« Do Pigs Matter? | Main | Jews heart Obama »

July 20, 2008

Pickens v. Gore? Not so much

Find more videos like this on Pickens Plan

I saw this ad last night on TV (KGW 8) and am intrigued by it.

Here's Pickens' Plan. The gist of it is that he wants America to do as he has personally done and invest heavily in wind power. That will, in his view, free up more domestically produced Natural Gas to be converted to vehicular fuel - and thus reducing the vast transfer of wealth which his ad expresses alarm over.

The plan makes a certain amount of sense at first glance. But some environmentalists have urged caution over the ecological damage of large-scale windfarms on a large enough scale to make a serious dent in the problem. However, that's on the premise that the point is to replace petroleum fuels. Pickens isn't necessarily trying to replace petroleum fuels per se, he just wants reduce our collective reliance upon foreign sources. That his windfarms would reduce our use of petro sources seems to be icing rather than the cake, from his point of view.

I'm honestly unsure what to think of this. At first whiff it seems good. But the effects of Global Warming seem to me to warrant at least a cautious attitude towards a plan that is so obviously motivated by $$$ first and foremost. Plus... I'm personally not convinced that wind power offers as much as geothermal power does.

I just watched Al Gore on Meet The Press say that he welcomes Pickens' Plan. Tom Brokaw read a statement by Pickens arguing that his plan and Gore's plan should be viewed differently. But Gore certainly seemed happy to have them considered together. His primary, albeit very gently articulated, criticism of Pickens' Plan is that he sees natural gas as an intermediate measure and he said that it makes more sense to him to cut to the chase rather than focus on an intermediate step as Pickens has.

Posted by Kevin at July 20, 2008 08:45 AM