Pickens disposes then proposes

Texas tycoon T. Boone Pickens hates the look of wind turbines, but that hasn't stopped him from beginning to build the biggest wind farm in US history. He goes on to propose a major government-led scheme to plan out the resource nationally -- not a bad idea and one committee I would happily sit on. According to this story, there are new wind roughnecks all over the Texas panhandle. But don't expect George W to realize that renewable energy is the ticket out of our current near-recession.

From the Guardian:

Pickens, being Pickens, has come up with a solution - and it makes his own gargantuan plans for a wind farm in the panhandle look tiny. For the benefit of the Guardian, he draws on a white board his master scheme. He carves out an enormous corridor of land running north to south through the middle of the US - along the great plains - where he would build an army of wind farms. Then he draws an equally enormous corridor running east to west from Texas to southern California which he would similarly dedicate to solar energy.

"You need a giant plan for America. Not the pissant 83 megawatt [windfarm] deals being stamped all over the country. There needs to be a huge plan from someone with leadership. It's going to take years to do, but it has to start now." Only then, he explains, can the US stop what he regards as the madness of a flood of money flowing out of America to the oil producers of the Middle East. "That money is going God knows where - a few friends, a lot of enemies. We've got to stop it."

Read the whole thing here...