At 55, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a quaking voice.
Spasmodic dysphonia causes his larynx to quiver involuntarily. But this does not stop him from speaking his mind as the Harvard-educated attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and one of Time Magazine’s “Heroes for the Planet.”
Kennedy is in a hurry to “decarbonize the economy” and save the world from a “rigged marketplace” of “corporate crony capitalism” that he says has polluted our planet and devastated our financial system.
Yet he’s been hanging out with a carbon-burning character named T. Boone Pickens — an 80-year-old oilman and former corporate raider who has spent tens of millions of dollars preaching energy independence now that he’s sure there’s a buck in it.
Kennedy met briefly with me before taking the stage at the University of Denver, where he compared our addiction to fossil fuels to Great Britain’s past reliance on slave labor.
Just as abolishing slavery led to the industrial revolution, getting rid of carbon will lead to unimaginable prosperity, Kennedy promised.
I always thought Pickens was part of the system that Kennedy opposes — a system Kennedy complains showers oil, gas, coal and nuclear power producers with trillions of dollars’ worth of subsidies.
Pickens is an energy hedge-fund manager, whose BP Capital reportedly lost about $2 billion last year with its bad bets on natural gas.
Kennedy has been encouraging powerful people to sign the Pickens Plan, as seen on TV.
Otherwise, Kennedy isn’t fond of carbon-burners. To him, degrading the environment is another form of deficit spending. It’s how big corporations profit by exporting the true costs of their enterprises onto others.
Kennedy and Pickens now share the same economic problem. They want Americans to embrace their personal investments in alternative energy, and they want U.S. taxpayers to help distribute their electrons over a modernized national grid.
Pickens wants to build a $2 billion wind farm in the Texas Panhandle. Kennedy wants to build an enormous solar power plant in the Mojave Desert.
Kennedy is a partner and adviser to Silicon Valley’s VantagePoint Venture Partners, which has invested in BrightSource Energy of Oakland, Calif. BrightSource recently struck deals with Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric to provide solar-generated electricity on par with a nuclear power plant, only cheaper and cleaner.
The deals, however, require regulatory approval and, of course, transmission lines that can stretch from the burning Mojave to the energy-burning cities.
The economic-stimulus plan that President Obama signed Tuesday commits about $40 billion for energy-related proj ects, including only about $11 billion to upgrade the nation’s electrical grid.
Kennedy says it’s a start.
“Just because oil prices went down, we can’t forget about our commitment to get off foreign oil, which is destroying this country,” Kennedy said. “We borrow $1 billion a day from countries that don’t like us to buy $1 billion of oil a day from countries that don’t like us.”
He may be right. But he sounds just like Pickens.
Al Lewis: 201-938-5266 or al.lewis@dowjones.com
