "Saudi Arabia of wind power." Donna Braden of Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood heard about the plan via an email. She hadn't looked at the website before heading out to Navy Pier. She and her brother maintain a family farm in Kansas. They always had wind mills to pump water, but now they are interested in getting involved with wind farming, and possibly hooking wind generators on their property up the grid that is proposed as part of the Pickens Plan.
As the Pickens Plan rolled into Chicago, it claimed to have over 1 million people who had taken the "pledge." Kimberly Tinerella drove in from Lake Zurich to hear Pickens speak because she and her husband would like to convert their automobile to compressed natural gas (CNG.)
The problem is, the nearest CNG filling station is in Mt. Prospect, about 12 miles from Lake Zurich. There is a CNG forum for the Midwest that includes a map to CNG stations and even a trip planner, however, there were only four stations currently open in Illinois and Indiana. CNG is a main focus of the Pickens Plan, including building up the infrastructure so that there will be lots of filling stations. Eventually, we should be able to have CNG filling stations in our own garages, provided we are in area where CNG is available.
T. Boone Pickens was known for making big money by being a ruthless corporate raider, but as he made money, so did the shareholders of companies which he took over. Asked about the money he stands to make if and when natural gas-powered vehicles become commonplace, with the infrastructure they'll require, called "Phill stations," Pickens told Lilly Rockwell of the Austin Statesman, that his Picken's spokesman Jay Rosser says, "People didn't care...they liked the fact that he had some skin in the game."
The Pickens Plan site features a basic and clear explanation of how a bill gets presented in the US congress, with simple directions for who and how to write to congressmen to push for a bill. The site claims not to take a partisan stand because we "...need production tax credits for alternative energy sources such as wind power, solar, tidal, geothermal, biomass, etc...And we'll probably need a whole lot more that we don't even know about yet."
Bill Anderson of Chicago, owns a two-flat apartment building. He is interested in solar power. He talked about "TAN," a mutual fund of solar companies based in the US, and made the point about how tax credits to reduce the "pay-back" time for solar and other alternative technologies were important in his decisions about whether or not to buy solar energy technology.
Brian Brown, a sustainable and renewable energy consultant and supplier, noted that the tax credits had been scheduled to end this year, and he had lost at least two jobs because of the reluctance of homeowners to invest without the tax credits. These credits were added back as part of the recent "bailout" legislation. [See video below]
Several folks from RMT energy and environmental consulting firm were in the audience. They are bidding on one of the Texas Wind Farm projects that is already underway. Their clients are large operations, not individual homeowners, but the tax credits and legislation regarding tax credits for alternative energy affect their business, too.
Overall, Rep. Emanuel and Mr. Pickens made sense with the ideas about a national energy policy that will lead to less dependence on imported energy and new jobs and industry for Americans. However, when Mr. Pickens asserted that "No president since Nixon, has had an energy policy," it would be hard to ignore the fact that Jimmy Carter, a Democratic president, had an energy plan, which he characterized as the "moral equivalent of war." It was a plan that included tax credits for alternative energy and curbs on fossil fuel-powered vehicles, with many similarities to the Pickens Plan.
Carter's plan provided the impetus for many of the current solar, wind, and alterative energy technologies now in use. But his plan was derided and discarded by Presidents Ford and Reagan.
As Pickens stands before crowds, pitching his Pickens plan, but having spent more than $70,000 on contributions to Republican candidates and causes over the years, one might suspect indeed, that beneath his folksy, earnest, down-to-earth delivery lurks the heart of ruthless, deceptive pirate. But whether or not you take the pledge, if the Pickens Plan can unite political polar opposites like Emanuel and Pickens to work for the common good, it is worth watching.
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