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T. Boone Pickens: From Swift Boater To Pluralist
Smart successful people tend to have strong opinions and the courage and confidence to act on them. But they can differ on how to deal with those who disagree with them or have other opinions.
One approach--the one we see from most politicians today--is to discredit and even demonize those who have other points of view. We've all seen how unproductive that is. A second is to be tolerant of the holders of inferior positions or to pretend to show them respect in an effort to promote diversity. This can keep people happier but does little to promote excellence.
The winning position in every aspect of daily life is to be pluralistic. Pluralism means being fiercely committed to your own beliefs and practices while trying to find the partial truth in the approaches of those who with whom you disagree. In business and education they call it using "best practices" and in sports they call it "cross training." Look for wisdom everywhere and when you find it, use it to upgrade your own ability to perform.
A few days ago I got to listen and talk to T. Boone Pickens, the 80-year old multi-billionaire oilman who over the last four years has transitioned from being a man who tried to discredit and demonize the other to a true pluralist. He is the best example I have seen of what a profound difference pluralism can make in one's effort to confront the most important challenges in life.
In 2004, Pickens donated almost $4 million to the Bush campaign--a huge chunk of which went to fund the sleazy ads produced by the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth which viciously criticized the military record of decorated Vietnam veteran John Kerry. George Bush, like myself, enlisted in the Air Force Reserve to avoid that war. Bush was trained as a pilot at a cost of $500,000 to U.S. taxpayers and then never showed up for a Reserve meeting for four years. Against all logic, the ads were a huge success and Bush won the election.
Last Friday, Pickens appeared at the Aspen Institute as a totally changed man on a mission. Although he never mentioned his Swift Boat role, he did say that our country's biggest problem is "a failure in leadership" and rolled his eyes whenever Bush's name was mentioned.
Pickens was here to talk about the Pickens Plan (www.pickensplan.com) for making our country energy independent. His plan is explained in detail at his website but in a nutshell, he believes our top national priority should be to stop the $700 billion a year transfer of wealth from the U.S. to oil producing countries. Many of those countries are funding terrorism and have pledged to destroy us.
He is in favor of aggressively pursuing any form of energy that can be produced in our country with an emphasis on natural gas--for heating, industry, and to fuel cars--and wind. He also favors expanding drilling although, unlike McCain, he does not believe that we can "drill our way out of this problem."
He pointed out that the U.S., with 3% of the world's oil production and 4% of the world's people, consumes 25% of the world's oil. "We got addicted to cheap oil and now that the price is going up we're stuck" he said, pointing out that no other country in the world allowed its oil prices to remain as low as we did. "It's your fault and my fault," he said. "And a failure of leadership."
When I talked with Pickens after his presentation, he said he has met with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Friedman called for a big hike in gasoline taxes the week after the attacks on 9/11 to cut demand for oil and keep us from supporting the people who attacked us. "I'm in favor of that right now," Pickens told me. "I'm looking for good advice wherever I can find it."
Pickens was enthusiastic and animated as he talked about his plan. He also said that he would not endorse John McCain or Barack Obama and would "sit out" this year's campaign because he felt that dealing in a non-partisan way with this problem was more important that his partisan political feelings. He asked for and received private meetings with both McCain and Obama over the weekend and he said he will look forward to working with our next president--whomever that might be.
Someone asked him if his enormous wealth didn't give him access to decision makers that the average person doesn't have. "My money gets me access, but it doesn't get me results, Pickens said. "I would rather show up with a million people signed up than show up rich."
Hearing about the Pickens Plan was fascinating, but I came away from the session blown away by the transformation in Pickens himself. In just a few years he moved from being a totally partisan political animal to a man who is looking for the partial truth in the disparate views of a variety of people. And, he's backing his position with $60 million of his own money.
From Swift Boater to pluralist in just a few years. From funding lies and smear tactics to working with millions of people to solve one of our nation's most pressing problems. In my mind, Pickens is the new poster boy for pluralism.
The Jewish Talmud says:
Who is truly wise? He who learns from all people.
