THE TEXAN OIL BARON AND THE WINDS OF CHANGE

T Boone Pickens was the ultimate Texan oil tycoon. Then he saw the light: the green light. Now he's at the forefront of a revolution that has turned the Lone Star state into the US's biggest producer of wind power. And, he says, that's just the start. By Leonard Doyle

US champion of alternative energy

Everything is bigger in Texas, even the wind turbines. They stand twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades as wide as the wings on a jumbo jet. Each one can earn hundreds of dollars every year for landowners, a whole wind farm can generate hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's hardly a surprise then that new turbines are popping at a rate of three to four a day. Texas and oil go together like hound dogs and huntin', as the saying goes, but the black stuff that made George Bush and many other oil men rich is now running out and something else is needed to keep the lights on. The state is already facing a shortfall in electrical power generation. From sneering at the country's green movement, (Mr Bush called Al Gore "Ozone Man" when he defeated him in 2000), pragmatic Texans have suddenly embraced wind power as the answer to their prayers.

Once known as America's oil patch, Texas now calls itself the nation's wind-power capital. Big Oil is turning into Big Wind.

For Sweetwater, known for its annual spring rattlesnake round- up, the wind-power bonanza produces enough energy to power a large city. Today you can drive for 150 miles either side of it without losing sight of a wind turbine.

Sweetwater is also home to T Boone Pickens, 80, a legendary Texas oil wild-catter, corporate raider, philanthropist and Republican hit man, whose personal worth has reached $2.7bn (1.4bn).

He was one of the inspirations for the rapacious capitalist Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street and in 2004 he was the bagman behind the infamous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign which helped destroy John Kerry's presidential ambitions.

From the prairie town of Holdenville, Oklahoma, his father made his fortune gambling on oil leases. As a child, Pickens had a paper round, which is where he says he learnt the aggressive approach to work that would make him infamous on Wall Street in the 1980s. He started the oil company, Mesa Petroleum, in 1956, with $2,500, turning it into one of the most feared companies in the US.

Fortune called him "the most hated man in corporate America" at a time when he was making a fortune using Mesa to make hostile takeover bids for other companies. His efforts made Pickens fabulously rich.

A hate figure of the liberal left, many blame him for George Bush's do-nothing legacy on the environment. Although he lives smack in the middle of one of the windiest places in America, as recently as 2005 he dismissed the idea of wind energy out of hand: "I was in wind energy for a minute ... I hate it. And when I got to looking at those damn things I said, I don't want to be a part of putting that on the horizon. We took a loss and got out of it and I'm glad I did."

Spool forward three years to find a country on the verge of a nervous breakdown with oil heading towards $200 a barrel. Americans do not worry much about global warming, but they care a lot about filling up their gas-guzzling pick-up SUVs and worry more and more about how they are going to get to work and back. The "Pickens Plan" is suddenly on everyone's minds in America, especially those pulling up to their local petrol station where filling up costs twice as much as it did last year.

Mr Pickens believes in the peak oil theory that world production cannot grow beyond 85 million barrels a day even with lots of new drilling and production. Demand is already at 86 million barrels a day and growing. For Americans who squander so much petrol plying the freeways in their air-conditioned behemoths, the crisis is no longer theoretical.

And over the coming months Mr Pickens is spending enough to ensure that his face will be seen on American television screens as much as either John McCain's and Barack Obama's as he bankrolls what he says is the most expensive public policy advertising campaign ever.

Environmentalists are cheering wildly, but the Pickens Plan has little to do with their worries about the catastrophic dangers of global warming. Mr Pickens has a plan that everyone can get their heads around: He simply wants to end America's addiction to imported oil and use the country's abundant wind power and natural gas resources to keep the country rolling.

"We're paying $700bn a year for foreign oil," he said. "It's breaking us as a nation, and I want to elevate that question to the presidential debate, to make it the number one issue of the campaign this year.

"Neither presidential candidate is talking about solving the oil problem. So we're going to make 'em talk about it. Nixon said in 1970 that we were importing 20 per cent of our oil and that by 1980 it would be 0 per cent. That didn't happen. It went to 42 per cent in 1991 with the Gulf War. It's just under 70 per cent now. Where do you think we're going to be in 10 years when our economy is busted and we're importing 80 per cent of our oil?"