T. Boone Pickens

I knew--just knew--that oilman T. Boone Pickens had a pecuniary interest at stake when he opines (via the television infomercial in which he appears) that "we can't drill our way out" of the energy crisis.

I had originally thought that he wanted to keep as high as possible the price of the oil coming out of the wells he already owns. And this may be true, but there is a second reason reported by John Wright:

According to an article in Popular Mechanics, if the plan is accepted, Pickens stands to reap a significant profit by building pipelines to pump billions of gallons of water from an aquifer under the Texas Panhandle, which he has bought the water rights to. The pipeline would follow the same 250-mile corridor that the wind farm would be on, which would be seized from private owners through eminent domain and granted to him.

Brilliant, isn’t it? Offer your solution to the energy crisis, offer to kick start the whole thing by buying up a ton of wind turbines, and - like a magician - ensure in the process of all this glamourous greenism that nobody notices the real business you want to build: selling your water to the metropolis of Dallas, Texas; all made possible because you got the government to like you so much they’d actually give you the land you need to do it!