Texas Tea and Sympathy

Midwesterners are notorious cynics. So you can see why some took a dim view when a Texas oil tycoon came to Kansas to chat up alternative fuels.

Seems like forever that folks were used to hearing Big Oilmen speak of alternative fuels only in terms of pump options, meaning regular, premium and diesel. So when a certain wealthy Texan called on Topeka recently, folks were treated to a horse of a different color.

Good thing the oil tycoon was introduced by someone Kansans know and trust: Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, defender of the small carbon footprint, who warmed up the crowd.

What Kansans saw in T. Boone Pickens was a kind of hybrid oilman. He favors domestic oil exploration, but he's promoting alternative energy usage, too. He wants people pumped up about natural gas to fuel our cars and about buying more hybrids.

He's talking about wind power, nothing new to anyone who has driven along the Kansas prairie lately. Still, that's nothing compared with Pickens' plans to develop a $10 billion wind farm in western Texas. Kansans are becoming famous for their experiments with green living. Tornado-ravaged Greensburg is being rebuilt almost entirely green because of a project supported by actor Leonardo DiCaprio and other environmentalists.

The architect of the "Pickens Plan" is serious about the need for the nation to consider alternative energy sources. No harm in making money and creating jobs in the meantime, he says. Fair enough.

He speaks in almost apocalyptic terms about what he believes is the No. 1 issue of our time and the one the politicians need to focus on before it's too late. "If we don't solve the energy question, they can forget health care, education and Social Security," he said.

Let's be clear. Tex Pickens isn't going full-tilt Al Gore here. He's not become some ultra-environmentalist who wants us all to reduce, reuse and recycle. He's for domestic drilling in the outer continental shelf and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, places in which many environmentalists believe we ought not drill.

The so-called green alternatives he's hawking, including that wind farm, really come down to supply and demand.

Something has to be done, and American ingenuity is such that we can fix this problem ourselves, he believes.

To Pickens, the real inconvenient truth isn't greenhouse gas, but natural gas. The obvious truth is that we've become a kind of welfare state (my words) for foreign interests who are exploiting our inability to come up with a strategic energy plan that doesn't involve coal or petroleum. As Dubya said, "America is addicted to oil."

Addicts usually can adapt. Therefore, let's get addicted to green energy whenever we can.

Is Pickens out to save the planet? Maybe for his next project. For now, he wants to save America from itself. "We're the ones to blame," Pickens said. "It was cheap oil. Nobody worried about it because it was cheap." By the barrel, he means.

Do you think our politicians might make more of a stink about human rights in China if the United States weren't deeply indebted to China to support our oil addiction? News flash: We're not in a war in Iraq over weapons of mass destruction.

As Gov. Sebelius said, "We're borrowing from China to import 70 percent of our oil, much of it from countries that don't like us very much."

Despite some differences, Sebelius speaks highly of Pickens who, like her, isn't against the tried-and-true energy sources but thinks it's time to examine other options before it's too late. We can't continue to borrow from Big China to make nice with Big OPEC while Big Oil makes record profits at consumers' expense.

Pickens told the crowd that what he is proposing is "about America" and has "nothing to do with politics."

Maybe for him it's not about politics, but in this country, oil and politics do mix. Under Bush II, Big Oil has unprecedented access to the White House and blanket immunity from testifying under oath before Senate committees. Big Oil made record profits while consumers suffered.

If Midwesterners are cynics, it is often for good reasons. But nobody sent T. Boone Pickens packing when he touted and tilted at windmills.

Rhonda Chriss Lokeman (RCLCreators@kc.rr.com) is a contributing editor to The Kansas City Star. To find out more about Rhonda Chriss Lokeman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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