Fueling our clean energy future

T. Boone Pickens

Sunday, May 9, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Not many states have the capacity to enjoy the benefits of alternative energy like Nevada. The sun shines. The wind blows. Major natural gas lines run right through Las Vegas, Carson City and Reno to supply the major population centers. And, as the Las Vegas Sun reported a year ago, "Nevada is poised to overtake California as the American geothermal energy leader."

This self-sufficiency is becoming more and more important as the world begins to stir out of the global recession and the industrialized nations need oil to fuel their factories and run their cars and trucks.

The United States is far, far from Nevada's self-sufficiency when it comes to oil. Month after month we import about two-thirds of the oil we use and 70 percent of that is used as transportation fuel.

Once again, in 2010, we are likely to spend close to $400 billion on imported oil. That will not produce one single job in Nevada or anywhere else in the United States, but it will produce plenty of jobs in places like Iran and Nigeria...