T. Boone Pickens has become truly wise.
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Honestly, if the only problem is that Pickens gets rich, I don't care. I'd just as soon he get rich than the Saudi royal family. And a domestic energy policy will make a LOT of Americans richer.
The problem with all the discussion of alternate energy is that cost analyses don't take into account the massive subsidies provided the oil industry. Perhaps half the defense budget is there simply to guarantee access to foreign oil. Iraq was about oil. Our Mideast policy -- which basically involves protecting the Saudi royal family -- is about oil. The war in Georgia was about oil (pipelines).
Switching to domestic sources -- wind and solar -- isn't a matter of a few cents difference per kilowatt hour. It's a matter of national security, plain and simple. A federally funded electrical grid capable of dealing with decentralized power generation is as important to the country as the Interstate Highway System and the Manhattan Project. If we had spent the $300 billion we've wasted in Iraq on real energy independence, we'd be done by now.
And if we did it right, we'd have an extra million high-paying factory jobs making wind turbines, solar panels and solar thermal plants. We'd have dying farm towns brought back to life. Our economy would not be in the crapper. And we'd be able to tell the Saudis to screw themselves.
For more information about "Concentrating Solar Power" plants, click here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080823/ts_csm/wp_6342
The truth about T. Boones wind.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/22/t-boone-pickens-next-proj_n_120652.html
I think it is a mistake to focus on Pickens' motives rather than what his plan calls for. Go to pickensplan.com and respond to the plan--not what you think his motivation might be. If he gets richer off this and our country shifts its plan and focus to stopping the $2 billion a day wealth transfer to our worst enemies then I say it's worth it.
t bone pickens only does what is good for ol' t bone. he gets the gravy. the rest of us will get the shaft.
You can spray paint out the white stripe on a skunk, but you still will have just a skunk.
Who is not truly wise?
He who learns about the "new" T. Boone Pickens only from the "new" T. Boone Pickens.
Meet the new T. Boone, same as the old T. Boone.
Total nonsense. America is not going to be energy "independent" anytime soon.
We will need to buy energy from abroad for a generation or more. We have big reserves of coal, that's it.
Ask yourself: are you willing to change to a lifestyle that, at best, could be called "camping" - and watch people in other places [like China] living large?
Yep...didn't think so.
Actually, that's not even true. The difference in quality of life between a person consuming 10kW of power continuously and one using half as much is... zero. America just happens to waste half of what it uses. We have the money, so we can burn it. Right?
The Pickens Plan has a large role for coal if we can clean it up. Basically he's for anything that we have a lot of in the U.S. and less of what we have to buy from foreign countries--particularly those that are supporting terrorism and want to destroy us.
You can call it "camping" if you want, but facts are facts. We have spent our country into bankruptcy with our current lifestyle and enriched our worst enemies beyond their wildest dreams. Change is not an option--it's a requirement. Unfortunately, we don't have political leaders who trust us enough to tell us the truth. They're too busy convincing us they can bring gas prices down (which they can't) so we can keep doing what we're doing.
It was Will Rogers--not Boone Pickens--who said "When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging."
You can't clean up coal. That's just another lie of the industry.
By the end of this year, the world will 100 Gigawatts of installed wind power capacity; that's equivalent to 100 one Gig nuke plants. The US is behind Europe but with renewed incentives we can catch up.
T. Boone is trying to cast himself as some visonary savior, but he's really just trying to catch the wave.
100GW of installed wind equal probably 25GW of nuclear. But unless we start shutting down old plants the positive effects will be nil.
Duh, Yes, 25Gig more like it. Wind Turbines are at the mercy of the wind.
Pickens Picks a New Horse¦the Wrong One! His perfecta bet on wind and natural gas doesn"t work for three reasons: 1) Wind is intermittent and while we now have the battery storage technology for cars, grid storage would require a million times that capacity¦something we don"t have. 2) We already import 20% of our natural gas. Any attempt to offset a significant amount of oil used for transportation to natural gas will just be shifting the problem to a new "drug" from the same "dealers." 3) His plan doesn"t include a way to pay for itself. Internal combustion engines are only 10% efficient regardless of the fuel burned.
