The right-wing web site American Thinker has posted an article down talking renewable energy and efforts to reduce consumption.

Blow off the turbine plan. Ninety-billion-dollar "bipartisan" compromises are absurd.

Instead, let's drill, baby, drill.

For the environmentalists, the answer is not really blowing in the wind. I believe their real desire is to see America use less energy -- period.

At least they've got SOMETHING right. Infinite Growth in a Finite World is falling apart as we speak. Let's see what an Infinite Economic Growth Party powered by fission and coal has to offer.

The "Conservative" Menu

Complete replacement of 12.6 million barrels per day of imported oil with electricity using nuclear and/or coal and no decrease in energy consumption.

All Costs are assumed to be inelastic, no inflation, and no interest paid on loans. Therefore, they are extremely underestimated.

• Change-out of oil-burning infrastructure. Electrified railroads, more electric cars, heat pump/resistance heat for buildings with oil heat. Cost: Unknown. Those "socialistic", European electric trains aren't going to sit well with the American right.
• $1.5+ trillion for Nuclear Power Plant construction at $4000/kW and no fuel reprocessing...OR
• $550+ billion for Coal Power Plant construction and no greenhouse gas controls...OR
• $1.1+ trillion for Coal power plant construction with greenhouse gas controls.
• Additional coal consumption of 1.6 billion tons PER YEAR on top of the current 1.0 billion tons per year.
• 1.7 CUBIC KILOMETERS of underground storage space PER YEAR to store the carbon dioxide from this 1.6 billion tons of coal burnt.

Nuclear. The oil which is imported to the United States each day (~12.6 Mbpd), when converted to electricity at 40% efficiency, would be equivalent to 8,685,580,000 kilowatt-hours. This would require about 361,899,000 kilowatts of nuclear generating capacity running at full output 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. At a price of $4000/kW of installed capacity that is $1,447,596,718,000 JUST TO BUILD THE PLANTS. Nuclear fuel, reprocessing, maintenance, worker salaries, and company profits will be piled on top.

In addition, trying to replace oil with electricity will require a change-out of all of the oil-burning infrastructure, namely vehicles. Electrified rail (such as those high-speed train proposals that are being lambasted as wasteful) is really the only practical way to ship large amounts of people and product over long distances using energy from those magical nuclear power stations.

Coal. Let's say we decide to go with coal instead of nuclear. At a measly $1500/kW of installed capacity, we would need $542,848,500,000 JUST BUILD THE PLANTS and we would need to burn AND BUY 1,585,117,620 (one point six billion) more tons of coal per year assuming that the plants have an efficiency of around 35% - a reasonable number for $1500/kW. The current coal consumption of the United States is a little over 1,000,000,000 (one point zero billion) tons per year.

If we do the "right thing" and sequester the carbon dioxide from burning all this 1.6 billion tons - and ONLY this 1.6 billion tons, we will need to find, assuming that the CO2 is stored in the form of a supercritical fluid with a density of around 850 g/L, 1.7 CUBIC KILOMETERS PER YEARof space to stash this COMPRESSED LIQUID itching to turn back into a gas. Add another 1.7 cubic kilometers to get the space required to store the carbon dioxide generated from the coal we already burn to generate electricity today.

This is aside from the fact that power plants with carbon sequestration will have at least a double cost ($3000/kW) over traditional coal, and they will consume up to 30% more coal to generate the same amount of electricity.

Moving towards less consumption isn't so absurd when one realizes that no matter what energy sources we choose, it is going to be expensive and destructive to continue the Infinite Growth in a Finite World™ party.