Legendary oil billionaire T.Boone Pickens is in the news lately as he promotes his plan to make America independent from foreign oil. The “Pickens Plan” calls for a vast network of wind turbines to be installed in a corridor stretching from the Texas Panhandle to North Dakota. Generating all that electricity from wind would free-up the natural gas currently being used to generate electricity, allowing us to use it to run our cars, according to the plan.

Critics say Pickens’ energy plan is providing cover for another plan being developed by the oil barren: Pickens is hoping to pump billions of gallons of water from an aquifer beneath the Texas Panhandle and ship it to Dallas and other major cities as drinking water. The power line corridors for his wind project, to be created by seizing private property through eminent domain, would also serve the $1.5 billion water project. Other critics of his plan question the wisdom of switching our driving addiction from oil dependence to natural gas. The production of natural gas in the U.S. has been declining since 1971.

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