First John McCain and now Newt Gingrich turn out to love the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Better start checking them both for U.S. flag lapel pins!

On the Hugh Hewitt show (see here), Gingrich dissed the new ad he made with Speaker Pelosi on climate and offered “real solutions:”

HH: Now can I ping you a little bit, Mr. Speaker? You made the ad with Nancy Pelosi, and I think that campaign is asking Americans to suspend critical thinking, not that I’m on one side or the other.

NG: Well…

HH: I just think thirty second ads on something that complicated asks…it’s not the way to debate this, because it almost makes it impregnable to debate. Did you consider the downside of doing the ad with her?

NG: Yeah, we spent six weeks thinking about that decision, and I do a newsletter every week. You can go to xxx.xxxx.xxx [sorry, for some reason, my PC just refused to copy that link], my first name, and sign up for it. It comes out for free. Over 700,000 people get it. And next week will be on energy policy and environmental policy. And I’m going to outline a stunningly different view than Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi. But my message to conservatives is you’ve got to get on the stage and debate. You can’t stand off-stage and scream no. And I’m perfectly happy, if you’ll look at the ad carefully, we said this was a topic we disagree on a lot of issue. But we agree we should try to solve this. And I’m perfectly happy to offer real solutions, and I’ll give you one example.

HH: Go ahead.

NG: If the United States produced the same percent of electricity from nuclear power as France, we would take two billion, two hundred million tons of carbon a year out of the atmosphere. And by that one step, we would be 15% better than the Kyoto goals.

Now, we’ve already seen that if we did what France does — and yes, it boggles the mind that two leading Freedom-fry eating conservatives are publicly advocating doing just that — we’d need, say 600 to 700 nukes by 2050, depending on whether we embrace electricity as a transportation fuel [See "McCain calls for 700+ new nuclear plants (and seven Yucca mountains) costing $4 trillion"].

But Gingrich’s final statement suggests

1. He wants to build 1400 nukes and shut down every last coal plant, every gas plant, and every refinery or (more likely)
2. He wants 400 nukes, he wants to shut down every coal plant, and he made a classic climate error and a classic energy mistake.

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Goldman Sachs’ Arjun N. Murti said in a May 5 report:

The possibility of $150-$200 per barrel seems increasingly likely over the next six-24 months, though predicting the ultimate peak in oil prices as well as the remaining duration of the upcycle remains a major uncertainty.

That would mean gasoline prices of $5 to $6 a gallon. Unless of course we permanently suspend the gasoline tax, in which case gasoline prices would only be $5 to $6 a gallon.

Why should we listen to Murti? Well, back in 2005, when prices averaged under $60 a barrel, he was one of the few Wall Street analysts who predicted oil could soon hit $105 a barrel — or higher if we don’t take the right actions quickly:

There will be a peak in production earlier than expected, and that post-peak decline will be more dramatic than currently assumed unless there is a sustained increase in investment in oil and gas production, greater consumer efficiency and alternative energy.

That may all seem obvious, but it has come as a big shock to Detroit, DC policymakers, truckers, and apparently most of the American public. Certainly the fundamentals of oil supply and demand have changed, probably forever, as I have repeatedly written (see below). And as Bloomberg reports, Murti is not alone

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So here is the unbelievable full post yesterday from the National Review‘s anti-climate-action website, Planet Gore:

The Nuclear Option [Drew Thornley]
In his Sunday interview on Meet the Press, host Tim Russert asked Sen. Barack Obama about his position on nuclear energy:

Russert: In terms of climate change, global warming, you’ve talked about wind and solar and biofuels. What about nuclear? All — in all realistic assessment, don’t we need more nuclear power in order to wean ourselves off of those same fuels that are contaminating the world?

Obama: I think we do have to look at nuclear, and what we’ve got to figure out is can we store the material properly? Can we make sure that they’re secure? Can we deal with the expense? Because the problem is, is that a lot of our nuclear industry, it reinvents the wheel. Each nuclear power plant that is proposed has a new design, has — it, it has all kinds of changes, there are all sorts of cost overruns. So it has not been an effective option. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be an effective option, but we’re going to have to figure out storage and safety issues. And my attitude when it comes to energy is there’s no silver bullet. We’ve got to be — we’ve, we’ve got to look at every possible option.

Hmm . . . So does Obama feel every energy option is on the table (like, say, extracting known but currently off-limits domestic oil reserves) or just non-fossil fuel options?

