Dear Reader,
August 2008
Our cover story presents Carol Higgins Clark,
the talented author and daughter of mystery writer Mary Higgins
Clark, who has written her 11th novel entitled
Zapped, continuing the Regan Reilly mystery series.
We had the opportunity to meet with her at Panfield, the beautiful North Shore
estate of her good friend Bernadette Castro and Ms. Castro’s husband, Dr.
Peter Guida, before a book signing at the Book Review in Huntington. We enjoyed
having the opportunity to visit with this lovely woman and our gracious hosts.
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In July we celebrated the first year anniversary
of Networking® Magazine
2020: Guide to Going Green.
For us it has been an exciting year of learning and growing in knowledge about
the most important issue of our time, renewable energy.
In this issue beginning on page 22 we have Wind Power, the Next Generation. I’m
sure you will enjoy reading the piece by Maureen Traxler.
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“We have not had an energy plan for 40 years. We cannot drill
out of trouble.” -T.
Boone Pickens
T. Boone Pickens, the founder and chairman of BP Capital Management, is a welcome
heavy hitter in the discussion of our energy future. The oil man’s “Pickens
Plan,” which is currently enjoying a massive media blitz, is his 10-year
answer to solving our shortage of oil. The Pickens Plan is a blueprint to reduce
foreign oil dependence by harnessing domestic energy alternatives to buy us time
to develop even greater new technologies. Building new wind generation facilities
and better utilizing our natural gas resources can replace more than one-third
of our foreign oil imports in 10 years. But it will take leadership, according
to Pickens.
Pickens said that we must go all out to develop all available
American resources now, but the most important ones are
wind and solar. The natural resources for
wind and solar are “unbelievable,” he said on Imus in the Morning,
7/23/08, “as we have a wind corridor from Sweetwater, Texas all the way
to Canada. We have a solar corridor from Sweetwater all the way to California.” Pickens’ Mesa
Power wants to build the world’s largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle
with as many as 2000 turbines. Texas is currently number one in wind power
according to the U.S. Department of Energy and has one quarter of all the wind
power in
the U.S.
Pickens said, “We should drill but we can’t drill out of trouble.
We import 10 to 14 million barrels of foreign oil per day. Saudi Arabia only
produces 9 million barrels a day of oil ...we can’t get up to the level
of our imports...We spend $700 billion per year on foreign oil. Some goes to
friends, most goes to people who are not friends. We have 3% of the oil in the
world; 4% of the world’s population. We import 70% of our oil... It doesn’t
take a genius to know that we’re funding both sides of the war...What
if they cut us off?”
He said to The Los Angeles Times last week, “Oil imports cost four and
one half times what the Iraq War costs. Nobody running for president even talks
about that.” Pickens said that a national energy plan is the missing link
- “We have not had an energy plan for 40 years...we must renew our energy
tax credits.”
Pickens also wants to convert the government vehicle fleet to natural gas
as it is “cheap, abundant and most importantly, American.
Send us your thoughts and comments. We value your opinion and we want to
hear from you.
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Please continue to share your thoughts with us. We want to hear from you
- you are our inspiration.
Best regards,
Christine Conniff Sheahan
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