Have you seen T. Boone Pickens “Pickens Plan” ads? Unless you live sans-TV, you really can’t miss them. (That’s the big advantage of being a rich guy with a point to make – you can actually afford to get your message out there.) Pickens argues that the biggest threat to our national security is our dependence on foreign oil. I’m not sure that I agree with him that it’s the biggest threat, but it’s certainly in the top five, and it is arguably the biggest threat (other than Congress) to our long-term economic security.

Pickens is doing a masterful job in getting people to discuss energy policy, something that makes most people’s eyes glaze over faster than you can say “1040 long form.” Since Congress does nothing (ever, about anything), Pickens has used the biggest bully pulpit money can buy, and taken his case directly to We the People. Good for him.

[Full disclosure: Mrs. Digital grew up in Boone's old stomping grounds of Amarillo, and her mom owns a spread right next door to Boone's world H.Q., outside Miami, Texas. She's known Boone since high school. ]

So since this is a marketing blog, I’d like to take this opportunity to step behind the marketing curtain, and take a look at the difference between what Boone is marketing, and what he’s actually selling. No judgments here – just observations.

Boone is, first and foremost, a businessman. (Yea!) He’s out to make money. Liberals/Progressives/skeptics think that the phrase “making money” is a conservative euphemism for “make money at the expense of the public.” Conservatives realize that this is not true. In a capitalistic, free-market society, everybody is trying to make money. The principles of Objectivism dictate that it is in everyone’s rational self-interest to play fair.

My take is that Boone is genuinely concerned that we are giving all our wealth to foreign nations, essentially bankrupting ourselves and our future, through a lack of a responsible energy policy. His commercials and website reflect that sentiment. His marketing push urges us to get off our collective butts and Do Something About This Before It’s Too Late. The something he has in mind is a way to get us from point A (a complete dependence on foreign oil) to point B (a reliance on home-grown, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydrogen).

Before we award Boone the Nobel Prize for Selfless Common Sense though, it’s useful to consider the Stanislavsky Method as it applies to marketing – in other words, “what’s his motivation?” In Watergateese, that would be “follow the money,” or in plain English, “what’s in it for him?”

When Boone says “we can’t drill our way out of this,” he’s partially right. Oil, no matter how much or how little of it we have, is (as far as we understand today) a non-renewable resource. Eventually we’ll run out. The key word here is eventually…until we start drilling again, we really don’t know how much oil we can tap on our own property. The pundits that keep saying we have but 3% of the world’s reserves are – at best – guestimating, based on old data, old technology, and old suppositions. What we do know is that using our own oil is better than buying someone else’s. Our current energy policy can best be summed up as “not in my backyard,” be it drilling, wind power, or nuclear. That’s got to change. Boone’s point is that we need to drill now – and do everything else we can do to be self-sufficient. But that alone is not enough. Our goal needs to be to transition from a dependence on oil to a dependence on renewable energy that we own.

Two things to ponder here – we need to start thinking about using energy appropriately – in other words, use renewable energy everywhere we can, saving the petroleum for things that can ONLY be done with oil. For instance, nobody’s talking about what we do to manufacture plastic, once all the oil is gone. Kind of important, doncha think? If we use wind and solar to light and heat our homes, maybe natural gas (for now) for our transportation, that would leave a lot more oil to make plastics and other things we need when we’re not lighting or cooling our homes and offices, or driving back and forth between them. But I digress…

Keep in mind, Boone was originally an oilman. If there’s one thing he knows about, it’s energy. It’s where he made his bones in the world of business. Pickens now makes his money in oil, natural gas, water, and wind power.

(Um…hang on a second? Did you say “natural gas” and “wind power”? Isn’t natural gas what Boone is advocating as a bridge to our “energy future”?)

Yes, it is.

The fact that T. Boone Pickens has skin in this particular game does not make him wrong. (Or “evil,” in liberal-speak.) Not at all. It’s useful, however, to understand that his position is that of someone who will benefit if people support and implement his plan. It’s not like he’s tried to hide this information from anybody. He just doesn’t mention in his ads that he controls a good bit of the natural gas fields in this country, and is busy buying up wind rights everywhere he can.

Boone will make a mint if the government starts converting it’s fleet of cars over to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) power. But that’s just his Step One. Step Two involves investing in wind power. Don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Amarillo is lousy with wind. (Chicago ain’t got nuthin’ on us.) Amarillo is the wind capital of the world, far as I can tell. Pickens calls the USA, the “Saudi Arabia of wind power.” And Boone is busy negotiating with everyone in the Panhandle to buy up their wind rights, and put giant turbines on their farmland. Cool enough. But the thing about wind power is that it’s fairly useless, unless you can get said power from the point of generation to the point where it can be used (i.e.: your homes and businesses). That takes transmission lines, and for that, you need right-of-ways. To get right-of-ways, you need government help, to force gently twist the arms of property owners who are less than enthusiastic about having massive power lines cris-crossing their farms, ranches, and homesteads. Hey – somebody’s gotta do it. If not Boone, some other energy titan will do the same thing. We need power and wind is a great way to create it, especially as there will never be a shortage of wind.

