Today I had the opportunity to call into a bipartisan bloggers conference call hosted by David All and Joe Trippi featuring a question and answer session with T. Boone Pickens regarding the Pickens Plan. You can listen to the audio of the call here.

Right now the United States is importing 70% of its oil from foreign countries costing us $700 billion annually (that number won’t just go away).

The Pickens Plan presents a clear solution to the cut down the dependence on foreign oil, which Pickens is spending $58 million dollars of his own money to advertise. His plan would not only reduce the amount of oil we import but would create jobs and stimulate economic growth.

The United States currently uses natural gas to produce 22% of our electricity. Pickens proposes we replace that with wind energy. He wants to build over 100,000 wind turbines throughout the “wind belt” (from Texas all the way north to Canada) over a ten-year period.

Pickens was asked: why now? Which is a reasonable question to ask an 80-year-old oil tycoon who could just go retire on a tropical island. Pickens said he noticed from Nixon forward that every president has promised an energy plan, but has done nothing. He understands this is his problem as much as ours.

Pickens made it clear his number one priority is to make sure America is not relying on other countries for oil for generations to come when he told the bloggers “Anything that reduces the dependence on foreign oil I’m for, as long it’s American.”

Pickens also touched on his meeting last week with Sarah Palin. He said their dialogue was mostly energy related and he thought she was qualified to handle energy policy on the national stage, more so than Obama or McCain.

Pickens will be hosting an e-rally before and after tomorrow night’s second presidential debate to talk about energy independence and the Pickens Plan. There are already 400,000 people signed up for it.  To participate you can RSVP here.