Alexander can't be faulted for trying to boost a sector that would preserve jobs and create 1,300 new ones in his state in the next couple of years. And he is certainly not proposing only that. His blueprint features 100 new nuclear plants by 2030 and a mini-Manhattan Project for reprocessing and recycling spent nuclear fuel. The 104 nuclear plants now operating were built in a 20-year period, he observed -- and that's something we forget easily -- and so what is to stop us from doing that again?
The blueprint, which Alexander said would not be an actual bill -- he will "wait to see what the reaction is" -- also includes $8 billion in R&D on electric vehicle batteries, carbon capture and sequestration, biofuels, green buildings and more.
Whether this or any other Republican alternative gets any traction remains to be seen; there is certainly lots of room for alternatives to the Waxman-Markey House climate change bill to develop, especially since senators will not start acting on their own bills until September. The economy, continuing low natural gas prices, growing pressure with respect to China and India as carbon emitters and renewables manufacturing competitors, the seeming imperative of figuring out healthcare -- all of these could mean the climate change train veering off the track it appeared to be on.
And is it worthwhile mentioning the mild, gorgeous summer that Washington and some other places are having? Climate change science isn't about the weather in any given week, experts tell us, but miserable heat and humidity sure gave Al Gore a lot of traction back in the '80s, when he talked about it in Congress.
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