Despite the presence of fairy-tale villains like Dick Cheney, one hopes that individuals grow both wise and generous as they grow old and wealthy.

Warren Buffett appears to be one of those individuals and his willingness to donate the bulk of his fortune after his death is a reason why. Perhaps T. Boone Pickens is another.

This week I saw Pickens speak on the Nightly Business Report and I read his op-ed in the WSJ. He is a wealthy oil man. He has a plan for change. He is willing to spend his own money to make people hear it. One hopes he is sincere.

I like his plan. Most of all, I like that someone in the industry has a plan other than "drill more oil to make me richer". Our unwillingness to face global warming is sickening. Our willingness to leave such terrible problems for our children is unconscionable.

My Plan to Escape the Grip of Foreign Oil

By T. BOONE PICKENS

July 9, 2008

Wall Street Journal

One of the benefits of being around a long time is that you get to know a lot about certain things. I'm 80 years old and I've been an oilman for almost 60 years. I've drilled more dry holes and also found more oil than just about anyone in the industry. With all my experience, I've never been as worried about our energy security as I am now. Like many of us, I ignored what was happening. Now our country faces what I believe is the most serious situation since World War II.

The problem, of course, is our growing dependence on foreign oil – it's extreme, it's dangerous, and it threatens the future of our nation.

Let me share a few facts: Each year we import more and more oil. In 1973, the year of the infamous oil embargo, the United States imported about 24% of our oil. In 1990, at the start of the first Gulf War, this had climbed to 42%. Today, we import almost 70% of our oil.

This is a staggering number, particularly for a country that consumes oil the way we do. The U.S. uses nearly a quarter of the world's oil, with just 4% of the population and 3% of the world's reserves. This year, we will spend almost $700 billion on imported oil, which is more than four times the annual cost of our current war in Iraq.

In fact, if we don't do anything about this problem, over the next 10 years we will spend around $10 trillion importing foreign oil. That is $10 trillion leaving the U.S. and going to foreign nations, making it what I certainly believe will be the single largest transfer of wealth in human history.

Why do I believe that our dependence on foreign oil is such a danger to our country? Put simply, our economic engine is now 70% dependent on the energy resources of other countries, their good judgment, and most importantly, their good will toward us. Foreign oil is at the intersection of America's three most important issues: the economy, the environment and our national security. We need an energy plan that maps out how we're going to work our way out of this mess. I think I have such a plan.

Pickens' plan is basically a short-term stop-gap to address our energy (and financial) problems in the immediate term while we build a better long-term solution.

He would replace gasoline with compressed natural gas as the fuel for individual transportation. I would add making lighter, smaller cars which are better suited to our actual use. People buy vehicles that are much larger than they really need because they imagine they need a 3rd row of seats for 7 people or they need to haul a piano or they need 4WD so they can scale a mesa. The reality is that most cars do one thing: drive a single person to work and back or on errands. In addition to smaller vehicles, we need more electric-hybrids like the Prius.

He would invest immediately in wind power generation built in the center of our country across our wide-open prairies. I believe that in order to make that work, we will also need to spend a massive amount of money on electricity transportation as in transmission-line infrastructure.

He would put a lot of money into alternative energy research. I would add nuclear power to the list.

Lastly I think the government will need to institute a large national tax on gasoline. The only reason we are seeing any attention on this issue now is because of $4 gasoline. If the price of gasoline drops back to $2, American's will lose interest in change. To prevent this, the government should institute a tax that gets larger as the price of gasoline gets lower. Keep the retail price of gasoline high and use any tax revenue to invest in transportation.

With this presidential election, change is in the air but the election will not be enough. We need substantial change on energy and environmental policy and we need it immediately. We need real leadership.