Have you heard of T. Boone Pickens' plan? Pickens, the successful U.S.-based investor, has proposed a plan to influence the incoming presidential administration to wean the U.S. off of foreign oil by migrating to wind power for electricity and natural gas for automobiles.
Building new wind generation facilities and better utilizing our natural gas resources can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports in 10 years.The plan is, in a word, perfect. It's clearly enunciated, easy to understand, the right thing to do, and - what really caught my eye - a potential boon to manufacturing. From the Pickens Plan site:
Developing wind power is an investment in rural America.
To witness the economic promise of wind energy, look no further than Sweetwater, Texas.
Sweetwater was typical of many small towns in middle-America. With a shortage of good jobs, the youth of Sweetwater were leaving in search of greater opportunities. And the town's population dropped from 12,000 to under 10,000.
When a large wind power facility was built outside of town, Sweetwater experienced a revival. New economic opportunity brought the town back to life and the population has grown back up to 12,000.
In the Texas panhandle, just north of Sweetwater, is the town of Pampa, where T. Boone Pickens' Mesa Power is currently building the largest wind farm in the world.
In addition to creating new construction and maintenance jobs, thousands of Americans will be employed to manufacture the turbines and blades. These are high skill jobs that pay on a scale comparable to aerospace jobs.
Plus, wind turbines don't interfere with farming and grazing, so they don't threaten food production or existing local economies.Now, to be sure, there's enough hot air coming out of Washington these days about what we should or could do to solve the energy dilemma. An election year makes it all the more depressing. Especially when we all know how serious this problem is to us all.
But the value to manufacturing makes this a slam-dunk, and worthy of our attention.
Visit Pickens' site. Regardless of what country you call home, this plan represents an acceptable solution for us all.
maybe someone with the brainpower to do so should crunch the numbers and see what amount of power the slipstream that runs across the U.S. is actually capable of doing for us? might be more than we realize.
As far as the manufacturing base of the U.S., I think your right on, it could only help us all in the manufacturing and anything else associated with it.