gas and wind

T. Boone Pickens' plan gets examined on CBS and on Cnet. T. Boone refers to his plan as a bridge to the future. Here's one media critique from the Houston Chronicle: Pickens' plan is bold. Neither natural gas nor even coal are as abundant as is assumed.

Pickens original commercials said: 'this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of'. His website and later commercials lack that verbiage, perhaps so as not to contrast with the party (Republican) with which he has been associated in the past. Within the past few months, in Congressional testimony, he asserts his earlier view. It should be noted again that the Republican candidate in the current presidential race, John McCain, selectively uses some of Pickens' data, but emphasizes drilling. The MSNBC piece, Fresh energy problems for new president, and Newsweek's The Truth about Tire Pressure shows the two candidates as having been all over the map. The New Republic offers this view:

Democrats will have to argue that the only true path to "energy independence" is independence from oil itself. That is, however much we may rely on our own oil sources, the market for oil is global, not national, and the growing thirst for oil from places like China and India won't be diminishing any time soon. So drilling may provide a few more U.S. barrels of oil, but this increase in supply will be minuscule compared to the cresting demand.