Finally, a serious publication did the math:

John McCain’s plan to revive the U.S. nuclear power industry with 45 new reactors may cost $315 billion, with taxpayers bearing much of the financial risk.

Who else should bear the financial risk? After all, taxpayers bear the meltdown risk thanks to the Price Anderson Act. Why should a mature industry with 20% market share bear any risk at all?

The Republican presidential nominee wants the plants built in time to help the U.S. meet a 29 percent increase in electricity demand by 2030.

Well, that is what the increase in electricity demand would be if we embrace Cheney’s third term. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Industry estimates put their cost at $7 billion each.

Or 50% higher. But why do taxpayers bear much of the risk? Because the industry can’t succeed without you, the taxpayer, putting your wallet on the line for each and every plant that gets built:

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The planet is boiling. The Wonk Room recently reported on the troubling new studies that show the spate of stronger storms — including Katrina — is tied to global warming caused by our unrestrained burning of fossil fuels. Today, Greenpeace notes that Ike is part of this trend of larger, more destructive storms fueled by hot oceans. As the Washington Post reports, “Hundreds of thousands of people began fleeing coastal areas in Texas today under mandatory evacuation orders as Hurricane Ike rampaged across the Gulf of Mexico, bringing 100 mph winds and a storm surge forecast to be as high as 20 feet.”

Tropical storm blogger Dr. Jeff Masters has been tracking Hurricane Ike, and he’s unequivocal about the threat of this “freak storm“:

Hurricane Ike’s winds remain at Category 2 strength, but Ike is a freak storm with extreme destructive storm surge potential. Ike’s pressure fell rapidly last night to 944 mb, but the hurricane did not respond to the pressure change by increasing its maximum winds in the eyewall. Instead, Ike responded by increasing the velocity of its winds away from the eyewall, over a huge stretch of the Gulf of Mexico. Another very unusual feature of Ike is the fact that the surface winds are much slower than the winds being measured aloft by the Hurricane Hunters. Winds at the surface may only be at Category 1 strength, even though Ike has a central pressure characteristic of a Category 3 or 4 storm. This very unusual structure makes forecasting the future intensity of Ike nearly impossible. . . . Ike is now larger than Katrina was, both in its radius of tropical storm force winds–275 miles–and in it radius of hurricane force winds–115 miles. For comparison, Katrina’s tropical storm and hurricane force winds extended out 230 and 105 miles, respectively. Ike’s huge wind field has put an extraordinarily large volume of ocean water in motion. When this swirling column of water hits the shallow waters of the Continental Shelf, it will be be forced up into a large storm surge which will probably rival the massive storm surge of Hurricane Carla of 1961. Carla was a Category 4 hurricane with 145 mph winds at landfall, and drove a 10 foot or higher storm surge to a 180-mile stretch of Texas coast. A maximum storm surge of 22 feet was recorded at Port Lavaca, Texas.

Masters estimates that Hurricane Ike will do “$20-$30 billion in damage.”

If we don’t change direction to build a green economy now, our entire planet will be staggered by climate change, as Thomas Fingar, “the top analyst in the U.S. intelligence community,” warned this week, the seventh anniversary of 9/11.

Digg it!

In a campaign notable for its lies by the Arizona Senator (see “In HIS big speech, McCain’s 10 energy lies top Palin’s 4 energy lies“) and for lies by and about his VP choice (see “Slick Sarah, the make-believe maverick“) we have the mother of all lies. McCain is asked by a reporter about Palin’s national security credentials, and he (eventually) answers:

She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America.

This time it’s personal. I mean seriously. Palin hardly knows anything at all about energy (see “Pork queen Palin is an earmark expert, NOT energy expert“). Heck, she knows very little even about oil if it doesn’t come from Alaska (see “Most revealing Palin energy whopper: Iran could cut off a fifth of the world’s energy supplies“).

I’m not sure what to be most scared about — the lie or that McCain tells it with a perfectly straight face, as this video shows (at about 4 minutes in).

H/t to Americablog.

More campaign analysis — full post here. Bottom line: No strategic counterpunch and a self-emasculating VP makes Obama’s job twice as hard.

