Get ready, America, T. Boone Pickens is coming to your living room.The legendary Texas oilman, corporate raider, shareholder-rights crusader, philanthropist and deep-pocketed moneyman for conservative politicians and causes, wants to drive the USA's political and economic agenda.
"We're paying $700 billion a year for foreign oil. It's breaking us as a nation, and I want to elevate that question to the presidential debate, to make it the No. 1 issue of the campaign this year," Pickens says.
Today, Pickens will take the wraps off what he's calling the Pickens Plan for cutting the USA's demand for foreign oil by more than a third in less than a decade. To promote it, he is bankrolling what his aides say will be the biggest public policy ad campaign ever. The website, www.pickensplan.com, goes live today.
Jay Rosser, Pickens' ever-present public relations man, promises that Pickens' face will be seen on Americans' televisions this fall almost as frequently as John McCain's and Barack Obama's.
You can read the rest of the USA Today article here.
Interestingly, the two candidates for president have been generating more than their own share of wind about so-called "green jobs."
In a link from Work Wonk by Richard Steubi (Cleantech Blog), the author lends some clarification as to just how many "green collar" jobs will be created in the mad rush to be seen as the greener of the two candidates.
Steubi believes there are benefits and jobs that can come from energy efficiency retrofits, solar panel installations, alternative energy conversions, etc, he's just not so sure the overall scope and number; as he writes, “It’s likely to be a very big number, but no-one can possibly quantify it with any degree of rigor.”
While getting out in front of the energy issue is important for rural states like Maine, it's important that we don't buy into much of the smoke being passed by politicians.
No comments:
Post a Comment