Gore, Billionaire Oilman Form Unlikely Alliance

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The New York Sun

WASHINGTON — The most unlikely alliance in this election year hasn’t come out of any political campaign. It’s in the convergence of interests between the billionaire oilman and Republican Party backer T. Boone Pickens and the former vice president turned environmentalist Al Gore.

Mr. Gore, the Democratic Party’s 2000 standard-bearer, and Mr. Pickens, who helped bankroll the group that questioned Democrat John Kerry’s war record in the 2004 presidential race, are pursuing separate paths toward a shared goal: cutting American dependence on oil.

Mr. Pickens said he and Mr. Gore have had “several conversations” about their complementary campaigns to overhaul the American energy menu and usher in a new era of wind farms, natural gas pumps, and solar panels.

“We have to get the country off the $700 billion a year it spends on foreign oil,” Mr. Pickens said in a telephone interview from his ranch in the Texas panhandle. “It’s a killer and is going to cause our economy great problems.”

Gore’s emphasis is on the environment more than energy independence. The biggest difference between the two concurrent campaigns and past efforts at addressing both issues is the money being put into the projects and a growing consensus that an era of profitable alternative-energy production is here.

Mr. Pickens, 80, insists his $58 million marketing campaign to push the country off imported oil toward domestic energy sources and his investment in a $10 billion wind farm in Texas isn’t about making money — he’s said he does that well enough already.

“What I’m doing now I’m trying to do for the country,” he said.

Asked if he agrees with another billionaire, Ted Turner, that shifting to a low-carbon economy is the “biggest business opportunity there’s ever been,” Mr. Pickens hesitated.

“Hold on,” he said.

With that, Mr. Turner, the 69-year-old founder of the Cable News Network and Turner Broadcasting got on the line to say he “absolutely” believes his assessment is correct.

“I’ve been saying that for years,” Mr. Turner, whose ideology is closer to that of Mr. Gore than that of Mr. Pickens, said.

Mr. Turner said he and Mr. Pickens spent two days “mostly talking about green energy, global warming.”

Mr. Pickens argues that wind harnessed from the country’s midsection could provide 22 of American electricity by 2010. That would free up natural gas to replace gasoline in vehicles.

Mr. Gore, 60, who won a Nobel Prize for raising awareness about global warming, is taking a slightly different approach. In a July 17 speech, he issued a call for America to completely convert to electricity production from solar, wind, and other zero-carbon-emissions sources. His Alliance for Climate Protection is undertaking a $300 million advertising campaign to promote the concept.

Mr. Gore’s main focus is environmental, though he also frames the debate as a matter of security and economics.

While Mr. Pickens views his own proposal as a “bridge to where Al wants to go,” there are no plans now to coordinate.


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