READ THIS NOW
How T. Boone Pickens (the Texas oilman) and Shai Agassi (an Israeli) are putting their money where their mouth is and starting an “energy revolution” …
Tom Friedman nails it again in his New York Times Opinion column entitled: “Texas to Tel Aviv”*…
T. Boone Pickens is 80 years old, made billions in oil, was involved in “swift-boating” Kerry, but now is “opting for a different legacy; breaking America’s oil habit by pushing for a massive buildup of wind power in the U.S. and converting our abundant natural gas supplies — now being use to make electricity — into transportation fuel to replace foreign oil in our cars, buses and trucks.”
“Pickens is motivated by American nationalism…His vision is summed up on his Web site [pickensplan.com]: ‘We import 70 percent of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year … I have been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of…”
“Pickens is “tired of waiting for Washington to produce a serious energy plan … [he] knows he’s unique. Unless, he says, ‘Congress adopts clear predictable policies’ — with long-term tax incentives and infrastructure — so thousands of investors can jump into clean power, we’ll never get the scale we need to break our addiction. For a year, Senate Republicans have been blocking such incentives for wind and solar energy. They vote again next week.”
Shai Agassi is “the Jewish Henry Ford now obsessed with making Israel the world’s leader in electric cars. His plan “backed by Israel’s government is to create a complete electric car ‘system’ that will work much like a mobile-phone service “system,” only customers sign up for so many monthly miles, instead of minutes. Every subscriber will get a car, a battery and access to a national network of recharging outlets all across Israel — as well as garages that will swap your dead battery for a fresh one whenever needed.
His company Better Place … would run the smart grid that charges the cars and is also contracting for enough new solar energy from Israeli companies…to power the whole fleet. ‘Israel will have the world’s first virtual oilfield in the Negev Desert, said Agassi. His first 400 electric cars, built by Renault will hit Israel’s roads next year.”
According to Friedman, “If only we had a Congress and president who, instead of chasing crazy schemes like offshore drilling and releasing oil from our strategic reserve, just sat down with Boone and Shai and asked one question: ‘What laws do we need to enact to foster 1,000 more like you?’ Then just do it, and get out of the way.”
_________________________________
*The New York Times, Sunday Opinion, “Texas to Tel Aviv” by Thomas L. Friedman, pg 10.