The savings generated by moving to an Electric Economy using 90% efficient battery-powered EVs will fund the additional solar-thermal generation infrastructure in our desert southwest. A system that pays for itself¦ and then some.
Dave Spicer
You have several misconceptions about Mr T's deal. First of all, it is not meant to solve our energy problems but it is meant to make him even richer.
OK, now that we have that out of the way, let's get technical:
1) Grid storage is by no means necessary to make wind a winner. We have plenty of natural gas powered plants which are very expensive to operate and which can act as a grid capacity buffer. And whenever cheaper wind displaces more expensive gas the utility and Mr. T are happy because the dollars are rolling in.
2) Obviously if wind displaces gas we need less of it. Which would be a good thing because the way it looks first we are running out of oil and then we are running out of natural gas. This is a real advantage. It does allow us to displace some oil with natural gas, although that is a rather limited effect and will come WAYYYYYY TOOOOOOO LATE. Not sure Mr. T really gives a dime.
3) His plan is not supposed to pay for itself. Did you not hear him asking the government to pay for the transmission lines to connect his wind turbines to his consumers?
And while your call for solar thermal plants is a nice idea, it will be even more intermittent than wind. We really have to do both. And we will buy Mr. T a golden retirement castle with tax payer money, too.
I"m quite aware that Pickens is interested in leveraging his investments in wind and natural gas at our expense, which was the reason for my comment.
1) REPLACING natural gas driven grid generation with wind means wind will be relied on for grid generation. All the wind systems I"ve seen rely on the grid for backup. For any intermittent grid source: wind, waves, solar, we will need storage, and wind/photovoltaic generate electricity for which we don"t have a way to store gigawatt-hours of energy.
2) He wants to use the natural gas currently consumed for grid generation to power vehicles, dramatically increasing the amount of natural gas that we use.
3) I know his plan isn"t supposed to pay for itself. Ours should. He"s interested in leveraging his investment.
Solar is intermittent, but solar THERMAL allows us to store energy in various materials. It will take about 4 square miles of desert to generation a GW of thermal power during eight hours of sunlight, meaning we need to store 16 GWH of energy to run the next 16 hours. Expanding to 12 square miles to generate 3GW allows storing the excess in one of many different materials for the evening, allowing 1GW generation 24 hours a day. My choice for storage material would be water.
At $4/gallon, an Electric Vehicle will save about $2300/year. Given we have 200M "light-duty vehicles" to replace, the savings will generate the funding for the additional generation, and then some.
You better believe there are going to be some big name investors, and a lot of fat cats who get fatter before this energy crisis is solved.
Wind power can be a solution. At least T Boone is getting some discussion going. A couple months ago, I'd never heard of the guy. Now, here we talking about how his plan will/won't work, and what it would take to make it happen.
I'd rather pay for T Boone's golden castle by powering mi casa with wind energy, than pay for his golden castle by powering mi casa with fossil fuel. I'm sure the latter would still contribute to old T's pension check anyway : (
SAVE THE PLANET!!!
http://www.greengroove.org = Phased Withdrawal
Natural gas imports (which is liquified nat gas) have been down significantly all year while domestic production has been up significantly. Also, huge amounts of nat gas production has recently come online in the shale areas across the country and there are huge reserves that remain untapped. Simply put, we have plenty of nat gas going forward. For wind, there is already a huge backlog for wind towers that extends for years. Wind is already in its way whether you don't think it's the answer or not.
In 2007, the U.S. exported 0.8 billion cu feet of natural gas and imported 4.6 TRILLION cubic feet. Can someone please explain how nat gas is going to be the key to our energy independence?
It isn't. It never was supposed to be if you ask any real energy expert. According to EIA we have approx. 210 trillion cubic feet of gas. Since 1boe (barrel oil equivalent) are approx. 6000 cubic feet of natural gas, the above estimate makes for 35 billion barrels of oil equivalent. At current consumption level of 21 million barrels of oil a day that's enough energy for 4.5 years.
Sorry... no silver lining here.
