From the new Texas Monthly's fascinating profile of T. Boone Pickens:
Earlier this year, he went to visit President George W. Bush at the White House, bringing with him the whiteboard that he carries on his jet. Standing before Bush, marking all over the board with a black pen, he gave the president his speech: Total global production of oil was at 85 million barrels a day, total global demand was hitting 87 million barrels a day, and oil producers were unable to make up the difference. The hydrocarbon era--the very era that had made Boone a rich man (and, by the way, also made Bush a millionaire)--was over, Boone proclaimed. The age of alternative energy must begin immediately."And what did the president say?" I asked.
"He said, 'No shit! T. Boone, you've got to be shitting me!'"
I started writing down everything Boone had said.
"Oh, hell, come on, you know I'm kidding," Boone said. "The president politely told me that what I had to say was very, very interesting."
"In other words, your talk didn't affect him all that much."
Boone then said something pretty frank for a big-time Republican. "Well, he hasn't done anything so far, has he?"
You really should read the whole Texas Monthly story. Skip Hollandsworth, the piece's author, is one of the best writers in the business, and you get a real sense of who T. Boone Pickens is from that story. The guy is a classic Texas character. You can't make guys like him up.
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Houghton -
You're right that the wind blows constantly in the Great Plains...but that's part of the problem: the good prevailing winds in this country are very far from the population centers. A whole new set of (massively expensive) high voltage lines would have to be constructed to carry that wind power to where it is needed.
And most oil wells are far away from where the energy ends up.
A windmill doesn't have to be next door for it to provide energy.
Infrastructure is always an unavoidable cost of using ANY new technology. Including when we switched over to oil in the first place.
Highways and paved roads, refineries, and gas stations were all a 'massively expensive' cost of the development of the auto.
Same goes for radio, television, computers..
If the power is there, it IS constant, and it provides the power we need, the lines will be more than worth it. We won't have to go, hat in hand, or gun in hand (depending) to people in other countries who don't like us much in order to GET it.
I think that's a distinct benefit.
Huge wind farms are going up all over West Texas without Pickins. Ultimately the "Pickins Plan" isn't about wind power so much as it's about water. Pickins has bought water rights in the panhandle and created a water district with the intent to sell water from the Ogallala Aquifer to Dallas and Austin. Thanks to the state of Texas passing a bond package for transmission lines, he now has a right-of-way for a pipeline. Here's a Business Week story on it:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_25/b4089040017753.htm
My family lives on the Llano Estacado, and I was born and raised there. Ground water from the Ogallala is what keeps the high plains populated and functioning. If he gets his pipeline built, then twenty or thirty years from now the water table on the high plains may have dropped so low that the farmers and small towns there can't effectively pump it. We could actually see the worst environmental disaster on the plains since the dust bowl, and like that one this would also be man-made. And there will be lots of hand wringing and big news stories with scary music asking "How could this have happened?".
Well this is how.
Yes, all of the above, I agree. Of course, change is hard. Inertia rules, things fall apart. They don't get better on their own. It's going to take a lot of lobbying and public awareness campaigns to even get people to get over their prejudices against all things "Green." But they may listen up if you tell them it's for the good of our national security. Which is it is.
Secondly, don't forget cutting back and living more simply. Sure, no one wants to be TOLD to do it. But if everyone who cares starts to do it, it will make a difference. Well, hopefully. I can see certain anti-environmentalists UPPING consumption and energy use just to spite us. But time is not on their side and at some point they will be poorer that people who saved and cut back. Maybe. Justice doesn't always happen though, does it?
Karen:
The problem with the power lines for wind generators is apparently they have to be a different type of power line. An entirely new network of wind-specific power lines would need to criss-cross the country-- and tens of thousands of parcels of property would need to be seized-- in order for massive windfarms in the plains to put even a dent in our electrical demands.
Furthermore, they would be an absolute blight. Feel free to build a windmill in your backyard for personal use-- seriously, I'm trying to convince my parents to do it-- but large-scale deployment is a non-starter.
Nuclear probably has more potential to save us. And perhaps switchgrass ethanol. And we really should nail this clean-coal thing.
I agree we need to push on ALL fronts. But I really am, specifically, skeptical of wind. And corn ethanol, too.
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