Media heartthrob T. Boone Pickens is coming to Lincoln on August 20. Mr. Pickens, you may have heard, is the filthy rich Texas oilman who thinks the U.S. needs to invest in wind for our electricity and natural gas for our cars. His goal, he says, is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
While that's all well and good, Mr. Pickens isn't driven by patriotism alone. Profit -- as you might expect -- is one of his substantial motivators. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Indeed, profit seeking drives innovation. As oil prices increase we are going to see more and more individuals and corporations come forward with solutions they hope to make a buck off of. And thank goodness.
What bothers me about good ol' T. Boone isn't that he wants to make a buck, but that he wants to make a buck using my tax dollars. Lots of folks are writing about this, but here is one summary. In short, Mr. Pickens has interests in water rights, wind energy, and natural gas. But in order for the profits to start rolling in, he needs you and me to wield our influence over our Senators and Representatives so he can get access to the resources he needs to put this all together.
That isn't capitalism. That's robbery.
Anyway, if you go see Mr. Pickens on August 20, and if there is a Q&A period, I encourage you to probe this topic with him. T. Boone says he wants to increase the use of clean (or cleaner) energy. Fantastic. But why must he use such dirty tactics to do it?
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While I don’t care for Mr. Pickens’ ideas in their current form, I know you are aware that governments at all levels direct money to help private investors if they believe it’s in the public interest. Why choose this project to declare it’s not capitalism, but robbery?
Thank you! I’m glad somebody besides myself pointed this out. The whole electricity plan isn’t so much about installing windmills as it is gaining a right-of-way for a pipe line to pump from the Ogallala Aquifer. This water will then be bought and sold much like oil so that people in Dallas can water their lawns.
I’m all for renewable and alternate forms of energy, but Mr. Pickens is nothing but trouble.
I had no idea he stood to profit so greatly from this. Seems like he should be more forthcoming about his desire to use his tract of land to pump water to Dallas. Maybe Dallas is in dire straits for water, but I’m always concerned about the use of eminent domain.
I see it as more of an attempt to expand the reach of the oil industry into the non-oil energy sector (wind, solar, etc.). I don’t have a problem at all with the oil industry using its vast knowledge and capital to help develop some of these other sectors if it is done wisely. My only concern is that you are potentially looking at quasi energy monopolies (perhaps too strong a word) if big oil starts to dominate wind, solar, and everything else.
One of my favorite podcasts is the Business Week “behind the cover” series, and they did an episode about T Boone buying up all those water rights outside Dallas a few weeks ago:
http://www.businessweek.com/mediacenter/podcasts/cover_stories/current.html
I just stopped by to say that I’d read your blog and comment more often if you included the story in the RSS feed. Since you don’t, I don’t either.
He wants to drink our milkshake.
I’m sure he’ll make his best efforts to accomodate you in the future. Passive-agressive much?
All the Lincolnite entries should be available via RSS. Perhaps your reader is set on a funky setting? I use bloglines and they all come up fine.
Our milkshake bring the ‘T’ to the yard
and we’re like
“Its better than yours…..”
ugh.
Thanks. Great info.!
I wonder how Ted Turner’s water rights on all those ranches stacks up against Pickens’ collection.
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