The pack of peppers T. Boone Pickens picked

Have any of you seen the series of ads that began airing last week, the ones with Texas oil baron T. Boone Pickens? This is the same guy who funded the phony baloney Swift Boat campaign four years ago against John Kerry; and who has offered a million bucks to anyone who can prove him wrong (unclaimed as of yet).

The new advertisments point to the fact that the civil wars in Iraq and in other troubled places is why oil is so expensive right now, as well as the disturbing detail that America now imports 70% of its oil and $700 billion per year are flowing out to the Middle East. Pickens invites viewers to go to his website and view his plan to save the American economy.

I looked at it last night and it is a rather interesting concept. Pickens accepts at full value the concept of "peak oil" and says the world actually hit that point in 2005 -- ahead of the mark even many environmentalists have suggested, somewhere between this year and 2011. He points out that 23% of power plants use natural gas and the penetration rate in automobiles is less than one percent. He suggests more cars and trucks produced be converted to NG, much in the way many municipal and commercial fleets have been, to take advantage of the gas already being piped out. That in itself would cut the import rate to about 60%. The natural gas would be diverted from current NG plants.

To cover the obvious shortage in power that would result, Pickens suggests the solution lies in solar and wind power. There is of course plenty of sun in the Southwest. Up the middle of America, through the Great Plains, he says the sustained winds are sufficient to power the country and then some with the ability to send power both east and west. (That's an interesting point when one considers that the eastern and western halves of North America are actually two completely separate power grids, with only one interconnect between them somewhere in Kansas.)

Pickens is saying that he's going to round out the rest of his ideas in the coming weeks leading up to Election Day and is saying the environment and energy independence has to be his country's number one priority. Say what you will about the rest of his politics, this is a guy who's thinking ahead of the curve and outside the box -- especially for someone who's spend nearly all of his 80 years on the oil patch. I give him credit for reopening the issue and taking on both parties in such a dramatic fashion. This is a direct challenge to King Coal which is spending zillions on their subtle ad campaign to ensure America chokes well into the 27th century compared to Pickens who is spending a relatively paltry $5 million. But the future for jobs in America will be jobs that come from responsible choices.

I look forward to seeing what McCain and Obama think of solar and wind.

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