Dark Star

Max Schulz:

Palin could throw a few crucial statistics at Biden tonight. One is that coal provides fully half the electricity Americans consume. Nuclear power and natural gas — neither of which is beloved by environmentalists — provide about 20 percent each. Large hydropower plants like the Hoover and Grand Coulee Dams (also hated by Greens) provide 7 percent. That’s 97 percent — virtually all of America’s electric power. How about wind and solar, the renewables that Biden favors? Combined, they provide less than one half of one percent of America’s electricity. Does Biden really believe that we can meet our future energy and economic needs without fossil fuels?

Palin can bring up nuclear power to highlight another key difference. Both McCain and Obama claim to support nuclear power. But catering to environmental interests (not to mention Nevada voters), Obama vows he will shut down the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository near Las Vegas if elected. McCain supports opening Yucca as a critical part of expanding nuclear power’s role in our energy mix.

Curiously, Obama doesn’t suggest any alternative to Yucca Mountain, and without an answer to the nuclear-waste problem, the country’s nuclear renaissance may stall. So Obama can say he’s for nuclear power, which is what the American people want to hear, while still signaling to greens that nuclear will go nowhere on his watch. John Kerry got in trouble four years ago by claiming he was for the war in Iraq before he was against it. When it comes to nuclear power, the Obama campaign is trying to be for it and against it at the same time.

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It will be hard to get people's minds off the bailout. Beyond that, though, he's exactly right. Joe Sixpack isn't feeling the hurt from the credit crisis. But he is certainly feeling the hurt from energy - and has been for sometime.