JERRY POURNELLE: “T Boone Pickens is absolutely right: we can’t go on transferring a trillion a year to the middle east. On the other hand, we used to be the creditor nation of the world, as well as the manufacturing nation. We gave that up voluntarily for regulations and a regulatory state. Whether his conclusion, that we ought to convert to wind power, is correct is another matter. It doesn’t look as useful as nuclear, but there are fewer environmental fanatics opposed to wind. I suspect that energy economics is more determined by law suits than by engineering.”

That’s a poor basis for policy.