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