For those interested in presidential campaigns, the post goes into what is probably the crucial way to understand which campaigns win and which lose. As psychologist and Political Brain author Drew Westen explained in a must-read commentary last month:

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Even as the sordid details of the Drill, Baby, Drill sex, drugs, and oil scandal in the Minerals Management Service are revealed, conservatives continue to press their drill-drill-drill agenda in Congress. They continue to repeat the Big Oil lie that opening America’s coasts to further drilling would lower gas prices, despite the clear finding by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) that lifting the offshore drilling moratorium would not affect oil prices.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research found that the news media has mindlessly amplified that lie. The hundreds of broadcasts on “proposed drilling for oil in environmentally sensitive zones in the United States” almost completely ignored the EIA report:

CNN — whose news coverage is sponsored by the coal and oil industry — was particularly egregious, talking about the drill-drill-drill agenda 139 times but mentioning the EIA’s debunk only once on August 7 (actually, I was able to find one other mention that same day).

From the American News Project comes a telling video report on how conservatives are “just lying to the American public” by promising lower gas prices from expanded drilling. Climate Progress‘s Joe Romm is interviewed, and he explains the dirty money connection:

It is conservatives who get ad campaigns and who get contributions from the oil companies. The oil companies get bigger profits when oil prices are high. So it is not surprising that conservatives have for twenty-five years opposed higher fuel economy standards. And it is not surprising that conservatives have steadfastly opposed alternative energy and renewable energy. They don’t want people to get off of fossil fuels and traditional energy because conservatives get paid by those companies.

Digg It!

Watch it: Read more

Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

During the Republican National Convention, delegates repeatedly demonstrated their obsession with offshore oil drilling by chanting “drill, baby, drill!” It turns out they were literally describing the relationship between Department of Interior royalty collectors and the oil industry.

Multiple reports released on September 10 by the Department of Interior Inspector General found that the Mineral Management Service officials responsible for collecting royalties from oil and gas producers are accused of accepting gifts, trips, and special favors from producers. The report described “A culture of ethical failure… [and] a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity.” These government overseers also abused alcohol and cocaine with officials from energy companies that they were supposed to collect royalties from, and “had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.”

The MMS employees are responsible for collecting royalties from producers for oil and gas produced on public lands, which can be paid in cash or “royalty in kind.” The latter allows the producer to pay its royalties by delivering oil and gas to the federal government, which is either stored in government reserves or sold on the open market. The total royalty tab is about $10 billion annually, and is one of the largest sources of federal revenue aside from taxes.

The DOI Inspector General previously found that the Department under collected billions of dollars of revenue owed the U.S. taxpayer from oil companies that produce and sell oil and gas from public lands and waters. The IG found that DOI provides mediocre oversight of oil and gas companies to ensure that they are paying the full royalties owed to the U.S. treasury. The result was billions of dollars of uncollected royalties owed to the federal government. These officials, in effect, helped subsidize oil companies already engorged with record profits that averaged $236 per driver over the past year.

This “sex, drugs, and oil” agency is the same one that would oversee the expansion of offshore oil drilling into protected ocean areas. No wonder coastal businesses that depend on clean beaches and ocean are so worried about the potential for harm from expansion of offshore oil drilling from Malibu to Miami to Maine. The federal watchdogs are in bed with the oil companies that they are supposed to oversee.

The House Democrats, like their presidential nominee, appear to be on the verge of walking away from a winning strategy. On Tuesday, I noted, it looked like they were going to embrace the Gang-of-10 position on offshore drilling, which is obviously the way to go from both a policy and strategic messaging point of view.

From a policy perspective, the “New Energy Reform Act of 2008” (aka Gang-of-10 proposal — now Gang-of-16) is something for nothing — de minimis and “opt in” drilling off the coast of a handful of Eastern states in return for some very strong clean energy policies, including an unprecedented five-year extension of the renewable tax credits. From a messaging perspective, the simpler message usually wins (unless, apparently, you’re a Democrat).

“Drill here, drill now” is obviously a simple message, one the Dems have failed to rebut. That said, “we endorse the bipartisan all-of-the-above drilling compromise from the Senate” is also a simple and politically winning message. Geez, the Gang-of-10 even includes close McCain ally Lindsey Graham.

That’s why I think the House and Senate Dems should simply have embraced the Gang-of-10 plan and put it — and nothing else — up for a vote, as I’ve said. If the GOP didn’t block it, then the Dems would have neutralized the issue and gotten something for nothing. Equally important, they would have avoided the criminally negligent act of letting the renewable tax credits expire at the end of the year. If the GOP did block it, then the Dems would have more than neutralized the issue — they would have turned the tables on the GOP, and given themselves a potent talking point and 30-second ad for the fall.

Not to be. E&E News (subs. req’d) reports today:

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