Pickens’ bad-mouthing of our use of oil sounds like it comes from Al Gore and his fellow Democrats and extreme Greens — and guess who Pickens’ new friends are?
Pickens told the National Journal that, “I think I would be for Al Gore for energy czar [in an Obama administration].”
Pickens said that he and Gore agree on about 95 percent of their respective energy plans.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited Pickens to speak before the Democratic Caucus.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that, while Pickens was once a “mortal enemy,” they are now friends because of the oilman’s conversion to alternative energy.
Then there’s Carl Pope, the head of the Sierra Club, who not only flies in Pickens’ private jet but writes paeans about him on the liberal Huffington Post blog.
“T. Boone Pickens is out to save America,” Pope wrote on July 3.
It would have been more accurate, perhaps, for Pope to write that “Pickens is out to make billions of dollars for himself and to save the Sierra Club’s anti-coal, anti-oil, anti-natural gas agenda.”
Lastly, the New York Times rhapsodized about Pickens in an editorial this week.
Pickens’ involvement in the alleged swiftboating of John Kerry seems to have been forgiven and forgotten by the paper. But the Times went absolutely over-the-top when it observed that the billionaire Pickens wasn’t in it for the money because “he doesn’t really need it.”
It’s too bad we can’t generate electricity from such hilarity, half-truths and hypocrisy. Pickens and his new friends could power us — as Buzz Lightyear might say — to infinity and beyond.
Posted by Keith Johnson
The renewable-energy industry’s still out of luck: [The U.S. Senate tried and failed again to extend the tax credits](http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN3048726220080730)that make clean energy competitive. That leaves the crucial government support even closer to expiration at the end of the year, and means lots of renewable-energy projects in pipelines around the country could get cancelled.
Despite calls from people as disparate as Al Gore and T. Boone Pickens for more clean energy, the Senate vote wasn’t even as close as previous efforts to extend the tax credits—51 senators voted in favor, to 43 against. The measure needed 60 votes to be filibuster-proof—crucial at a time when Senate Republicans are holding their support for the tax credits until Democrats offer their support for more domestic oil drilling. If the two sides can find common ground, Congress could still renew the tax breaks after the August recess.
Wednesday’s vote was for an eight-year extension on solar-power tax credits, and a one-year extension for wind power credits, among other things. Why do they matter? The federal tax credits are a key national subsidy for renewable energy, which still needs a push to be competitive with traditional power sources, despite recent price hikes in fuels like natural gas.
The U.S. has never had long-term clean-energy subsidies in place; usually they are renewed for a year or two at a time. Lots of people in the industry blame that unpredictability for the stop-and –start pattern the clean energy industry’s developed over the last two decades. New projects generally come to a standstill the year after tax credits expire. The American Wind Energy Association, a trade group, lambasted the Senate and pointed to “116,000 jobs and nearly $19 billion in investment at risk.” Of course, the upside—such as it is—is a mini-gold rush the year the credits expire. U.S. solar power is having a banner year right now.
[Pickens Gives New Meaning to 'Self-Government'](http://junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080731.html) By Steven Milloy
July 31, 2008
The more you learn about T. Boone Pickens’ plan to switch America to wind power, the more you realize that he seems willing to say and do just about anything to make another billion or two.
This column previously discussed the plan’s technical and economic shortcomings and marketing ruses. Today, we’ll look into the diabolical machinations behind it.
Simply put, Pickens’ pitch is “embrace wind power to help break our ‘addiction’ to foreign oil.” There is, however, another intriguing component to Pickens’ plan that goes unmentioned in his TV commercials, media interviews and web site – water rights, which he owns more of than any other American.
Pickens hopes that his recent $100 million investment in 200,000 acres worth of groundwater rights in Roberts County, Texas, located over the Ogallala Aquifer, will earn him $1 billion. But there’s more to earning such a profit than simply acquiring the water. Rights-of-way must be purchased to install pipelines, and opposition from anti-development environmental groups must be overcome. Here’s where it gets interesting, according to information compiled by the Water Research Group, a small grassroots group focusing on local water issues in Texas.
