Pickens talks to full-house Mizzou crowd on Earth Day
Photos by Shane Epping
Mizzou couldn’t have custom-ordered a more perfect Earth Day.
The sun shined over an impeccable green Francis Quadrangle in Wednesday’s 75-degree weather. Inside Jesse Hall, hundreds of energy-conscious leaders in business, government and nonprofit agencies milled about at the Missouri Energy Summit.
T. Boone Pickens was the keynote speaker Wednesday at the Missouri Energy Summit.
The summit’s main attraction was T. Boone Pickens, billionaire Texas oilman and creator of the Pickens Plan for harnessing all-American, clean energy and weaning the United States of foreign oil.
The content of Pickens’ presentation to a packed Jesse Auditorium audience was familiar to any Pickens follower and eye-opening to any newcomer.
Pickens predicts that if Americans don’t change our ways immediately, at the rate the country is going, 10 years from now the United States will be importing 75 percent of its oil — mostly from unstable, non-ally nations — and paying $300 a barrel for it.
On the other hand, if current house bill H.R. 1835: New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2009 passes, the country will be on its way to enacting the first step in the plan: using natural gas to fuel large vehicles.
The 80-year-old Pickens easily charmed his audience. Mizzou and Oklahoma State football talk dominated opening remarks. A microphone mishap led to an anecdote about accidentally sitting on a mic at another presentation and quipping, “Well, you can say that for the first 10 minutes he was talking out of his ass.” The transition to the question-and-answer session invited a frog-kissing joke, with the punch line “Talking frogs are worth a hell of a lot more than Texas oilmen these days.” After the keynote address, Pickens sloughed off his entourage to sign books and chat with an Oklahoma college football player recently drafted by the Dallas Cowboys.
Jacob Kerner, a sophomore at Columbia College who plans to transfer to MU, asks Pickens for advice about what to study.
Pickens both recruited young people from the audience and offered them some perspective. Talking at a graduation once, he said, he rhetorically proposed trading places with any of the graduates; a youngster would take Pickens’ jet, ranch, billions of dollars and eight decades of wisdom, and Pickens would take what he or she had. “What you have is a future.”
T. Boone Pickens talks to the press after his address, among university leaders such as University of Missouri System President Gary Forsee.
In talking with both the public and the press, Pickens occasionally fielded questions, challenges and devil’s advocates. He insisted he’s open to any pragmatic American solution to the energy problem but has little patience for further delays in implementing solutions. For naysayers Pickens has these words: “What’s your plan?”
Read Mizzou Wire’s interview with Pickens.
To learn more and/or join the Pickens Plan Army, visit the Pickens Plan site.
This has been my most inspirational moment in my entire life!!!
Jacob Kerner | April23, 2009
It’s good that the local community has a voice to lead us to a more stable and prosperous nation. It took a man of great vision and great motivational power to lead us in the right direction. He is a man who cares. Where we would be in 10 years from now if he had not started this plan? We are so dependent on foreign oil that a lack of supply and/or higher cost could shut down America faster than you can blink! Pickens is pouring billions of his own money into this, for us, for America.
Teresa Kerner | April25, 2009
Wow! The way Pickens talks is just brilliant, and you can see why he influences so many and has a large effect on big groups. The leadership style he employs is just terrific. I learned a lot from him.
Leadership Styles | April27, 2009
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