From an editorial in the Seattle Times by editor James F. Vesely:
We have in our vice-presidential candidates a senator who knows intimately the power centers of the world, and a governor who knows something about oil and natural-gas benefits to her state. We have no one who could be called a true energy producer and expert, so while there is still time, one of the parties should snap up T. Boone.
He’s great on TV, which is now a necessity. He’s rich, but voters don’t hold wealth against candidates who talk plain. And he understands that each piece of the energy puzzle, from oil to natural gas to wind power, is the summation of an energy policy.
Pickens would also be quite a breath of air as secretary of energy. The energy secretary holds lots of secrets about nuclear arsenals but also must be someone who can speak from outside the various industries of energy.
In 15 years, we have had so many secretaries of energy come through this office, their names could fill the telephone book of a small town. The current secretary at a 2005 journalists briefing in Washington, D.C., mistakenly placed Washington’s gigantic Hanford nuclear waste site in Oregon.
The evidence seems plain that all forms of energy production are needed. Dams for hydro come to mind. Last month, Sen. Barack Obama toured a turbine manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania, where the brightest metal is shaped to turn water into electricity. As he admired the skills of the plant’s workers, someone should have asked the candidate: Where should we put these turbines? Do you want them on the rivers of the West, the rivers of Brazil, the rivers that cross the U.S.-Canadian border?
It is not the technology that is so difficult, it is the placement of it that takes years to resolve.
You can read the entire editorial here.