I hope you will excuse a little off-topic commenting.
[Note: Please excuse some off-topic commenting for a moment.]
If you are following the presidential election process the past few weeks or so, it feels like T. Boone Pickens (with all his commercials airing on TV just at the right time) is a 3rd candidate running for president.
Of course, he is not.
But he seems to have single-handedly made energy the hot topic of the election process. If you just look at TV air time, he is probably not far behind the two candidates.
Heck, with both McCain and Obama in attack-ad mode right now, T. Boone Pickens feels like the only one on message. And, I might add, driving his message extremely well. (Do I sound like Josh Limon out of an old West Wing episode?).
Just watch all the other political commercials on TV right now – what are all the candidates standing behind? That’s right, wind turbines! I bet that has something to do with T. Boone Pickens.
I have to admit his commercials are really well done and really hit on a lot of the issues. His web site is also really well done. You have to think he has a large team of high-powered PR people watching over everything he does.
I have no idea if his plan with natural gas and wind makes any sense, but he has met with Senator Barack Obama, Senator John McCain, and Former President Clinton in the past couple of weeks.
I have to admit that I have pretty much forgotten who all the people were running for president 6 to 8 months ago, but I have a feeling that I will not forget the role T. Boone Pickens played.
What are your thoughts? And, do you think solar is getting left out?
Well, I haven’t forgotten who is running for President by any means, but I am glad that the candidates are FINALLY discussing the energy crisis…and I guess we have T Boone Pickens to thank for that (and the Denver convention). Up until now the issues have been largely neglected and if the PR has influence, T Boone Pickens will be the greenest thing on tv. I work for Sharp TV, which up until now I guess has been the greenest thing on tv…their factory in Japan installed one of the largest rooftop solar panel arrays in the world, significantly reducing its carbon footprint. But Sharp is one of few companies to make such improvements because there is no legislation to promote it. Here’s hoping that this new chatter will turn into something that will finally make all the other corporations turn around. http://sharpgreen.smnr.us
I’m glad of the green, but think there’s more to consider than just green. Decentralization is also important, so that energy goes back to being a consumer-driven market, not the big-government-regulated-company-with-line-into-residence model of the last 100 years or so. That model stifles innovation.
Yeah, ok, so T. Boone Pickens is doing something right here but don’t expect me at least to get all rosy about him. I’m having trouble conveniently forgetting the $3 million he donated to the scurrilous “Swift-Boating” campaign of John Kerry (denounced by John McCain himself, as well as every non-partisan review of the facts that I’ve seen).
That campaign arguably cost Kerry a very close election and I can pretty much guarantee that he would have had a far different energy policy from the “3 O’s” policy (oil, oil and more oil) pumped out by Bush (the son of an oil man), Cheney (the oil man) and his friends…the oil men.