Southern Beale has the details.

I don't know what she's complaining about. The oil companies are spending millions on alternative energy. Alternative energy hype, that is. Look at the news magazines, national newspapers, and cable TV news breaks to see all the great ads about how "green" and concerned they are about our planet and our energy supplies.

Also, I hate to tell you this but the real price of gas right now is about $10 per gallon. You're just not paying it at the pump. You're paying it with an IOU for damage to the environment and oil company tax breaks and defense spending and trillions in budget and foreign trade deficits that are costing us jobs and piling up massive debt for somebody to pay off someday. Except they won't be able to get to work because they'll be out of oil and they won't have figured out how to get past 150 year old internal combustion technology for transportation.

And every time the oil companies raise the price of gas, the Average American worker gets a pay cut and a tax increase, with the proceeds going directly into the pockets of oil companies and their enablers in Congress. How's that stimulus check working out for you?

At any rate, the argument shouldn't be for lowering gas prices or opening up ANWR and the Continental Shelf to drilling (although that would help expedite using up all the oil so America would finally have to do something about the real problem). The argument should be for a rational energy policy. But we are way beyond that, and it may be too late.

If you want more of these same brilliant strategies, vote for John McCain and Lamar Alexander in November.

P.S. Bush and Cheney aren't "oil men." They are "oil company men."

UPDATE: TNDP: Alexander, Corker throw Tennesseans in the tank

As gas prices hit $4, some tough talk on energy.

AP:

“We’re supportive of Wal-Mart’s broader initiative,” Will Pinkston, senior adviser to Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, said in an e-mail. “But we’ve had a couple of false starts that probably were unique to Tennessee, and we’ve run into some unrelated issues that frankly complicated things.” Pinkston did not elaborate on those issues.

Anybody know what's up with this? Sounds like a Wal*Mart PR stunt gone sour.

UPDATE: Sean Braisted speculates on what this is all about, citing a Nashville Scene article re. some inside hardball, which may or may not be related.

Democratic Senate candidate Mike Padgett responds to Sen. Alexanders "Manhattan Project" with an "Energy 2.0" proposal. At least it has a more up-to-date new age moniker. Read the press release after the jump...

Speaking at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory today, Sen. Lamar Alexander proposed "launching a 5-year New Manhattan Project to put America firmly on the path to clean energy independence within a generation."

Ideas and policies from the days of Jimmy Carter on energy independence and a massive push for development of alternate energy sources are all the rage again. It's worth noting that Carter's Energy Security Act of 1980 was dismantled within a few months by President Reagan. As fuel and oil prices fell, zero plans for the future were made, even with the creation of the Department of Energy in the late 1970s. The real cost of ignoring energy needs for the future is being calculated today and it will burn into every layer of our economy and into every lifestyle.

Carter's speech from the summer of 1979 echoes all the rhetoric today: reducing imports, a brand new research and development of alternate fuels, a new commitment, windfall profits taxation, and on and on.

Current programs enacted by President Bush now have energy needs and food needs competing. As R. Neal posted yesterday, it seems more a backward movement than forward. Today's Washington Post reports on the corn as fuel and corn as food battle.

As much as the leadership in Washington is to blame for abandoning real solutions over the last 30 years, we have to blame ourselves too - for letting them slide and for indulging ourselves even more and for increasing our reliance on the commercial structures which have expanded our needs for energy.

I keep hearing the Narrator's lines in the opening of the post-apocalyptic movie "The Road Warrior":

"To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time. When the world was powered by the black fuel. And the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel, they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche ... On the roads it was a white line nightmare ... In the roar of an engine, he lost everything. And became a shell of a man, a burnt out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland."

Appalachia is being utterly gutted by Big Coal. The desperate calls for change are coming from the ground up, and our candidates must now come here.

As "The Examiner" notes:

Of the remaining 566 Democratic delegates to be won, 352 will be awarded from Appalachian states. The western parts of Pennsylvania (April 22) and North Carolina (May 6) along with West Virginia (May 13) and Kentucky (May 20) will take on outsized importance in the weeks to come.

The choice is obvious...
A majority of West Virginians oppose mountaintop removal.
A majority of Americans oppose mountaintop removal.

The political will to end mountaintop removal is here.

North Carolina gets go-ahead in its TVA pollution suit

The state of North Carolina can proceed with a lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority that demands the utility clean up its power plants and reduce air pollution, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

If the EPA won't make TVA clean up its coal plants, maybe North Carolina can. But North Carolina's Duke Energy and the rest of the Southern state utilities that burn coal all need to clean up their act.

I was going to do a comparison of the Democratic candidate's energy plans, but someone has already done it and saved me the work.

Arthur Smith at Alternative Energy Action Network prepared this comparison chart. It's a little dated (Aug. 2007) and some candidates have probably "borrowed" more ideas from other candidates (as we have seen on health care and other issues), but this is a good benchmark.

The Senate passed a watered down version of the energy bill, removing requirements for utility companies to get 15% of their power from renewable sources and restoring $21 billion in tax breaks for oil companies.

