 In America last week, I was gripped by the election coverage, and the TV ads for the Pickens Plan, the brainchild of eccentric billionaire T Boone Pickens. He's an unlikely environmentalist (with an unlikely name), but an experienced oil man who's seen the light – that oil is not an endless or renewable resource. “I’ve been an oilman my whole life, but this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of.” Tell that to the politicians in Congress, who in an election year seem terrified to put any curbs on American drilling on American shores, even though any help for strapped motorists would be years down the line (not to mention potential environmental hazards). Pickens claims there's a huge financial incentive (as well as an ecological one) for reducing America's reliance on oil, as the US currently spends approx $700 billion a year on foreign oil, which he projects will rise to approx $10 trillion within a decade.
The Pickens Plan solution: building wind farms along the 'Wind Belt', in central US from Texas to the Canadian border. The power would be used to generate electricity, freeing up a large portion of natural gas now used for electricity to be used for transport energy. Natural gas is cleaner (NGV vehicles cause up to 95 percent less pollution than gasoline/petrol or diesel cars and trucks) and many cars are already equipped to run on it.
Many Americans, and much American advertising, hints or even boasts that American ingenuity will solve the climate crisis (main point: without Americans having to change behaviour or reduce consumption). T Boone doesn't want to wait for any 'magic bullet'. Instead he is keen to get act immediately on the technologies which already exist. He's not perfect, but if people want real change, it's down to people from the left and right recognising that climate change exists and that human behaviour is a major contributing factor and supporting significant ways to address the problem.
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