It’s a Gas

There’s been a lot of chatter on the Internet – and over the airwaves – for the past few days, as various pundits have be chiming in on the new version of the “Pickens Plan” in which T. Boone Pickens appears to be backing off of his previous stand on wind power (he spent $80 million of his own money pushing it in television ads and online) and is now concentrating on natural gas to decrease America’s dependence on imported oil. Environmentalists appear to be gnashing about how disappointing it is that Mr. Pickens is backing another fossil fuel over clean, renewable wind power, while anti-business types and anyone else who hates billionaires who like to throw their weight around is howling about how Mr. Pickens owns several of the companies that would build the infrastructure for a natural-gas-based transportation system, and how all of this is just another attempt to line his pockets. As a life-long environmentalist and business pragmatist, I have to ask, why does anyone care?

You can check out the story on MSNBC.com here if you want to, but I think we should note two facts about the situation before reaching any conclusions. One is that Mr. Pickens isn’t abandoning wind power; he’s relocating the wind farm he was going to build in the Texas Panhandle to Canada, where local utilities have a mandate from the national government to purchase electricity from renewable sources (like wind farms). It’s hard luck on the small town in Texas where the wind farm was going to be, but the local infrastructure couldn’t have handled (or transmitted) the output from the wind farm even if it did get built, and it’s really hard to blame anyone for taking their product to a market that will pay more for it. The second is that Mr. Pickens isn’t trying to conceal his interest in natural gas or his financial stake in getting the infrastructure in place; he’s just touting it as an alternative to imported oil – which, in fairness, it is…

In addition, it’s probably worth noting that the wind turbine industry seems to be doing just fine, and that if giant wind farms are built in Canada using American-made equipment, there should still be a major lift to our economy. But the real point here is that a businessman with an interest in natural gas infrastructure campaigning in favor of natural gas is in no way different from the petroleum industry commercials I called to your attention earlier this year, which claimed that this country could fulfill all of its own energy needs with the resources found within our boarders. If we agree that an improved foreign trade ratio and a decreased dependence on several countries that actively hate us for oil is a good thing then these new natural gas-powered vehicle programs are probably worth the effort, and if these initiatives turn out to be cheaper or more practical than wind power (at least in the short run), then we all stand to benefit. The real question is what are we going to do when the world starts running out of natural gas?

It’s possible that the new energy policy that will come out of Washington in the next two (or four) years will include increased support for alternative sources of energy. And if we can buy enough time to develop those new sources, build the infrastructure to sustain them, and educate our people on how to use them by using the respite that the Pickens plan could quite possibly gain for us, then I don’t see why anybody should complain if the guy who had enough foresight to figure out which way the bandwagon was rolling and get in front of it makes another fortune or two in the process…