Pickens Plan

My good buddy, Jim, has a post about the Pickens Plan to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

This Pickens guy has some good ideas: more wind generation and more natural gas (LP) for cars. Great. Some thoughts (adapted from my comment over there):

+ First, as I've said many times before, we need to let the market work on energy like it's starting to do. Would be better if we didn't subsidize gas and roads so heavily.

+ I may have said this before, but independence from foreign oil is not the goal. It's a form of isolationism that we don't need. We need to be better engaged with the world, not less.

+ Natural gas is great. Let's ramp it up, by all means.

+ Wind plan sounds good. A lot of the land he's targeting is not particularly arable anyway.

+ 3:55 (in the video): first check: OK, what's the cost of all that wind generation (new infrastructure) and conversion of cars to natural gas (including refueling infrastructure)? Surely that would cut into his $300B savings.

+ Not to mention his premise: Can we really not handle buying foreign oil? We have the number one economy in the world. Sure, we're a little depressed right now, not least of all from the housing correction. But is $700B for foreign oil per year really unaffordable and undesirable?

All in all, I'm not convinced this is the way to go. But there's no question we need to do lots of things better WRT energy.