Last week, T. Boone sat down with the L.A. Times to talk about the Pickens Plan, past blunders with ethanol, and how America’s next president needs to tackle the country’s energy problems like Eisenhower and the Interstate highways.

Here’s an excerpt:

Jon Healey, L.A. Times: Can you talk a little bit about the infrastructure challenges of getting wind power into the grid at volume, and also of getting natural gas into the transportation sector at volume?

Pickens: You’ve got to have health in the wind corridor…. Just look at how blessed we are with where our wind is. It’s in a perfect place — it’s in the plains. It’s interesting because this is going to have great support. Back in 1996 when Bob Dole ran for president and I was his energy advisor, and he told me, “Energy is a sleeping dog, and I’m not going to kick the dog. And then there’s Clinton, and you won’t be much use in this case, but just in case something happens, and the subject came up, I’ll call you and you help me.”

Well, he was right on: Nothing happened in ‘96. And he also told me on ethanol, he said, “Ethanol is, you say it’s a bad fuel.” I said, “Come on Bob, you spend more money making it than importing it.” And he said, “Let me explain something to you about politics: There are 21 farm states, and that’s 42 senators. Don’t go any further.” I’m getting the picture. I said, “They want ethanol.” He said, “They’re going to have ethanol.” And so he said, “Don’t waste any more of our time or your time telling us it’s a bad idea, because they’re going to do it.”

That’s the way I see this unfolding on wind, that you’re going to have 21 farm states as kind of the same state, and you’re going to get a lot of support for wind in this whole picture because the landowners want it. People say it’s so unsightly. I say, let me tell you, some people say it’s not unsightly, it looks like money. And they need the money, and they’ll do it….

I think that if Congress would do something like Eisenhower did in the Interstate highways — that is to say, an emergency, which it is. It’s like war, and we need to address it in a non-partisan way…. We have the vast resources of wind and solar, but the naysayers say wait a minute, solar isn’t there yet. Don’t worry about it; I have enough faith in America….

Whatever you do, this is the loser, here — foreign oil. And there wouldn’t be anybody that would — I don’t think, in this country — that would not like to see these people lose and we win.

The full exchange is worth reading. You can check it out here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 11:35 am by Brad in In the News.
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