T. Boone’s Millions and the Corporate Media

By now, most of us have seen or heard T. Boone Pickens’ ads touting his absolute, undying love for the country and, in a very practiced boyish, next-door guy kind of way, his heartfelt desire to reduce the amount of oil we import and help some wind power development along the way. I observed him in a panel during the DNC at the Big Tent and came away very unsatisfied with him and his plan. What was labeled as a discussion came closer to being part sales pitch, part lecture. T. Boone must be used to the old way of doing business, because every blogger I spoke with afterward came away as unimpressed as I was. Why no questions from the audience, for example? I think T. Boone figured out that this crowd would pose some very unwelcome questions considering members of the corporate media were also in attendance. I believe those same corporate media folk have been sucked into Pickens’ charisma without taking the time to examine his plan in a critical fashion. It’s rare when journalists actually do their jobs anymore, which is part of the reason the old-time entities are collapsing in on themselves.

The situation isn’t much different in Colorado based on an article in today’s (Sunday’s) Business section of the Denver Post. They carried a piece by Al Lewis of the Dow jones Newswires that did some minor cheer-leading for good ol’ T. Boone but didn’t get into his plan’s details too much. The title: T. Boone taps into forgiveness. The “story”: despite T. Boone’s funding Republican candidates and causes over the years, Democrats came out of Denver absolutely loving the Pickens’ Plan. The evidence: not too much here. Apparently, Al Lewis came away impressed. And I’m sure other folks left the lecture in star-struck awe. But I don’t think they’re in the majority. Al Lewis’ characterization that Democrats just couldn’t get enough is a little too much to swallow, quite frankly.

Pope, Podesta and Pickens: Energy Policies and Climate Change

The most important panel I attended today at the Big Tent at the DNC revolved around the next energy policy of our future president. Talk about celebrity power: T. Boone Pickens was part of the panel and attendance in the Tent was the highest I’ve seen it all week. It was moderated by John Podesta, a former Clinton Chief of Staff. The third person on stage was Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club.

In a nutshell, the Pickens plan doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t go far enough because his plan doesn’t address climate change in any meaningful way. It is an energy plan and one that could be described as transitory to 100% renewable. But he doesn’t present it as such. He presents it as the end game. If his plan, or something close to it, is the end game, climate change will effect us in ways we can’t imagine today. Read on if you want more details.

Yes, two parts of his plan deal with a wind corridor from Texas to Canada and a solar corridor from Texas to California. That’s a good thing. The third portion of his plan, however, advocates changing U.S. trucking fleets over from diesel to … diesel. The diesel would come from changing natural gas to diesel, but they would still run on diesel. That means we will still be utilizing fossil fuels for transportation. Unfortunately for his plan, natural gas is becoming increasingly difficult (read: expensive) to get out of the ground. Natural gas will become even more expensive if we convert national fleets of trucks to run on natural gas. One reason: the Pickens plan doesn’t guarantee domestic natural gas will be sold domestically. Like oil, it will go to the highest bidder. That’s what commodity traders do: sell for maximum profit. Pickens wants to switch expensive oil for expensive natural gas.