Sunday, July 13, 2008

T. Boone Pickens and Alternative Energy

Maybe you've seen this commercial...



Or one of the news stories...



Well, here's his plan...



I'm glad to see a smart-thinking capitalist embrace alternative energy. When these kinds of folks get serious, stuff gets done. Although, he doesn't really provide a comprehensive solution. As he confesses, this plan only stems the tide, not to mention probably lining his own pocket (not that there's anything wrong with that...).

Hopefully there will be other smart-thinking capitalists, and maybe even some engineers with ingenuity & other noble-minded do-gooders, who will work to do even more to improve all of our lives & secure our "temporal" future in terms of diversifying our energy sources.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have a look at his wikipedia article and you will see he is heavily connected with oil. That is his bread and butter. I seriously doubt he has a real desire to do away with our need for oil but that is just speculation on my part.

III said...

He admits his oil bias. The bias he doesn't admit is that he has positioned himself to benefit handsomely from a transition to more wind-based power sources.

Yeah, I'm not holding the guy up as a saint. And even his plan doesn't call for us to not use oil anymore. But if a smart capitalist is seeing dollar-signs in alternative energy, that is a positive development & not a negative one.

Jordan said...

Pickins is from my part of the world, I think that I have a closer view of him. I would say that yes, he, like many others around here, have made a killing off of local USA oil. He has positioned himself recently with his vast money to promote the wind energy market. Of note as well is that he is one of the biggest philanthropists around.

I would also say that greed is one of the best motivators to solving critical problems. This is a simple truth that has spawned many great advances.

Anonymous said...

I will admit that I've come to begin thinking about businesses and politicians in cynical terms; that is, each is out solely for his own gain. I would argue that self-gain is actually the initial motivation presented for many things, including our decisions to obey God. I would further argue that the Bible actually supports this motivation (at least initially) in many areas, but I will not try and flesh that out here.

In any case, capitalism walked us into our current dependency on oil and I think it has the same capacity to walk us into a dependence (economically) on something else.

As a nation, we are quickly arriving (or perhaps, have reached) an equilibrium where our use of oil no longer is justified in terms of national security and gross domestic product.

If you haven't been considering what issues are important to you, now is the time. Every single seat in the House of Representatives is up for election in November 2008. I suggest you write your current representative and let he or she know what's important to you.