Two big speeches in Washington, DC last night. One was on Capitol Hill before a Joint Session of Congress. The other was by T. Boone Pickens talking to the Washington chapter of the Council on Foreign Relations.
President Obama, in his speech to the Congress and the nation, made it clear that energy is a big part of the recovery effort. According to the site BeforeTheBell.com
In the speech, Obama vowed to develop renewable energy. “We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century,” he said. The administration’s Secretary of Energy, Stephen Chu, announced on Monday an immediate fast-tracking of all applications from wind and solar companies for stimulus dollars to kick-start the construction of more projects.
The President also talked about the need for new transportation fuels for cars and trucks. As reported by the New York Times:
We will invest $15 billion a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power, advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.”
About two hours earlier, Boone Pickens told an SRO crowd at the Council on Foreign Relations that he was “the only geologist of my age that believes in global warming.”
Pickens told the group that whether you believed global warming is man-made or not “it makes sense to do the things to clean up the environment – if I’m wrong about global warming then the environment will still be cleaner.”
Pickens also told the CFR members that America has allowed it self to become hostage to foreign oil. “I know this is a group interested in foreign affairs,” he said. “Well, the rest of the world doesn’t understand why the United States – with all of our domestic resources – would allow ourselves to get into this dangerous position of importing 70 percent of our oil.
Boone explained how incenting owners of heavy trucks – 18-wheelers – to replace their aging trucks running on imported diesel with new trucks running on domestic liquified natural gas would have a significant positive effect on the economy.
“We have about 6.5 million 18-wheelers on the road in America. If we ran a test and got 350,000 of them from diesel to natural gas that would produce 450,000 jobs directly and 1.4 million jobs indirectly as the major engine manufacturers re-tooled to build natural gas engines.
— The Pickens Team