The media has been in a frenzy about the recent ad campaign launched by T. Boone Pickens, an octegenarian billionaire oil man who has asserted that drilling for more oil will do “nothing to lower gas prices.”
Pickens is proposing an ambitious energy plan in which he invests $10 billion to construct “the largest wind farm in West Texas,” which would in turn make available additional natural gas that could supposedly replace foreign oil as the driving force in the U.S. economy.
Pickens not only calls for an alternative plan to oil drilling, but calls the Republican rhetoric on the issue “completely misleading.”
The irony of an oil man-turned-environmentalist is perhaps not the greatest irony of Pickens’ transformation. In 2004 Pickens made his mark on the presidential race by funneling $3 million into the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign.
