T Boone Pickens continues hard sell with blogger call

Mark Sumner: If I said “When you said you’re not interested in the environment and you’re funding James Inhofe, do you understand that there are those of us who are concerned about energy and the environment who find problems with this?” PICKENS: “In conversations with Al Gore, I said that #1 for me was the $700 billion and Global Warming is #2. My record is a very good record on the environment. The natural gas that I am proposing as a bridge fuel is 80% cleaner than gasoline. So, I don’t step back from the green-clean position, I’m right up there with that … I do not think it is realistic to go directly to the battery or the hyrdrogen. … In discussions that I’ve had with Gore, I don’t find ourselves far apart. … Just so happens that the cleaner fuel is natural gas, which we have in abundance in this country. Now, if the Saudis had natural gas and we had oil, I would be supporting drilling because of problem #1.” That last bit lays the situation out clearly, global warming is — at best — an afterthought for T Boone Pickens rather than an integrated issue with trying to deal with Peak Oil and Global Warming in an integrated fashion.