Larry, I've read the Pickens Plan. There is a lot to like about it, but also a lot of questions. He expects the Nation and States to do the heavy lifting for him setting up his wind farms. He also doesn't even mention solar energy in his plan. Does that make sense to you?
I also wonder if his great sounding idea of freeing up natural gas for transportation is based on the usefulness of this plan or something related to his knowledge of future LNG prices?
I have learned a ton about energy reading the comments. That is not my field. What I was so taken with was the change in the man himself and his approach. It seemed pretty clear from his body language that the old Swift Boater is not exactly a Democrat now. I think if he followed his political instincts he would be supporting McCain at least as strongly as he did Bush. The fact of the matter is that he's not. Not only that, he's meeting with Obama because, as Pickens put it, 'It looks like he will win."
He's also meeting with Thomas Friedman and others who he thinks have something to add to the conversation. To me, that's a big deal.
As far as the fundamental strength or weakness of his plan, I'll have to count on people like you who actually understand this stuff better.
Meet the New Boss, same as the Old Boss.
Pickens is running scared that we will all realize that we can and should be investing in demand side consumption reductions, smart metering, and point of use renewables, and that remote, wasteful, wilderness-killing energy projects - which are required to centralize profits in one person, instead of across all of us - are a lousy solution for the planet, the ratepayer and the taxpayer.
If we spent our taxpayer and ratepayer dollars getting our own structures in shape, and getting our own renewable generation, WE would benefit (pluralism). If we spent them forcing people from their homes, destroying our open spaces AND EMITTING MORE, NOT FEWER GHGS (that's what new transmission will do - did he mention that? that no matter how much "clean" energy it links to, a new line ends up in NET INCREASES OF GHGS that cannot be offset or mitigated? well, my, my. Pickens told a porky...), then Pickens will benefit and the rest of us will be harmed (socialism for the rich).
the only way forward is to engage ALL OF US in this paradigm. not only will we FINALLY achieve INDEPENDENCE FROM BIG ENERGY MONOPOLIES, but we will conserve more, and create far more jobs and spread the economic benefits around, while SAVING our planet and our ecosystems. it's the only win/win...
So, uh, where are the questions about his eagerness to build transmission lines that would less-than-coincidentally also give him right-of-way for extremely profitable water lines from West Texas to the DFW metroplex?
My understanding is that Mr. Pickens is the owner of the largest wind-farming company in the country, but that he wants government subsidies (or private subsidies) and that THAT is the crux of his public pleas for "his" energy plan... It will make him richer.
Now I personally am a fan of wind power... If I could, I'd have a wind turbine on my property (I live on a mountain in WV).. My choice for POTUS (and hopefully at least our VP or Secy of State) is the senator from Delaware, a state which is planning a large off-shore wind "farm".
I also wish solar panels were cheaper, and would welcome any plan which would make them more economically feasible for more average home-owners.
But as for Mr. Pickens, he's out for Mr. Pickens...period.
Either he is purely out to make more money or he is being honest when he says he is doing this for other reasons. The good news is that it doesn't matter. If his actions help our country then I'm for them. If he can make another billion or two in the process, then that's what America's all about. More power to him!
Can we please separate the issue of "swftboating" from the "Pickens energy plan." They should both stand on their own merits. He has a serious energy plan that can result in positive things for the country and the environment. We should work with him to get our energy policy right.
dukeiout-
Fair enough and I agree with you.
I agree that it's a fair comment regarding the issues. But when you're looking at a person, then everything is a piece of the puzzle.
Pickens might well have enough 'Oil money" to buy the Texas Rangers and the White House. To think he would be unable to 'Own' the Swiftboaters would be a drop in the bucket to him.
Donald Trump, a candidate for the Presidency, decided casinos in Atlantic City were not profitable enough so left it up to the 'Honest' slot machine operators.
Both of these individuals have enormous personal wealth and seem to agree that 'Gambling' and 'Oil' is not beneficial to solving the economic crisis in this nation. And, to continue borrowing for Communist China is NUTS.
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Posted August 19, 2008 | 04:52 PM (EST)