Of course, Boone’s other hobby has been buying up water rights here in the Panhandle. Boone went to the Legislature here in the Lone Star State to get a law passed called “right of capture.” You see, unlike a lot of places in the country that depend on lakes and rivers for their water supply, in the Panhandle, we depend on an aquifer – essentially an underground lake. Our Ogallala aquifer covers parts of Wyoming, virtually all of Nebraska, parts of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, as well as the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. If somebody drains the Ogallala aquifer, a whole bunch of people in a whole bunch o’ states will have no water. You could kiss a good portion of the Midwest buh-bye.

The way “right of capture” works (as far as I understand it) is, if you own the water rights on a piece of land, you can pump as much water from it as you like, with no regard as to your neighbors’ needs. That’s rather like taking a milkshake, putting a bunch of straws in it, and letting all your friends share it, claiming that you’ll only drink your share, and will leave their parts completely unaffected. Um…not so much. If one guy gets a little thirsty, everybody else gets less to drink. Thanks to the right of capture law, whoever owns those water rights could potentially drain that aquifer any time they want, leaving everybody else dry as a bone.

Keep in mind, what Boone wants to do is to sell our water to places like Dallas and San Antonio that need it. (San Antonio’s Edwards Aquifer is so depleted at the moment that many homes in the greater San Antonio area have to buy bottled water, as their wells have literally run dry.) Selling our water to drought-stricken areas of the state wouldn’t be a problem, except that we’re in a drought as well, and have been for some time. Our biggest lake in these parts, Lake Meredith, is some 50 feet lower than it is supposed to be. It will take years of rainfall to bring it back up to the proper level. And that’s only if somebody (Boone) doesn’t make things worse by pumping our water to points South.

But wait…pumping water is an expensive proposition, and requires an extensive network of pipelines. He’d have to build the pipelines, but to do that, he’d…need…right-of-ways…across…the…state.

Uh oh.

Now I don’t wanna get all ‘grassy knoll’ on you, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the same right-of-ways that would allow for transmission lines could be used for a massive water pipeline. I’m not sayin’…I’m just sayin.’ And for the record, I don’t think that Boone would ever drain the aquifer to the point where the Panhandle becomes another Dust Bowl. However, I’m not sure we should be entirely comfortable with a situation where everyone here is dependent upon the kindness of one entrepreneur, no matter how sharp the guy may be.

Boone’s marketing pitch doesn’t go into any of this. And why should it – he’s a smart guy, and he knows what will resonate with the American people. Even better, he’s right – we need to do EVERYTHING to make ourselves as energy-independent as possible – drill for oil everywhere we can, build more nuclear power plants, use natural gas wisely, invest in wind power generation, solar power generation, and develop ways to turn clean coal and oil shale into usable energy, as well as encouraging private companies to come up with new ideas for energy creation. The fact that he’s gonna make money in the transition from oil-dependency to something else is immaterial. To properly evaluate the Pickens Plan, though, it’s useful to understand what’s behind the marketing message.

Boone’s plan is heavy on natural gas and wind power. No surprise there. What he doesn’t talk about, though, are options like building plants that would convert oil shale into diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel. Seems that we have HUGE deposits of oil shale, which heretofore have been largely useless as far as energy goes. Since WWII, we’ve known how to convert this resource into usable fuels – but building the plants was way too expensive for the return on the investment. That all changed when oil hit $100 a barrel. The only thing stopping entrepreneurs from building those plants now is the knowledge that if they were to start, OPEC would simply drop the price of crude long enough to bankrupt them – then jack the price back up, once the threat had passed.

Boone also soft-pedals nuclear energy. Contrary to what Jane Fonda and the rest of the “China Syndrome” crowd, nuclear power is safe, cost-effective and practical. Just as France. Or Germany. France – home to tree-hugging groups like Greenpeace – has invested big in nuclear power. They’d be the first on the protest lines if it were dangerous. Done right, it’s a blessing. France has nuclear power plants all across the countryside. Stateside, nobody’s built a new nuclear facility – or expanded a current one – in years. Why? bureaucratic red tape and lawsuits from enviro-Nazis. They’d rather wear no-nukes shirts and protest than have clean, cheap energy. Nice.

Wind power faces some hurdles, too. Ted Kennedy and the Hyannisport crowd have taken a “not in my back bay” attitude – they don’t want anything spoiling their precious view. (Keep in mind – the longer the distance you have to transmit energy, the harder it is to do, and the more energy it takes to do it.) The PeTAmaniacs are up in arms, too. According to Leading Animal Rights Activists, those turbine blades regularly play Freddie Kruger to our feather friends. Well…it’s hard to say how big a problem this is, because the animal activist crowd tends to, shall we say…exaggerate the severity of any problem they think can get them some face time on the boot tube (not to mention YouTube). And I’d sacrifice an entire flock of seagulls for cheap, renewable energy any day.

Bottom line, Boone’s marketing is brilliant. But there’s more to the story than the part the public sees. I have no problem with what he suggests. But we all need to be aware that he has a stake in this game, and the Pickens Plan is not necessarily the only game in town. Unfortunately, with a Congress that seems only to care about being the antithesis to Progress, it might as well be the only alternative to our current dilemma. In this case, Boone’s marketing is providing a public service – while at the same time, helping him promote his own interests. Not a bad deal for everyone involved, when you think about it. And if Pickens can get Congress off the dime and get us out of the clutches of OPEC, more power – um…energy – to him.