Yesterday, I wrote about Boone Pickens’s plan to plaster the center of the country with windmills. He’s on a PR blitz, trying to convince the country and its politicians—especially those two guys running for President—that we need to go hog wild into wind energy. (Could maybe have something to do with the massive wind farm he’s building in Texas.)
This morning a reader of the Curious Capitalist—okay, the Curious Capitalist himself—pointed out how Pickens wasn’t always so in love with wind energy. He forwarded me a link to this blog post, which includes this quote:
“I was in wind energy for a minute…. I hate it. And when I got to looking at those damn things I said, I don’t want to be a part of putting that on the horizon. I think it’s homely and I don’t like it. We took a loss and got out of it and I’m glad I did.”
—T. Boone Pickens, Bloomberg, February 17, 2005
Could I get a “flip flop” from the crowd?
Oh, but that’s okay. Boone Pickens is, before anything else, a capitalist. I think that’s something we can respect here, on a blog about capitalism. And even though Pickens can gloss over his true motivations with the best of them, he does also do that fantastic Texan straight-talk thing. From an April article about Pickens and wind power:
“Don’t get the idea that I’ve turned green,” Pickens tells the Guardian in the Dallas offices of his new venture Mesa Power. “My business is making money, and I think this is going to make a lot of money.”
[UPDATE (of a sort): I do know that Pickens is originally from Oklahoma, not Texas. Though I doubt anyone would argue about my characterization of his style as Texan straight-talk.]
Barbara!