Greg asks: What's the deal with this guy?  I don't know if it's going on everywhere, but he's on DC TV and radio a lot, advertising his plan for energy independence.  Is he full of crap?  Is he just trying to get people to buy T. Boone Pickens Brand windmills?  ObscureCraft readers want to know! (and are too lazy to figure it out on their own).

Greg, what are you doing in here?! You are not the Suze!

I'll answer this question, but only because I never got around to actually sending you your prize for winning the ObscureCraft.net Obamaganda contest.  Consider this your winnings.

There are two schools of thought on environmentalism.  I'll call the first one the altruistic view; that is, there is not necessarily a personal immediate benefit to making choices that help the environment, but you do it because you feel it is "the right thing to do."  Call this the Al Gore school. 

The other school is the capitalist view.  Can I make money off of being an environmentalist? That isn't to say that you use being "green" as some bullshit marketing campaign, but rather, is there an inherent competitive advantage to being green? An example would be building an electric car.  You don't build one because you give a shit about the environment; you build one because people will buy it.  This is the T. Boone Pickens school.

These two schools of thought actually have the same starting point.  Have you heard the phrase "peak oil" before? The idea is this: there is a finite amount of oil in the ground.  At first, there is so much, that you pretty much just stick a pipe in the ground and it comes shooting out.  After awhile, the oil starts running out, and it becomes harder and harder to suck it out.  Eventually, you reach a point where you've stuck all the pipes in the ground that you can, and you are sucking as hard as you can, but it won't come out any faster.  Indeed, the rate of oil production starts slowing down.  This point at which oil production stops increasing and starts decreasing is called peak oil.

That is a problem.  Also a problem is the fact that it seems like the more oil you have under the ground in your country, the crazier and crazier you get.  Saudi Arabia? Venezuala? Russia? Crazy, really crazy, holy-shit-are-you-serious crazy. 

So both Gore and Pickens say the same thing: we need to stop importing oil from these crazy people.  Gore's buzz word is "global warming." For Pickens, it is all about "energy independence."  Gore has "An Inconvenient Truth." Pickens has the aptly-named Pickens Plan.  To gain energy independence, Pickens says we need to use the energy that we have here in the United States.  Makes sense, right?  Specifically, he has identified wind, solar, and natural gas as the resources we have in abundance to generate the energy we need. 

Here is where Pickens and most green energy experts go their separate ways.  Pickens wants cars to run on natural gas instead of oil.  In climates like Texas where there isn't a large heating requirement, natural gas is used to run turbines to generate electricity.  Pickens Plan says that we use the wind turbines to free up this natural gas for use in cars. 

First, here is why this will never happen:

Al Gore has made carbon the villian, but there are other environmental contaminants that we need to be concerned about.  While it contains less carbon than other fuels, burning natural gas releases large amounts of nitrogen oxides (NOx), which produces smog.  This is a particular problem in large urban areas like Houston and Los Angelos, or pretty much the entire east coast (hi, New Jersey!). 

In fact, this is the most likely reason that this will never, ever happen. The National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which are set by the EPA, dictate the requirements for permitting new natural gas burning equipment.  In an area like Houston, which is defined as being in "severe non-attainment", it is really really hard to get a single natural gas turbine permitted. Imagine trying to get permits for millions of cars? Will. Never. Happen.

Now, here is why it shouldn't happen:

Natural gas is not a renewable resource.  And unlike with oil, there is no peak in natural gas production.  Natural gas has what is called a cliff - it is as easy to pull out the last bit of gas as the first.  Then, it is gone.  The Pickens Plan accelerates us towards, and eventually off, that cliff.

And the biggest problem, for me, is this: natural gas is an intermediate solution between gas and electric cars.  But electric cars are going to be here in just a few years.  Seriously, check this out:

"...Ford will announce plans for its electric vehicle, including a goal to start selling them by 2011...Nissan [has] promised to sell an electric car in the United States and Japan as early as next year...Chrysler [has] vowed to produce its first electric car by 2010....GM [expects to start selling its] Chevrolet Volt model next year..."

Why would we ever spend the money on building a refueling infrastructure for natural gas vehicles when we have the real solution right around the corner? We should spend that money on an electrical recharging or battery swapping infrastructure instead.

That is not to say that I think the whole plan is junk.  The idea of building a huge swath of windmills from Texas to Minnesota is a bold and visionary one, and I love it.  (You know who doesn't love it? Environmentalists, who complain about birds getting sucked into the windmills and the landscape being destroyed by the additional electrical transmission lines.  These, by the way, are the environmentalists it is okay to hate.)

And for the record: yes, he is selling T. Boone Pickens brand windmills.  No, this is not a problem for me.  There is no law that says you can't make money off of being an environmentalist.  Sheeeeeee-it, that's pretty much what I do (although, obviously, significantly less).  Besides, Pickens is in his 80s, and he is a billionaire four times over.  I think he is trying to use his fortune and businesses to make his plan a reality, rather than using his plan to make more money.  I do not think he is a Bond villian hiding in the guise of an environmentalist.  He has good intentions.

Bonus fact! T. Boone Pickens wrote an autobiography titled "The First Billion is The Hardest".  So true.