Sweetwater Stories

I met these guys in Houston!  It really is a great story, a small town saved from extinction by harnessing the wind that blows freely overhead.  New jobs, new infrastructure, and best of all, an atmosphere of excitement and new life.  If they can do it in west Texas, why not elsewhere?


Now, I am not going to say the Pickens Plan is perfect, and there are some political issues that are being overlooked, in my opinion, but at least T. Boone is doing something about it.  He has come up with a plan and he is pushing to make a difference, instead of just sitting on his butt and complaining about the state of affairs.

My main contentions:

• Yes, reliance on foreign oil is bad.  Both in the amount of money we are sending overseas and the fact that most of the world's oil is controlled by countries that we don't get along with.  Being independent and self-sufficient is what this country was founded on, and losing the ability to support yourself and your citizens is what ultimately brought about the fall of Rome.  So, do we need to curb our appetite for oil?  Yes.  Does more of the oil we do consume need to come from our resources that we can control?  Yes.  Do we also need to launch a recipe of alternate sources of energy to reduce our reliance on and use of oil?  Yes.  So, I think wind and natural gas are great answers, but so are solar and nuclear. So... should we use our oil resources?  Yeah, I think so, but that's not the real answer.
• Yes, harvesting natural gas is a big deal and a big part of it.  But then we need cars that run on natural gas.  We know they exist, but just not here in this country.  Whether it is because there are lobbyists and corporations that are keeping gas-based cars on the road (see also: Who Killed the Electric Car? lest we forget...) or because GM and Ford don't think there is enough of a market or what... we need to replace gasoline and diesel cars with natural gas cars. 
• CNG needs to be widely available.  Just like there are tons of gasoline stations everywhere (far more than we actually need), there needs to be an abundant and convenient source for CNG to make these cars practical.
• CNG cars isn't the whole answer.  If we are generating clean electricity with wind and solar and nuclear (I know Pickens doesn't care as much about the environmental side as he does about the energy independence side), then that energy needs to be utilized in our vehicles, our primary source of energy consumption.  This clean electricity needs to not only go into the grid and into our houses, but into our cars via plug-in electric and hybrid vehicles.  The technology is there, it just needs to be rolled out and made practical and accessible to the public.
• Boone.  Look.  You can't keep your hands in all the same pockets you have in the past if you want this plan of yours to work.  You may be a Republican/conservative politically, but in order to get something like this to work, you have to lobby both sides of the aisle.  Really, you need to get the support of the Democrats even more than you need the support of the Republicans.  You support McCain and the Right, but they have historically opposed all the things you have in your plan.  Their solution to the energy crisis is to drill off-shore.  Sure, that might be part of the solution, but a minor answer to a major problem.  If your plan is so progressive and different, and you say that this issue should not be a partisan one, then stop being partisan.  Support both sides of the aisle, especially individuals that align with your views and are trying to make a difference.