Accountable by Tavis Smiley

Author:Tavis Smiley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2009-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

EXPLORING ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

Recognizing America’s annual $700 billion expense for oil and its reliance on importing 70 percent of that oil, T. Boone Pickens is in the vanguard to reorder America’s renewable energy future. Ranked by Forbes magazine as the 117th richest person in America and 369th in the world, Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr., has an estimated net worth of $3 billion. Born in Oklahoma, he is the son of an oil and mineral landman who moved his family to Texas at the end of the oil boom in Oklahoma. After graduating from Oklahoma State University with a degree in geology, Pickens accepted a position with Phillips Petroleum and later founded Mesa Petroleum. Although renowned as a successful oilman at heart, Pickens is now preaching the gospel of alternative energy. The Pickens Plan promotes the use of wind power as a primary energy source. It relies heavily on a Stanford University study in 2005, the findings of which demonstrated that there is enough wind power to meet the global demand seven times over, even if only 20 percent of wind power is captured.215 While wind power holds tremendous promise, a diverse portfolio of options will be necessary to sustain our current energy demands.

Pickens’ plan has produced as many skeptics and critics as supporters. A Los Angeles Times article written by a senior fellow of the Cato Institute labeled it “Pickens’ Plan to Rig the Market,” purporting that Pickens was motivated by greed, corporate welfare, and tax breaks.216 The criticism, however, was based on a view that is more sympathetic to drilling for oil and that has serious doubts about the viability of wind energy and natural gas technologies. On the other hand, some of Pickens’ would-be supporters remain skeptical, finding it difficult to believe that a former financial backer of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against former Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry would visit the 2008 Democratic National Convention, share a stage with John Podesta and the executive director of the Sierra Club, and pitch a “politically neutral” energy plan to Barack Obama.217 Yet, stranger things have happened. And the truth is that corporate energy giants and other privately owned companies are critically important partners in our country’s environmental and energy maturation and independence.

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