T. Boone Pickens has a plan to end foreign energy dependence, but for him, it's not a question of whether the United States will listen to him. It's simply a question of when.

Current levels of foreign energy dependence are unsustainable for America and present both economic and security risks, Pickens told a Gaston Hall audience Sept. 21. Pickens came to Georgetown to present his eponymous plan for using alternative energies, chiefly natural gas and wind power, in lieu of foreign oil. The U.S. already is in an energy crisis, he said, and refusal to focus on alternative energies cannot continue.

"The way I see this unfolding is that we'll do what I said we should do," Pickens said with characteristic bluntness. "But when? … This has to be done."

Delivering his plan with a frank demeanor -- "I know what I'm talking about," the talk began -- Pickens sprinkled his speech with sobering statistics about energy's skyrocketing costs and dire predictions of the future. Pickens, using a dry erase board to drive home his points, created a web of numbers to illustrate the cost of ignoring alternative energy.

"Think about the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. That's exactly what it costs us every year to buy foreign oil at $150 a barrel," Pickens said, emphatically circling the figure. "It's four-and-a-half times the cost of the Iraqi war, but we do not have one politician … who ever compares it to that."

America won't be paying $700 billion per year for oil for very long, Pickens predicted -- but only because he believes the costs will balloon rapidly.

"Don't think you're not going to see $300 (barrel) oil -- you are. You all will and I will too," he warned.

Pickens, a Texas billionaire and former oil executive, is taking his plan on the road to college campuses, political rallies and anywhere people will listen to him. Spending $58 million of his own fortune to design, promote and implement his ideas, Pickens is targeting universities to start local chapters in support of his plan. Georgetown was his second stop after the United States Military Academy at West Point.

His answer on energy concerns is wind for electricity and natural gas for transportation. In each case, "it's cleaner, it's cheaper, it's abundant and it's ours," he said. That is, compared to oil, of which the U.S. uses 21 million barrels a day -- one-quarter of the world's oil production for 4 percent of the global population, Pickens said.

Pickens' plan calls for a wind turbine network through the central Great Plains, starting in Texas and traveling north where he said wind blows about 40 percent of the time. Other countries with much less wind energy potential, such as Germany, already have networks in place, he added.

Bolstering natural gas capabilities goes in tandem with wind energy. Natural gas would be used for transportation needs under the Pickens Plan, but the U.S. needs major infrastructure improvements to have either alternative energy succeed, he said. That includes fixing the nation's power grid, which Pickens called outdated.

While favoring any American solution, including drilling, to break the shackles of energy dependence, Pickens predicted energy would soon become even more politicized. Drilling the country's nature reserves, which Pickens said won't solve energy problems, already is a hot-button issue, but he sees a differently framed argument on the horizon.

"It's going to be about patriotism. It will be abhorrent to use foreign energy," he said. "This will be like a war without guns and we will march together."

Faculty member Timothy Beach said Pickens' points must be considered, especially as research is leaving little doubt that climate change is real and as energy costs go up. Beach is a professor of geography and geoscience in the Walsh School of Foreign Service's program in Science, Technology and International Affairs (STIA).  

Alternative energy possibilities are a concentration for many STIA students, Beach said.

Pickens has a somewhat divisive past, having worked in oil and been a vocal supporter of political causes, Beach said, but the professor hopes the public will move past that to focus on Pickens' plan.

"It's important to have business leaders who can get things done and who have a long history of working on energy," Beach said. "We need leaders to work on an issue that is right in the center of American politics, and not politicize it, but set it out as a topic that is a win-win for both parties."