Posted on 07/28/2008 5:59:33 AM PDT by Clive
One of these words is not like the others. But then again, T. Boone Pickens isn't like the others either. Today, Stephen Marche examines a typical quote from a delightfully atypical enviro-crusader
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The general rule, that everything before the but is bullshit, does not apply in the case of T. Boone Pickens, the ex-wildcatter and current hedge-fund manager from Texas. Pickens' is the latest, and perhaps strangest, voice calling for a radical change in America's relationship with the environment. He has decided to spend $58-million of his own money on an ad campaign to promote a new American energy policy -- one which would involve massive subsidies to himself as well huge gains for the clean energy industry. He believes that the United States can generate 22% of its energy from wind and solar power, which will free up 22% of natural gas reserves (much cleaner than crude and relatively plentiful in America) to service a newly engineered fleet of American cars which could run on natural gas, thereby freeing America from its dependence on foreign oil. Simple.
Pickens looks and talks like an oilman. His limpid and luxurious Texas drawl is not the shrill sound of the typical environmentalist. Aesthetically, though not politically, he is the opposite of Al Gore, who recently "challenged" the nation to produce 100% of its energy from renewable sources within 10 years, a goal which even his supporters described as "superstretched." Nonetheless, Gore and Pickens have little but good to say about each other, which is remarkable considering that Pickens was a major sponsor of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign. He continues to support the Swift-Boaters, posting a standing offer of $1-million to anyone who can prove a single untruth in any of the nine anti-Kerry commercials he paid for. T. Boone Pickens is a fundamental Republican, and yet Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader, describes Pickens as "my political friend." The emphasis, one assumes, is on the word "political."
Pickens represents a new brand of environmentalism -- conservative but not pretending. He believes that the $700-billion the U. S. spends on foreign oil is a "national security crisis." Offshore drilling in Alaska is fine by him--one has the feeling that he wouldn't mind grinding up the caribou herds himself if their bodies contained any crude. He speaks the language of national, business and personal interest, not the language of organic wholeness, of harmony with nature, which has so dominated the environmental movement from its origins to today.
Pickens is new, and so important, because his vision of the future of the environment is not focused on life, or living things, but on money, his own and others. And the future of our money matters more to us than the future of life on the planet. This is one of the most disturbing lessons of our current situation, but it's also evident in every page of our history: our selfishness and greed are basic to us, older than original sin. In Genesis, God gives us "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the Earth" before he even gives us names. The cruelty and self-destruction we are willing to inflict for dominion fills our history, ancient and modern. So it should come as no surprise that environmentalism as a form of idealism has been ineffective -- Al Gore calls us to take up our duties towards the future in the same way the greatest generation took on the Great War. But we aren't great. We know that. We are hyper-conscious of the imminent collapses of the natural world and yet have altered our behaviour only in miniscule, practically irrelevant way. Pickens' big idea is to change the ethos of the environmentalist project: Let's do this not because we're good people but because we're good businessmen. That proposal has a shot.
I would never bet against T. Boone Pickens. Nor should you. He spent a little less than $6-million on the Swift Boat Veterans and he got his money's worth. He's spending $58-million on promoting his new plan, deliberately choosing not to fund either presidential candidate for the duration of their campaigns. Potentially, his advocacy is the beginning of a massive shift in public consciousness about the environment, a move away from its status as a left-wing issue. Subsumption into the mainstream could be either a huge step forward or a huge step back for the environmental movement. Pickens doesn't deny the existence of global warming, and his folksy but disdainful sneer for those who do deny it -- "I can see what's happening to the glaciers … It doesn't take a genius" -- will convince a certain portion of the American public more than any number of Nobel-Prize winning scientists at the United Nations ever could. More importantly, he believes that there are rational courses of action open to us involving capitalism and national interest, rather than utopian visions of whole countries or groups of countries deciding to do the right thing. That's the spiritual deal he is presenting to the environmental movement: They must sacrifice virtue for effectiveness. The speed with which they have taken him up on the offer shows how desperate they are, how precarious they believe the Earth's position to be. Even Al Gore tires of virtue eventually.
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No use dancing around the hyperbole; may as well just blurt it right out. If that ain't a liberal, I'll kiss your a$$.
“He has decided to spend $58-million of his own money on an ad campaign to promote a new American energy policy — one which would involve massive subsidies to himself as well huge gains for the clean energy industry.”
Bring out your carbon credits!
Just BSPH, BullShee...piled higher. What a big bunch of squeeze, if T.BP said what this idiot quotes, we can be sure that T. Boone is no GENIUS....folow the $$s.
‘Pickens doesn’t deny the existence of global warming, and his folksy but disdainful sneer for those who do deny it’
“I can see what’s happening to the glaciers … It doesn’t take a genius”
How much money does T. Boone Pickens stand to make off this BS.
Boone Pickens sounds like a terrible person. His message is also terrible. But - as the author says - he is probably both realistic and right.
Which glaciers? The ones that are shrinking or the ones that are growing?
Wish him luck on his new venture he's trying to sell. At least it's real in comparision to Gore's CC scam.
Absolutely. And also - the glaciers melted and/or grew in 1100 AD as well, when it was 2 deg C warmer than today.
Does Pickens have a “pragmatic down-to-earth Oil Baron” reaction to those glaciers as well? What makes the modern warm period anthropogenic, but the medieval warm period natural?
This 80 year old gasbag is congress’ new best friend.
But McCain at 71 is too old????
Personally ground up Caribou makes great Summer Sausage.
How is his message terrible? Or do you mean in a truth hurts way? Because it is flat out idiotic of us to do whatever is necessary to stop sending money to the Middle East.
He has said he is for the “all of the above” approach.
Yawn. This writer knows nothing about what he is talking about, nor about T. Boone, and he lost all credibility with the description of the “Swift Boat SMEAR Campaign”. What a fool. For Boone, it isn’t as much about environmentalism, but independence from the crooks who control us and how to make money at it.
ah been an ol man makin’ $ all ma life.
nows, ahs a win’ man makin’ $, an’ ahs green.
He is not interested in an “energy Policy”. This is a thinly disguised attempt to hump his wind power scheme.
T. Boone had a very plausible scheme in the ‘70s. Residential natural gas pumps, hooked up to your existing gas supply. At the time, govt could not figure out a way to collect the road tax, but Oregon has solved that with the electric cars, collecting tax on the mileage reported each year at license renewal. That must be a shock to Prius owners to pay 45-46 cents on 12000 miles($5400-5520).
They would recharge overnight at home and get you 80-100 miles the next day. They were hybrids since they burned CNG and gasoline on demand. The same idea would work today but electrical generation would have to be converted to coal, gasified, liquefied, or lump(hauled by rail). That would free up enormous amts of natural gas to be used in automobiles.
T. Boone reminds me a lot of Ross Perot.
‘Nuff said.
He has said he is for the “all of the above” approach.
Comment:
Save your breath cause there are some who have a private agenda against conservatism and saving America.
When I see these anti Boone posts I cringe to think these folks may be trolls in disguise.
I’m with you.
What?!?1? I'm not a big Pickens fans but I viewed what he did as backing the Swift Boat Veterans by offering up his own money ($1 million) to those who claimed they were lying to put up or shut up.
John Kerry accepts Boone Pickens' Swift Boat challenge
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/111707dnnatkerrypickens.de9d26.html
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