Of all the people you might expect to spearhead a movement away from oil and onto alternative energy, T. Boone Pickens probably wouldn’t be at the top of the list.

But a year ago, the 81-year old chairman of BP Capital spent his own money to buy prime time on major networks and mobilized an “army” of believers in order to get the word out about the dangers of continued dependence on foreign oil.

Earlier this month, Pickens appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to discuss the progress of the “Pickens Plan,”which essentially seeks to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil through a combination of wind-generated power and natural gas powered vehicles. The goal: Drastically reducing or eliminating the need for foreign oil in as little as 10 years.

His timing was perfect, as oil prices shot to all-time highs around $150 a year ago. The plan garnered a lot of attention. And to

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A wave of government bailouts around the world and a sharp deterioration in existing infrastructure could lead to as much as $35 trillion in public works spending over the next 20 years, according to a new study by CIBC World Markets.

The study, released last week, says that many of the countries that balanced their budgets over the past 10 years did so by skimping on the construction costs for new public assets and the maintenance of existing buildings and roads, CBC reported.

“The global economy is running a major infrastructure deficit as the cost of decades of under-investment is now surfacing,” said Benjamin Tal, the analyst who authored the study.

Canada, for example, has eliminated an enormous budget deficit left over from the 1980s, but built up an infrastructure deficit of $120 billion in the process.

Governments have come to realize that …

We may be ready to enter a period of intensive private and public investment in alternative energy, but as of last week, the sun was certainly not rising over solar stocks.  The theme may have legs eventually, but not right now. Some have predicted that Americans would lose their will to seek greater energy independence from foreign sources if oil prices declined significantly.  Oil prices have come down a lot, and solar stocks have done poorly. Last week was a bust for the group.

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Stocks in chart: CSUN, LDK, STP, SPWR, SOL, YGE, JASO, TSL, ENER, SOLF, ESLR, ASTI, CSIQ, FSLR, WFR, AKNS, REC, CTN, EMKR, TAN. This chart is available with weekly updates on our site. See our Theme Dimensions article for additional thoughts on thematic ...