Only Four Years Left to Save Environmentalism — Climate Resistance: Challenging Climate Orthodoxy

If Obama is really to choose ‘hope over fear’, he will have to challenge the influence of the likes of Hansen. Can he do it? Well, we hope so.

T. Boone’s Wind Farm: At Least 2-3 Years Off

Even after T. Boone Pickens’ plan to build the world’s largest wind farm in Texas got kicked by the debt markets, he tried to remain optimistic that the funding would come and his plan would only suffer a minor delay. But at the Clean Tech Investor Summit on Wednesday, Pickens said that the farm will likely be pushed back at least to 2011, when the wind turbines are due to be delivered.

And even that deadline might be optimistic, admits Pickens, who calls himself an eternal optimist. “We’ll see what happens in 2-3 years,” he said. Construction of the wind farm was supposed to start in 2010, but this best-case scenario would involve a delay of at least a year. At this point there’s just no money to finance the wind project, says Pickens.

But the hedge fund manager did offer up one new possible way to finance wind projects while funding is scare: a wind bank. Pickens says the Obama administration should look into ways of developing a wind bank that would offer funds for wind developers. He didn’t elaborate on how it would work.

If wind power is so viable and lucrative, why can't Pickens find private investors to fund his projects?