Purchasing rights-of-way is often expensive and time-consuming – and what if landowners won’t sell? While private entities may be frustrated, governments can exercise eminent domain to compel sales. This is Pickens’ route of choice. But wait, you say, Pickens is not a government entity. How can he use eminent domain? Are you sitting down?
At Pickens’ behest, the Texas legislature changed state law to allow the two residents of an 8-acre parcel of land in Roberts County to vote to create a municipal water district, a government agency with eminent domain powers. Who were the voters? They were Pickens’ wife and the manager of Pickens’ nearby ranch. And who sits on the board of directors of this water district? They are the parcel’s three other non-resident landowners, all Pickens’ employees.
**Nancy Pelosi says that she is trying to save the planet and prevent global warming, but the reality is that, according to disclosure statements, in May 2007 she invested in T. Boone Picken’s clean energy fuels corp., CLNE, which is the sole sponsor of a proposal in California to funnel $5 billion in state funds and $5 billion in Federal funs to this corporation which will indirectly help them create a giant wind farm in the Texas panhandle.
An overlooked story in November of 2007 shows that the T. Boone Pickens plan involves the private control of water, which Pickens wants to be able to sell to big cities via giant water pipelines which will be built on land seized under eminent domain.
How did he do this? He did this by pushing through a “water district” which consists of only 8 acres of land and then applying eminent domain to expand that district and seize land from local ranchers which, in the end, puts vital water resources under his private control.
The Sierra Club, which you might think has an opinion that means something to Nancy Pelosi who just wants to “save the world”, had this to say, “We have real concerns about private control of water,” said Ken Kramer, director of the Texas Sierra Club. “Water is a resource, yet in some respects it is a commodity. It’s as essential to human life as air. That puts water in a different class.”
…in commercials funded by Republican businessman T. Boone Pickens, who wants government subsidies for alternative energy. He tries to scare us by saying, “$700 billion are leaving this country to foreign nations every year – the largest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind.”
Don’t Obama and Pickens realize that we get something useful for that money? It’s not a “transfer”; it’s a win-win transaction, like all voluntary trade. Who cares if the sellers live in a foreign country? When two parties trade, each is better off – or the exchange would never have been made. We want the oil more than the money. They want the money more than the oil. They need us as much as we need them.
And Obama is wrong when he implies that America imports most of its oil from the Mideast. Most of it comes from [Canada and Mexico](http://tinyurl.com/7ldt).
McCain and Obama talk constantly about how much they will “invest” – with money taken from the taxpayers, of course – to achieve energy independence. “[W]e can provide loan guarantees and venture capital to those with the best plans to develop and sell biofuels on a commercial market,” Obama said.
What makes Obama think he’s qualified to pick the “best plans”? It’s the robust competition of the free market that reveals what’s best. Obama’s program would preempt the only good method we have for learning which form of energy is best.
Has he learned nothing from the conceits of his predecessors? Jimmy Carter, saying that achieving energy independence was the “moral equivalent of war,” called for “the most massive peacetime commitment of funds … to develop America’s own alternative”. Then he wasted billions of our tax dollars on the utterly failed “synfuel” program.
McCain promises a $300-million prize to whoever develops a battery for an electric car. But the free market already provides plenty of incentive to invent a better battery. As George Mason University economist Donald Boudreaux writes, “Anyone who develops such a device will earn profits dwarfing $300 million simply by selling it on the market. There’s absolutely no need for any such taxpayer-funded prize”.
Could be why Ted Turner is buying up all of the land in the plains that he can get his hands on. He currently owns millions of midwest acreage. Windmills my be in our future.
Here in Illinois we get power from Coal and Nuclear.
It is still high priced.
If we use electric cars , how will this help ?
Why does the promotion of CFL bulbs ,seem to be tied in with oil prices?
There is so much BS and politics involved , with a very real problem ,that I wonder how far down the economic ladder this country will go before real solutions,rather than rhetric will be applied.
It matters not in the end, look at who is developing the Alternate Energy, the oil companies! They are not going to take their hands out of our pockets, they are just developing new ways to pick them.
