More bad energy policy

Max Shultz says Obama's Great Green Jobs farce (see my previous post) isn't the worst part of the president's energy plan:

Far worse is Obama’s proposal to institute a cap-and-trade regime to lower carbon dioxide emissions similar to the one European nations implemented earlier this decade. However commendable the goal may be, the evidence is clear that cap-and-trade is a monumental failure.

Emissions have soared in most industrialized European nations during the plan’s first phase, in most cases more than in the United States during the same period. Moreover, cap-and-trade has led to substantial increases in electricity bills for European consumers, hindering economic growth.

And there's more to this cautionary tale, as well as evidence of a more sound approach, if only we are willing to listen:

For the better part of the last ten years, many European powers have made massive investments in renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar, at extremely high cost to their economies. This single-minded focus on green energy not only has not reduced greenhouse gas emissions in any substantial way, it has actually increased dependence on foreign sources of energy. Most of Western Europe is now dangerously dependent on natural gas from Russia, which has shown a clear willingness to use its energy supplies as a political weapon.

During his stop in Strasbourg, President Obama apologized for the United States, saying, “In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world.” But putting environmental pipe dreams ahead of economic and energy security shows the Europeans are not as enlightened as President Obama would have us believe.

Ironically, there is one European example worth following, and it comes from France. But so far Obama will not acknowledge it. That’s nuclear power. The French embraced nuclear power several decades ago. It now produces nearly 80 percent of the country’s electricity. France even exports to neighbors. As a result, France is insulated from the energy shocks manufactured by Kremlin autocrats threatening to cut off gas shipments in the dead of winter. France is as close to energy independent as any nation in Western Europe.

Obama almost never mentions nuclear power as part of a clean-energy solution. His hang-up seems to be nuclear waste, and he is taking steps to prevent Nevada’s Yucca Mountain repository from being built. So why not copy France and recycle nuclear waste?

Why, indeed?