energy

Poor Paul Ryan. First he has to pay $350 a bottle for wine, and now it costs more than $75 to fill up his gas-guzzler. What next?

More at The Paul Ryan Watch.

I’m going to be really honest with you: after all the fights at the mall to get just the right present for everybody and the giant hassle of going to the Post Office so I can get the perfect stamps for my cards – and then worrying that I left someone off the list – I am just not in the mood to do a 9/11 story.

And it’s been getting worse every year. I mean, just like the “It’s Christmas Every Day Store”, I know there’s one of the “9/11 Every Day” stores open, in the all-too-human form of Rudy Giuliani, and I’ve learned to live with that, but it seems like they got started with the 9/11 earlier than ever this year – and by the time the TV memorials and analysis and retrospectives are all over, to paraphrase Lewis Black…I’m going to hate freedom.

In an effort to stave off this fate, we’ll be headed in a different direction today: I have three stories to pass along; each is important enough that you really should know about them, and yet they’re each very much bite-sized and easily digestible.

It’s all good stuff…so let’s get right to it.

In America, today, there are three kinds of drivers: those who look at the other gas pumps down at the ol’ gas station and think: “Oh my God, I can’t believe how much that guy’s spending on gas”, those who look at their own pump down at the ol’ gas station and think: “Oh my God, I can’t believe how much I’m spending on gas” – and those who are doing both at the same time.

Naturally, this has brought the Sarah Palins of the world back out in public, and once again the mantra of “Drill, Baby, Drill” can be heard all the way from the Florida coast to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But what if those folks have it exactly backwards?

What if, in a world of depleting oil resources, the last thing you want to do is use yours up? To put it another way: why isn’t all our oil part of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

Gov. Scott Walker wants to privatize Wisconsin's state-owned power plants, the Capital Times reports.  And he's got just the man for the job -- the utilities' pal, Jeff Plale.  The story:

The provision would give the state Department of Administration the authority to sell the plants or contract for their operation. The proposal calls for net profits from the sale of the plants to be deposited in the budget stabilization fund.

 

"This is not a new idea," said Jeff Plale, administrator of the DOA's Division of Facilities. "This has come up before. It was shelved."

Actually, it wasn't shelved, but was passed in 2005 by the legislature, when the GOP controlled both houses.  Gov.

The party line from people trying to pass the Clean Energy Jobs Act is that there's no reason to worry about the changes that would make it much easier to build a new nuclear reactor in Wisconsin.

No one wants to do that anytime soon, they say, so it's not a big deal.

Sen. Spencer Black, D-Madison, co-chair the Assembly clean energy committee. "stressed this week that the state only has a de facto moratorium on nuclear power anyway, since new plants could be built if they are deemed cost-effective and are supported by a federally approved site to store nuclear waste," WisPolitics reported. "But Black said reducing those standards won't spark a wave of new plants since Wisconsin's energy production is currently outpacing demand.

"Black added that by investing in energy efficiency, the state could push off the need for more power plants -- nuclear or otherwise -- for decades."

State Sen. Jeff Plale (D-South Milwaukee), co-chair of teh Senate committee working on the bill -- and a nuclear advocate -- also downplays the nuclear changes.

"The likelihood of a nuclear power plant being built in Wisconsin any time soon is virtually nil," he told WisPolitics.

Let's start by accentuating the positive, this quote from a Capital Times story on the pros and cons of nuclear power:

Tia Nelson, co-chair of Gov. Jim Doyle’s Task Force on Global Warming, says that while the costs of nuclear power grow and the price tag for renewable sources shrinks, it is not fiscally smart for the state to invest in nuclear energy.

“We know that nuclear power is more expensive and more dangerous than any other alternative before us today,” says Nelson, daughter of Gaylord Nelson, the late U.S. senator who founded Earth Day.

As the state's Clean Energy Jobs Act starts working its way through the legislature, coverage of the nuclear power issue -- one of the more contentious piece of the huge bill -- is increasing. That's a positive;; public education and debate is good. But there's a big helping of misinformation and spin being served up as part of the menu.

An online petition campaign to maintain Wisconsin's existing regulations on licensing of new nuclear reactors has been launched by the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, (WNPJ)  in cooperation with One Wisconsin Now (OWN).   The message:

Dear Friend,

We urgently need your help to maintain reasonable restrictions on nuclear power in Wisconsin.

Learn more and sign our petition here, or read on.

Wisconsin has wisely had a state law in place since 1984 that prohibits the construction of new nuclear reactors unless two conditions are met:

1. There is a federally-licensed facility to dispose of high-level radioactive waste from the reactors, and

2. The Public Service Commission makes a finding that nuclear power makes economic sense.