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As a sportswriter for years, I knew who T. Boone Pickens was only because of his extravagant donations to Oklahoma State, which has given his alma mater some of the premier facilities in the country. But then I started seeing his commercials pop up about The Pickens Plan, and I became very intrigued about what he had to say on this issue. Since Pickens is a genius investor, I figured I might want to pay attention.

If you haven't seen the Pickens Plan, it's worth checking out. And if you're convinced enough to begin exploring investing in alternative energy sources and what it can do, Bill Barnes' book Climate Solutions: A Citizen's Guide is a short primer on investing in alternative energies:

INVESTMENTS
Theory
Taxes, caps, and regulations are good for reducing carbon emissions. To create a post-carbon infrastructure, however, we also have to build things: more mass transit, smarter electric grids, denser and greener cities. These will require public as well as private investments.

History
The federal government has a long history of spending money on important challenges, including wars, education, dams, highways, and space exploration. Such spending can be financed by bonds as well as taxes.

Reality
The biggest problem with public investment is that it provides no certainty that we’ll reduce emissions quickly enough. Investments take time to kick in, and meanwhile, growth in emissions (if not otherwise limited) will continue.

A further problem is political. In theory, the federal government could sink billions of dollars into clean energy infrastructure. But such public investment must overcome a root cause of climate change: the domination of government by legacy industries. Even today, despite everything we know about global warming, Congress spends far more on fossil fuel subsidies than on clean alternatives.