Drill deeper? 45 nuclear plants? not answer.

All of a sudden, the gasoline worries have hit the fan here in the USA and the news is full of politicians ranting about this or that. Examples:

• McCain proposes the construction of 45 new nuclear power plants
• McCain (and Bush) proposes drilling for oil on the outer continental shelf, up to 200 miles offshore of the east coast and Florida.
• McCain explicity distances himself from the famous Cheney lifestyle sneer. Remember when Cheney sneered that energy conservation is a nice lifestyle choice but it has nothing to do with energy policy back in 2002? "In the face of climate change and other serious challenges, energy conservation is no longer just a moral luxury or a personal virtue,"  said McCain yesterday. "Conservation serves a critical national goal." Very nice, mcCain, but I notice that you had lots of proposals to obtain more fuels, and no proposals to conserve them.
• Obama criticized the drilling idea- "At best you're looking at five years or more down the road and even the most optimistic assumptions indicate that offshore drilling might reduce the overall world price of oil by a few cents."
• Obama proposed a windfall profits tax on oil companies.
• On Tuesday, The U.S. Senate  blocked debate of a bill to offer about $17.7 billion in tax incentives for consumers to build renewable energy sources like windmills and solar arrays, and buy plug-in cars that run on electricity rather than gasoline. The Energy Independence and Tax Relief Act of 2008 would have extended a tax credit to build windmills by one year through Dec. 31, 2009, and extend for three years similar credits for renewable energy sources like biomass, geothermal, landfill gas and trash combustion. Senate, what were you thinking? You throw money at anything that moves, then this comes along and you freeze.

I believe that we are flailing around here in a partisan atmosphere trying to come up with something sensible. 45 nuclear power plants are not going to happen any time soon, and neither is offshore drilling. We need an answer yesterday, which means we needed to start work 5 years ago. Instead we did nothing. Mccain's proposals sound a little less right wing and pompous than Bush's, but he is singing from the same hymnal largely. Obama has some great points about the need to actually spend some money on renewables. The windfall profits tax is not a great plan, because it will be funded by us the consumers, but if you ask me to feel sorry for Exxon, I cannot manage that either. They could have used some of those billions to become the powerhouse of Solar, but they chose a different road: eventual corporate irrelevance at best or extinction at worst.

Solar is the eventual answer to electrical power- and with the help of plug in vehicles it would address transportation as well. If it is the eventual answer why waste time on stop gap measures, why not throw some serious money at solar? It's probably cheaper than 45 nuclear plants, no kidding. And the recent book that I read entitled "The world without us" made the point that if we should all drop dead tomorrow our major legacy to the other living things of the planet would be death, cancer, and mutations for several millenia from our nuclear meltdown mess. Ideally of course the human race will not all drop dead tomorrow, but still, it makes a guy think.

yes we need energy and we need it now, but let's not just talk about reducing our energy use. Let's enjoy these painful and horrendous price increases, because they may actually compel us to do more about reducing our use of energy than just talking.

As for Cheney and Bush, i do not merely wish to move on and forget. I want to punish McCain for belonging to the same political party they belong to, even if he is willing to quibble about one or two nonessentials. He is deep in Bush's money pocket and can't get out, and the resemblances between them outweigh the distinctions in my view. McCain is not an idiot? Okay, maybe not, but he cannot become president without the help of Bush's idiot backers- so he might as well be an idiot.