The good news is, however, that they raised the auto fuel economy standards to 35 MPG by 2020, the first such increase in 30 years. It ought to be 40 MPG and sooner, but we take what we can get. Sens. Alexander and Corker both voted for the revised bill. It now goes back to the House, where it is expected to pass and Bush is expected to sign it.

Speaking of fuel economy, tax credits on popular 2007 model Toyota hybrids are phased out (the Honda Civic still qualifies), and the only 2008 hybrid which currently qualifies is the Ford Escape (and Mercury Mariner variant). And bonus, they raised the tax credit to $3000 for the 2008 model year.

The trouble is finding one. There isn't one in Tennessee that we can find. There's one in Atlanta, and one in Orlando. I've also heard that it can take four to six months to get one if you order it from the factory. I guess Ford is sending them all to California and Massachusetts so they can qualify for their stricter fleet emission regulations or something.

From the AP on CNN

Al Gore, who was criticized for high electric bills at his Tennessee mansion, has completed a host of improvements to make the home more energy efficient, and a building-industry group has praised the house as one of the nation's most environmentally friendly.

The former vice president has installed solar panels, a rainwater-collection system and geothermal heating. He also replaced all incandescent lights with compact fluorescent or light-emitting diode bulbs -- even on his Christmas tree.

We need state and federal incentive and tax credit programs to make these types of energy conservation improvements available and affordable for everyone.

That didn't take long. As predicted, the energy bill passed by the House yesterday stalled in the Senate today.

Both Tennessee Senators Alexander and Corker voted to continue a Republican filibuster the bill.

Curiously, Tennessee Republicans are fighting the bill, which promotes ethanol production that would help Tennessee farmers. They talk a lot about how they support ethanol programs. Apparently it's just talk.

The AP reports:

The House approved the first increase in federal automobile fuel efficiency requirements in three decades Thursday as part of an energy bill that also repeals billions of dollars oil company tax breaks and encourages use of renewable fuels.

Great news on the CAFE standards. We'll see if the repeal of oil company tax breaks get past the Senate. Or a veto.

Highlights of the bill

Note: the repealed tax breaks will cost oil companies $13.5 billion over ten years. A single oil company, Exxon Mobile, racked up approx. $30 billion in profits for the first three quarters of 2007.

Tennessee Delegation Roll Call

Voting for the bill:

Rep. Bart Gordon (D Murfreesboro)
Rep. Lincoln Davis (D Pall Mall)
Rep. Jim Cooper (D Nashville)
Rep. John S. Tanner (D Union City)
Rep. Steve Cohen (D Memphis)

Voting against the bill:

Rep. David Davis (R Johnson City)
Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. (R Knoxville)
Rep. Zach Wamp (R Chattanooga)
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R Brentwood)

Knoxville City Councilman Joe Hultquist has a great post over at KnoxViews about the grand opening of Charlotte NC's light rail line.

WKRN files this report on an Erin, TN man who has built a gas/electric/human powered (tri-hybrid) bike and he's riding it 1000 miles to Amarillo Texas:

"This is Exertrike Tri-Hybrid and it is not a production model," [Jay] Perdue showed News 2. "This one was set up to run down the interstate down to Amarillo, Texas, 1,000 miles getting over 300 miles per gallon. It is street legal in the state of Tennessee, with lights and running lights, turn signals and mirrors and even has a horn."

According to WKRN, the tri-hybrid tops out at 54 MPH. The Discovery Channel is covering his journey.

The inventor has some journal notes at his Exertrike website. According to his notes, the tri-hybrid used on the 1000 mile run is powered by a 2.5 hp Honda 4 stroke engine and 6 batteries totaling 72 volts.

Sen. Rosalind Kurita emails in response to this previous TennViews post about her energy conservation efforts and the idea of residential solar incentives:

We do have a long way to go. Solar is one of many ways we can help unchain ourselves from all the negatives of fossil fuels as well as entanglements they bring.

There are simple ways that everyday Tennesseans can change our habits. Not everyone is going to buy solar panels, but everyone can get a programmable thermostat. I am trying to pass legislation to exempt from sales tax, the purchase of energy efficient appliances, CFLs and programmable thermostats. I was not able to pass this last year but I am going to try again this year.

Giving a sales tax break to those who are responsible and proactive is a good place to start a culture change.

This is a great idea. Lots of little things add up, and there is definitely a need for culture change in regards to energy conservation.

The issues with coal-fired power plant emissions are well chronicled - increased lung and cardiovascular disease, loss of visibility, and (somewhat importantly) the complete shattering of our global climactic patterns.

Many are also seeing for the first time that extracting coal is as destructive (and socially expensive) as emitting coal. Mountaintop removal and strip mining are decimating the majestic Appalachian Mountains – the oldest mountains on this continent. More than 1 million acres have been blasted away, and shoved recklessly into creek-beds and hollows. 1200+ miles of headwater streams have been buried, poisoning the water for us and those who live down stream.

The ancient hardwood forests of Appalachia (themselves an important carbon sink in our war on CO2) are often shoved aside with the mountain, left to rot and clog our streams without even being commercially harvested. The “rape” of Appalachia, as Senator Webb has called it.

How much coal would be “worth it?”
100 years?
250 years?
500 years?

Hows about a dozen?