After taking a close look at the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle responded by emphatically endorsing the Pickens Plan and imploring President Obama to do the same:
Maybe now is the time, Mr. President, to have a look at the energy independence plan put forward by the wildcatter T. Boone Pickens — especially his proposal to convert our nation’s fleet of 8 million 18-wheeler trucks from imported diesel to domestically produced natural gas.
The Chronicle’s editors made a point of singling out the U.S.’s dangerous dependency on foreign oil, much of which is produced by countries who are self-professed enemies of the American way of life:
If this country is serious about reducing our oil dependency and, by inference, the amount of drilling at great depths offshore, we’ll have to make some major inroads on the demand side. Short of that, shutting down drilling and production for any length of time in the Gulf of Mexico is a nonstarter. Gulf production provides us with 30 percent of the oil we produce domestically. Take it away without cutting consumption and you get only one thing: increased dependency on foreign oil, much of it controlled by countries that don’t like us.
Now is the time to point the way forward with cleaner alternatives that help build that bridge to a sustainable energy future we all want.
The newspaper closed the editorial by pointedly asking the President to take the lead in this all-important area:
We believe the American people are primed for a mission that makes us more secure and creates good jobs while cleaning up the environment. It’s your moment to lead, Mr. President. Take full advantage of it.
Read the entire editorial HERE.