AT A STANFORD University tech conference three years ago, legendary Texas oil man T. Boone Pickens spoke bluntly about the global energy crisis and the urgent need to use cleaner fuels. Between policy points, the elderly billionaire said: "I can make it to the finish line, but I'm not so sure about our grandchildren . . . For generations to come, this has got to be fixed."
Haunting words, coming not from a soy-eating, tree-hugging, street-protesting U.S. citizen, but from one of the wealthiest and most admired American businessmen and investors of our time. He can buy a natural-gas field quicker than we can fill up our hybrid cars. Enough capitalist cred for you, Business Guy?
NEXT TO GLOBAL warming, perhaps the most critical and urgent issue of the day? The supply and demand for basic resources as the world population -- a billion here, a billion there -- continues to explode. In a recent study, the McKinsey Global Institute urges companies and governments to launch a "resource revolution" to improve resource productivity, and to meet the vast global need for energy, materials, food and water in the near future. A McKinsey e-mail to subscribers reads:
NOTE: This blog post on T. Boone Pickens, billionaire oil investor turned tree-hugger (sort of), ran during the 2009 Global Technology Symposium at Stanford University, where he spoke. Boone probably is one of the few men alive who could get Al Gore and Dick Cheney to the same salad bar. "Am I green?" he said. "I could pass the saliva test.".
The annual tech symposium comes to Stanford on March 24-26, 2010. This year's gathering features former Intel chairman and CEO Craig Barrett, former Reagan Administration counselor Clyde Prestowitz, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, Google executive Marissa Mayer, and other business luminaries. The event is run by Alexandra Johnson, managing director of the DFJ-VTB Aurora venture fund, which invests in early-stage companies in Russia.
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA -- The times they are a changin', sang a famous folk troubadour from the 1960s. Ain't that the truth. A few years ago, it would have been hard to imagine legendary Texas oil investor T. Boone Pickens getting chummy with Al Gore and other hardcore environmentalists. But borders are tumbling, and creative destruction and disruption are hallmarks of the new global economy. Last summer, Pickens launched a highly-publicized crusade called The Pickens Plan to end America's addiction to foreign oil. Is he a capitalist crusader a la Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, or a modern-day Don Quixote tilting at solar windmills? I'm betting on him to help save the world, or at least push politicians and the energy sector in the right direction.
PICKENS REMINDS US that the U.S. is the biggest energy hog by far, spending $475 billion in 2008 on foreign oil and using 25% of the 85 million barrels of oil produced each day. But he says we can realistically change our environmental fate by boosting our production of natural gas and using the cleaner fuel in trucks, 18-wheelers and other big business fleets. That'll buy us time -- at least 25 years -- before the glaciers melt like ice cubes at the beach. By then, solar, wind, clean-tech energy sources will have grown to a larger scale to make a real difference. Companies are gradually buying in; AT&T just announced that it plans to run 8,000 of its fleet vehicles on natural gas within five years.
LIKE PRESIDENT OBAMA, Pickens is aiming for a younger, Internet-savvy demographic. In the tradition of civil rights marches on Washington, Pickens is promoting an online "virtual march" on Washington April 1-3 (2009) with his "New Energy Army," some 2 million people who've signed up to send emails to Congress and to promote the Pickens Plan through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social- and professional-networking sites. Is Pickens spot on or what? An avid birdhunter, Pickens and his advisors know how to lead his target -- in this case, reaching green generations under 40 that will shape politics and business over the next several decades. He's also spreading his message the old-fashioned dead-tree way, promoting his new book, The First Billion is the Hardest: Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America's Energy Future.
On his new clean energy reputation: "Am I green? I could pass the saliva test."
On trying to persuade Sen. John McCain to support natural gas, not oil: "He said, 'You're trying to get me to pick a winner.' I said, 'You don't understand, this isn't a multiple choice question. This is the only thing we have. A battery won't move an 18-wheeler. Natural gas is the only thing that makes an 18-wheeler go that's abundant in this country."
On energy leadership: "One thing that's been missing for 40 years is leadership. If this administration, this leadership, can put the American people together not as Democrats, not as Republicans, but as Americans . . . it can be accomplished. In New Delhi, they were choking to death on diesel fuel, so they mandated no diesel . . . Eighteen months later, they switched over to natural gas, and now people are not dying on the streets from diesel fuel . . . It's a war without guns, and we have to move as fast as we can."
On drilling: "I'm for anything that's American. (We should drill on) the East Coast, West coast, Gulf of Mexico . . . Throw it all in. It won't fix it, but it'll help. There isn't a silver bullet. Put it all together and we can solve the problem. Nuclear (energy), sure, I'm all for it."
On risk-taking and entrepreneurship: "I've drilled more dry holes than anybody you want to know. I've also found a lot of oil. In the oil business, I'd probably be in the Top 10. But what did it cost you? That's the big balancer in my industry . . . Entrepreneurs will all go down that trail at some point . . . You have to be smart enough (to know) it's time to walk off. At some point, you run out of rig, you run out of pipe, you run out of money, so you're going to plug it and leave it with tears in your eyes."
On leaving a clean energy legacy before the planet dies: "It's not about this guy (himself). I can make it to the finish line, but I'm not so sure about our grandchildren. For generations to come, this has got to be fixed."