First off, Obama’s comments on nukes are exceedingly well-informed, unlike, say, John McCain’s (See “McCain calls for 700+ new nuclear plants (and seven Yucca mountains) costing $4 trillion.”).

Second, what closing comment by Planet Gore could possibly be more inane?

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Mary Gade, the Midwest regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency who resigned last Thursday, laid the blame on her ongoing efforts to compel Dow Chemical to clean up its decades-old dioxin pollution from its flagship plant in Midland, Michigan. Gade is a lifelong Republican who has been praised by Democrats and environmentalists as “one of the most seasoned and experienced environmental policy-makers in the country,” “a woman of unquestioned credentials and integrity,” and “a highly-qualified and well-regarded official.”

Dave Camp (R-MI)

But Michael Hawthorne reports for the Chicago Tribune that there is at least one official who disagrees:

“In 20 years of public life I have never encountered a more unprofessional, vindictive and insulting government official,” said U.S. Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), whose wife is a former Dow attorney.

What could possibly motivate the nine-term Republican congressman representing Michigan’s Fourth District to make such a strongly worded statement?

Dave Camp Is A Dow Chemical Millionaire. Camp graduated from Midland Dow High School in 1971. In 1994, he married Nancy Keil, an attorney who was working for Dow Chemical at the time. Based on financial disclosure statments, Rep. Dave Camp is worth $3.6 million to $6.9 million, including Dow Chemical Co. stock valued at $500,001 to $1 million and his wife Nancy’s Dow Chemical 401(k) at $100,001 to $250,000. [Detroit News, 7/7/06]

Dow Chemical Fills Dave Camp’s Campaign Coffers. In his freshman term in 1990, Camp received “more than $100,000 from Dow Chemical sources,” the most money any member of Congress received then from any single company. Camp has received at least $298,685 in campaign contributions from Dow Chemical in his career. [Los Angeles Times, 7/1/1992; Center for Responsive Politics]

Dave Camp Scores Zero On The Environment. The League of Conservation Voters gave Rep. Camp (R-MI) a zero rating for the 110th Congress based on twenty key environmental votes this session. He has not scored above 10% in the last decade. [LCV Scorecard]

Dave Camp Believes In Federal Taxdollars Paying To Clean Up The Great Lakes. Press releases on Rep. Camp’s website call for the Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Restoration Act to be funded at $20 million a year instead of $16 million, promote the passage of the $1.71 billion Water Quality Investment Act, and celebrate the $2.75 million in local watershed earmarks he included in the 2008 Energy and Water Appropriations Act. Dow Chemical, the 169th largest company in the world, had sales of $53.5 billion in 2007. [Rep. Camp press releases; Forbes.com]

Dave Camp is only one of several Michigan political officials with strong ties to Dow Chemical who have fought environmental regulation of its dioxin pollution. On September 29, 2004, Camp told the Detroit Free Press, “We have a party responsible for the contamination who wants to do the right thing.” Somehow, Dow Chemical has still managed to avoid cleaning up the waterways downstream of its plant, which it has been operating since 1897.

The oil industry has borrowed the (laughable) tagline of presidential candidate John McCain? As FoxBusiness reported on Friday:

The American Petroleum Institute took out a full-page ad in USA Today, and other major media were tapped this week to provide “straight talk on earnings.” The earnings that need “straight talk” : ExxonMobil’s $11 billion quarterly profit, and Chevron’s $5.2 billion quarterly profit.

[Note to big oil: When Fox doesn't give your spin favorable coverage, you've definitely become the Britney Spears of industries.]

Apparently the oil companies think that people will ignore their bloated profits once they see a chart showing earnings in “cents per dollar of sales,” claiming

In fact, first quarter 2006 earnings for oil and natural gas companies were slightly less than the average for other U.S. industries.

[Cue the violins, cut to a small starving child in Nigeria shedding a tear for the below-average earnings of the world's fattest fat cats.]

Well, I suppose you can fool some of the people all the time. After all, straight talker McCain denies his cap & trade system is “mandatory.” And he claims his gas tax holiday will actually benefit consumers — presumably because oil companies will generously lower their prices rather than, say, simply charging people the pre-holiday price because they know people will pay that price. Yeah, that’s the ticket. And you have millions of dollars waiting for you in the Central Bank of Nigeria…

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