If the G8 won't help how about an Oil Tycoon

This week T. Boone Pickens announced that he has a plan for increasing our energy independence and thereby beginning to help the environment. I applaud him for using his money to promote this cause and actually give a plan, unlike the G8. I was surprised to see that he actually purchased TV spots for his plan, which is a great step in the right direction. So in terms of what he has done to promote this issue, he is beginning to do great things and hopefully more will follow his lead.

However I must be more critical of the plan itself, which does not have helping the environment as a primary goal but seeks to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. While this is a great goal I think that we can advance both aims with the same economic inputs that he seeks. His plan can be summed up as lets replace the 20% of our energy that we get from natural gas with wind power and then use that natural gas to run cars off of so that we can reduce our consumption of foreign oil by 1/3. He estimates that it will cost about 1.2 trillion to get 20% of our power from wind turbines. He already has substantial investments in West Texas in wind, including a 4000 mW plant that cost about 12 billion dollars. First of all, you all know I am a great proponent of Nuclear Power and I believe that 1.2 trillion would be better spent on the nuclear industry. This amount of investment, using the metrics outlined by the World Nuclear Association, could create around 200 new plants, which might get us to where 60% of our power came from nuclear. Also, according to those metrics, nuclear power has a lower operating cost than other forms of power, including wind. Also another issue I see with his plan is that it does nothing to combat the great evils of coal fire power plants. This is because the US has a lot of coal so there is no incentive from the people who want energy independence to get rid of coal, yet it releases most of our CO2 and other pollutants. Third, natural gas would be a good temporary fuel for our cars as according to Pickens’ Plan it release 30% less CO2 than gasoline. However, I believe that by the time the infrastructure is developed to support natural gas as our fuel of choice, we will be ready to switch to hydrogen. Thus I think that because biofuels require much less change in the current infrastructure they are a much better temporary solution.
So overall I applaud him for taking a step in the right direction. But I wish that his plan would do more for the environment and see the potential of other more effective technologies.