Took those words right out of my head ...

John Hinderaker over at Power Line live-blogged last night's presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. I wish to highlight one nugget that elegantly expresses what I was thinking during the discussion on energy--particularly when Obama was decrying McCain's failure to support bills that provided tax breaks for alternative energy sources.

9:44--I suppose there is no point in trying to explain to a television debate audience that you don't create wealth by subsidizing inefficient production of energy.

That sums up the whole problem with Obama's energy plan. His plan is built on a pie in the sky.

As Hinderaker points out, inefficient energy production does not assist the economy. Let's say we figure out how to get electricity from rocks, but each rock involved in the process needs to be massaged by hand in order to produce electricity. It takes 100,000 such rocks to power a medium-sized city. On the bright side, one can claim that this system can create at least 100,000 jobs (full time rock masseurs and masseuses). Economically, however, the system simply cannot work. The cost of producing the electricity will hamstring the economy. At $1 per hour, the payroll costs without any overtime for the 100,000 employees would amount to $1 million dollars. The company would need to bring in $1 million in receipts just to break even on energy costs. And on $1 per hour, how much electricity do you think employees of Electrolith Inc. can afford to fit in the budget?

Relative to the costs of other businesses, this energy delivery system would be unworkable. The whole key is cost efficiency, and aside from nuclear power the world currently has no ready substitute of comparable efficiency to fossil fuels such as gasoline and natural gas. Until that occurs, alternative energy sources are an economic loser.

Obama's claims of adding jobs through his alternative energy plans, I suspect, are comparable to rock masseur jobs, except that he will subsidize the new less efficient system. Everyone in the city will be taxed in order to pay for rock masseurs and the electricity they produce--at least enough for the business to operate.

The pie in the sky is the techological breakthrough required to produce energy more efficiently (or at least comparably so) than we currently do using fossil fuels. Without that breakthrough, and it isn't on the drawing board, Obama's plan is a guaranteed failure.

For that reason, exploiting nuclear and fossil fuel energy must be done until the breakthrough occurs. The direction the Democrats are taking on this will probably be disastrous.