The first session that I attended featured Governor Jennifer Granholm, as well as T. Boone Pickens. As far as I was concerned, it was a great combination. Granholm, our governor, has been a huge proponent of diversifying our economy-one of those areas being research and development of alternative energy technologies. There’s also Pickens, who spent $60 million of his own money in a PR campaign toward our more widespread acceptance of natural gas as a fuel source over gasoline. Plain and simple: things cannot continue this way for much longer.

A big part toward Granholm’s plan is for Michigan to be the state to lead the country in producing batteries to be used in automobiles. The problem is that in our current switch from gas to electric, we are exchanging our dependence on petroleum from potentially unfriendly countries to dependence on batteries from countries that are also potentially unfriendly (i.e China). So, we are exchanging one evil for another.

Now, why Michigan? We have a huge manufacturing capacity with a skilled workforce that, with relatively little retraining, could start the process of domestically producing litium-ion batteries and work toward developing the next generations of batteries. In order for this to work, Granholm was suggesting that we need  state and federal support to make this happen-money and incentives to bring battery manufacturers to Michigan.

During the second portion of the session, T. Boone Pickens spoke and I have to admit that I was impressed. For being 81, he was remarkably sharp, extremely clear and I came out understanding the ideas that I initially was exposed to during his private funded campaign for the American public to start embracing natural gas as a fuel source.

One of the United States’ weak points is that, as said by him, is that it has never had a real energy plan. What this means is that asides from making campaign promises, which amount to a few statements, of getting us energy independent, nothing has ever done. What we need at this point is for the empty words to stop and to see real action. What will President Obama and future presidents do toward moving us toward true energy independence?

Here is where Pickens suggested or, rather, clarified his major suggestion: while moving away from our reliance on gasoline, we use natural gas a bridgegap until we can develop viable, trustworthy batteries. It’s funny to be to took a geologist (he did say that he received a degree in geology) to suggest a viable plan when past presidents have failed to do so. He made it clear and I agree with him completely that we need to move toward battery power. As Governor Granholm said, we are the place with the proper resources to supply the United States with batteries.