Lexington for Independence Update: Psst, CBS — Lexington isn’t in Virginia

Today John McCain hit on energy policy in two different directions.  First, as Allahpundit noted earlier, he cast Barack Obama as “Dr. No” in a new national ad, in which Vero Possumus turns into parco proventus.  At the same time, McCain rolled out his comprehensive national energy policy, the Lexington Project, named after the town that started America towards independence from Great Britain.  McCain hopes to do the same for America and its reliance on imported oil:

Senator John McCain unveiled the name of his energy project in Las Vegas today as he wrapped up the western swing of his two week energy tour. Deemed the Lexington Project, McCain’s plan states the U.S. will be independent of foreign energy sources by the year 2025.

“For the town where Americans asserted their independence once before,” McCain explained of the plan’s namesake in Virginia [see update II below -- Ed]. “Let it begin today with this commitment: In a world of hostile and unstable suppliers of oil, this nation will achieve strategic independence by 2025.”

That’s 17 years from now, a rather ambitious schedule.  McCain noted that we destroyed the Nazis in four years and landed a man on the moon in eight.  Both efforts took a national commitment and a dedication of resources that, thus far, has eluded consensus.

McCain aims to change that by working several parallel tracks.  For the short term, McCain wants to start using traditional American resources rather than foreign imports as other, more speculative innovations await.  That means more drilling in the OCS and expanded exploitation of natural gas.  This would end what McCain calls “the largest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind,” and a chief component of our trade imbalance.  Reversing that would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US — good-paying, mostly union jobs at that.

On the innovation side, McCain wants support on a broad spectrum of renewables.  He especially wants to speed development of clean-coal technology, and for good reason; the US has at least 250 years of coal in proven reserves.  Nuclear power gets a big commitment, with 45 plants planned by 2030.  Nuclear plants produce 20% of our electricity already, but with the big advances in nuclear technology, it should provide a much larger slice of it.  McCain notes that India, China, and even Russia have already committed to nuclear power. Wind, hydro, and solar will also get attention, and McCain hopes to boost these through an R&D tax credit in order to incentivize the market to drive solutions.

We’ll need the electricity, too, if McCain succeeds in transforming the transportation sector.  He wants less oil used on cars and trucks, with a stronger reliance on alternative fuels and electrical engines.  The $300 million prize for a breakthrough storage system plays a large part in his market-based incentives.  A sweeping change from oil-based cars to electrical or hybrids powered in large part through clean coal, natural gas, and nuclear will lower the need for foreign oil imports and have a big impact on  emissions as well.

It’s interesting, and in some areas still controversial.  He never mentions ANWR, for instance, and he still wants a cap-and-trade system that will be tantamount to a rationing system, with all of the shortage mentality that entails.   The failure of Europe to match the US performance in reducing GHGs through a similar system hasn’t dulled McCain’s enthusiasm for C&T, unfortunately.  Still, the overall plan has a much broader use of existing resources and market-based solutions for innovation, a far cry from Barack Obama’s top-down, confiscatory approach to energy policy — and it takes the kind of action that will lower energy prices in the short- and mid-term, not escalate them further.

Update: Jazz Shaw has more at TMV:

We have two Senators running for president right now. Don’t tell me what you’re going to do after we elect you. You’re in a position to do something right now. If either of them can get Congress together to wrestle something like the Lexington Project to the ground, then you will have impressed me.

Get to work, gentlemen. This is coming down to crunch time and we need a lot more than talk. This Lexington Project proposal is a good start. Let’s see if Congress can’t actually get past the partisan bickering and do something about it.

Yes.  Which Senator has the will to do something now along these lines?  Congress is still in session.

Update II: Apparently, Jamie Farnsworth at CBS needs a history lesson — although, to be fair, I didn’t catch this when I first read it.  The battle of Lexington and Concord took place in Massachusetts, not Virginia.  I’d make a snarky comment about layers of fact-checkers in mainstream media, but to be fair, this came from the CBS campaign blog, which probably doesn’t get much editorial review before publication.

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