We hitched up the T-Boone-Express and made stops in Columbus, Ohio and Ann Arbor, Michigan. I’m a pretty strong college football fan, so I understood that going from the home of Ohio State University to the University of Michigan could have some danger involved.
In Ohio I had lunch with Governor Ted Strickland at the Governor’s Mansion. First, of course, we had to pose for a photo:
Strickland was a member of the U.S. House for about 10 years before he became Governor. He represented the Southeastern part of Ohio where there are a lot of small oil and gas producers which have been pumping small amounts per day for decades and decades.
He was interested enough in what we were going to talk about to have had his energy advisor come over from the Statehouse. Ohio is big in wind. And, Ohio is home to the largest manufacturer of solar panels in the world. So, the Buckeye State is into alternative energy.
Strickland understands the economic threat and he understands that sending $700 billion per year overseas for oil can’t be sustained.
This is why making these visits is so important. Ted Strickland is a pretty smart guy. But he thought America was short of natural gas. I asked him why he thought that and he told me that when Alan Greenspan was the chairman of the Federal Reserve, that’s what he had said.
I told him that when Greenspan said that, it was probably true. But now that we’ve developed and improved recovery techniques for natural gas, we are probably looking at a 100 year supply.
After the excellent meeting we jumped into the T-Boone-Express and went up to Ann Arbor for a town hall meeting with about 850 students and faculty.
As we’ve talked about before, I really like talking to college kids. They’re smart and they’re on top of their subjects because they go to class every day.
I told them about the Pickens Plan and took their questions for about an hour. The University of Michigan folks told me that they were sending my talk live through the campus cable and they were also streaming it live so students could watch it on their laptops where ever they were.
After the actual town hall, about 50 of the students came down to the front of the auditorium so I sat on the edge of the stage and spent another 20 minutes talking with them, listening to their ideas, and helping them understand the possible solutions to our problem.
I enjoy that as much as anything I do.
Then, of course, the press. This is very important because it reaches so many people who couldn’t come to the town hall. They don’t get the full story, of course, but if I can get just a small percentage of people to go to PickensPlan.com because they saw me on a newscast or read about me in a newspaper article, then it is well worth my time.
This is how it looks:
We fired up the plane and went home to Dallas. Another good day for the Pickens Plan and the New Energy Army!
— Boone
