What To Make of T. Boone Pickens?
Thursday, July 10th, 2008
Having already made a fortune off of oil, T. Boone Pickens is now looking to expand his empire into the realm of the renewable energy. In August, 2007, he announced his intention to build 2,700 wind turbines in Texas, which would produce 4,000 megawatts by 2014, enough to power a million homes.
At first glance the man seems to have become a tree hugger overnight—the so-called “Pickens Plan” would produce 20 percent of the country’s energy, perhaps signaling an end to the creation of any more environmentally unfriendly coal-burning power plants—but before you start patting him on the back keep reading. A major element of his plan involves using natural gas to power cars instead of to generate electricity, which the folks at Climate Progress to a good job of discrediting.
Meanwhile, as the media focuses on his foray into wind, he’s been busy buying up all the water in Texas. He has spent $75 million purchasing the ground water rights for 200,000 acres of Texas with the idea of selling water pulled out of the Ogallala Aquifer to El Paso or Dallas. “I know what people say,” he told critics. “Water’s a lot like air. Do you charge for air? ‘Course not. You shouldn’t charge for water. Well, OK, watch what happens. You won’t have any water.”
As scary as this business magnate sounds, he’s still one of the few people in this country who has actually devised a plan that will wean us off foreign-produced non-renewable energy. I’d almost rather give the money I spend on electricity to him than our hopelessly behind-the-times government, and if he has it his way that’s exactly what’s going to happen.