Knights of the Planet Gore

Henry Payne on Michigan & Energy Plans on National Review Online

Ultimately, McCain’s soft-spot for nuclear is because it’s not coal: America’s most abundant — and cheapest — energy resource. It is an aversion that McCain shares with Senator Obama, because both candidates are, at root, global-warming alarmists.

And global warming alarmism is not good for the state that they are wooing.

Unmentioned in the media coverage of sparring energy plans is that both candidates are ardent supporters of federal cap-and-trade laws. Writing for the Mackinac Center, a Michigan think tank, author Deneen Borelli reports that “the economic cost of a cap-and-trade bill would hit Michigan especially hard. The increase in energy costs would compound the loss of manufacturing jobs in the state and reduce the disposable income of Michigan residents.”

An American Council for Capital Formation study of this year’s Lieberman-Warner cap and trade bill found that "Michigan would lose 37,400 to 56,260 jobs in 2020 and 91,490 to 121,786 jobs in 2030” and electricity prices would increase by 126 percent to 177 percent.

Obama and McCain are fighting for the affection of industrial states like Michigan, each touting their own government plan to put America on the proper green-energy course. But the closer one looks at their handsome gifts, the more they look like Trojan horses hiding armies of government regulation.