Environmentalists beware

T. Boone Pickens, a Texas oil man, recently unveiled his plan to “save America” by cutting America’s dependence on “foreign oil” by 38%. His plan calls for harnessing the wind that sweeps across the Great Plains of America and turning it into electricity. This would then free up an equivalent amount of natural gas, which we currently use to generate electricity, and allow us to use that gas to power our…cars. This plan requires a number of large-scale systemic changes. For starters, we all need cars that can run on natural gas. Next, we need a whole new power grid to conduct all this electricity from the middle of the country to the coasts (price tag: at least $70 billion). And let’s not forget all those gas stations that need new infrastructure to store and sell natural gas fuel (another $10 billion). Needless to say, it’s an ambitious plan. But hey, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, Carl Pope, seems to think it’s a good idea. And generally speaking, I’m all for alternative energy. So I figure it deserves a fair shake.

The first red flag appears, however, when you examine Pickens’ bio. Ever heard of the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush? That was Pickens; he funded them. Suspicion mounts further when you consider possible motives besides “saving America.” By happy coincidence, having the US taxpayer fork over billions to pay for a new national power grid would be a great boon (sorry, couldn’t resist) to T. Boone’s latest business venture—a mammoth wind farm in Texas. He says he’s 80 years old and doesn’t need any more billions, but I don’t buy it. These cats never really leave the game; their ego is too tied up in it all.

His plan also relies upon a dubious assumption. Pickens says we have reached peak oil; he predicts oil will reach $300 a barrel in 10 years. But the reasoning behind peak oil theory—that the amount of oil in the world is finite and we have already discovered most of it—is, in my opinion, pretty thin. (More on this, perhaps, in another post). If oil is not going to $300 and beyond, but rather to $100 and below, then the economic rationale for investing billions in wind-power infrastructure goes out the window. The national security argument for such investment also takes a hit since we won’t be sending so many billions to the bad guys.

Speaking of the national security argument, how exactly does buying less “foreign oil” translate into more national security? The reasoning is as follows. We send $700 billion a year to foreign suppliers, many of whom do not like the United States. This makes the bad guys richer and the U.S. poorer to such an extent that “we are on the verge of losing our superpower status.” In other words, because we are addicted to the oil these bad countries are selling us, our hands are tied and we can’t push them (or anyone else) around like we have in the past.

The problem, then, is not that scary sounding oil producing countries are going to bomb or blackmail the United States (they won’t). The real problem is that the United States no longer has the luxury to bomb and coerce them! Pickens’ argument is rooted in the right-wing hegemonic worldview that America should do anything and everything to protect its narrow self-interest and the rest of the world be damned.

Most environmentalists, on the other hand, look at the world in a diametrically opposite way. They see that, as the earth heats up, we must all work together to solve the daunting problem of global warming because we are all in the same boat. Environmentalists may be tempted, for political reasons, to talk about alternative energy in the context of national security. But teaming up with right-wingers because they are going after the same goal but for different reasons is a dangerous game. Let’s not forget how left-leaning “humanitarian interventionists” teamed up with the neocons in the Bush administration to bring us the Iraq war. The case for wind power and other alternatives should stand on its environmental merits, not on the shaky foundation of a flawed and hawkish national security argument. Thanks, T. Boone…but no thanks.

For more on the myth of energy independence, click here.