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It isn’t every day you get to witness a tipping point being reached, but events in recent weeks seem to be just that.

Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book, The Tipping Point, is being played out in the daily newspaper, and it’s exciting to follow.

As strange as it may sound, Al Gore, T. Boone Pickens and the state of Texas have become bedfellows.

Gladwell defined tipping points as “the levels at which momentum for change becomes unstoppable.”

News last week that the Texas Public Utilities Commission approved a $4.93 billion investment in new transmission lines to connect the growing wind farms in west Texas to the power grid will be viewed in history as the tipping point leading the U.S. to reach energy independence and global climate change being halted.

Anyone who has read The Tipping Point knows it takes three kinds of people with different types of social skills to effect change, and with regard to climate change we now have that in Gore, Pickens and Texas.

Gladwell named the three types of people connectors, mavens and salesmen.

Connectors are the “people who possess a special gift for bringing the world together.”

Mavens are “information specialists — people we rely upon to connect us to with new information.”

Salesmen are “persuaders — charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills”.

It is unfortunate that for decades climate change, or global warming, has been politicized, causing many Americans, including many with the power to make a difference, to deny the crises.

Al Gore should be commended for putting the issue at the forefront of conversation, but he has been derided by many who believe his aim is purely political and his ideas for bringing change are too heavy handed and too costly.

But as relates to climate change, Al Gore is the maven. He is clearly the person most responsible for connecting us to new information on the topic.

His book and movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and his winning of a Nobel Prize brought greater focus on climate change than at any time in history.

And then along comes Pickens, a lifelong oil man who has invested heavily in wind energy. If you watch cable television you have no doubt seen his promotion of a plan he says he will unveil to America in coming weeks. Pickens is the quintessential salesman.

In his commercials Pickens says, “We can’t drill our way out of this crises.” That’s probably not what Republican presidential candidate John McCain or President Bush wanted to hear just weeks after they called for opening up new areas to oil exploration, but Republican megadonor Pickens has never been one to care much about what others think.

Pickens is putting up $1 billion of his own money to develop wind energy as a primary electricity source and then shifting the focus of vast amounts of natural gas from generating electricity to powering vehicles.

Gore and Pickens approach the climate change issue from completely different mindsets, but both agree that the $700 billion spent on foreign oil is killing our economy and is an unsustainable model.

Gore’s primary goal is to reverse global warming while Pickens’ is profit. Both are good and necessary.

Gore could stump on the issue for the rest of his life and barely make a dent in moving the world closer to a solution.
Pickens on the other hand, with a profit motive, is making a huge difference in a very short time.

Enter the Texas PUC. Austin insiders say it’s Pickens who is most responsible for lobbying the commission to make the investment in new transmission lines.

Commissioners are the connectors in this scenario — the people with a special gift for bringing the world together.

Government plays a unique role in this solution since utilities are so heavily regulated. Because every move a utility makes must be thoroughly vetted by some type of governmental agency, government must be at the center of this issue as it moves forward.

So with that in mind, Pickens says he will release a plan and spend millions telling us about it by advertising in various media.

Look for both McCain and Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama to embrace the plan as both seek to become Connector in Chief.
Information: www.pickensplan.com

Gary Adkisson is The Paducah Sun’s general manager.