Hey energy was brought up, allow me to /topic it.
Considering that I’ve worked in the power industry I can tell you that coal is not going away for at least 50-60 years AFTER we find a viable alternative. If nuclear plants weren’t so feared and hated we’d have been using nuclear power a LONG time ago. It’s extremely clean and the lists of safeguards is retardedly long. Alternative “green” energy will not be the future of any nation that hopes to be a global power as you just can’t get enough of it. It takes 2-3 dams or 3-5 fields of “green” energy (wind, solar) to equal the output of one “modern” steam station (coal) and it takes 2-3 “modern” steam stations to equal the output of a single nuclear reactor. Most plants have 2 reactors, meaning that if you did a straight swap you could replace 5-8 coal fired planets with a single nuclear plant.
When you listen to politicians talk about energy solutions, keep one thing in mind. All energy comes from somewhere and the only energy that doesn’t pollute is too scarce to meet our needs. Do you want to create power at a plant that spits pollution into the air for us to breath or do you want a plant that can reprocess and reuse the fuel about a half dozen times and then bury it in the ground? The answer is fairly obvious.
On a different note, why is it that so many people say they voted for Obama because Palin was inexperienced. Considering she’s been a governor for as long as he was an *acting* senator I don’t really feel the comparison is fair. Even if it is, Obama had much less experience than McCain so I’d really rather have an experienced P and inexperienced VP than an inexperienced P and experienced VP.