I've heard it said several times that no matter who wins the election, we're going to have a cap-and-trade system that will put a price on carbon emissions, because both candidates support it. But I struggle to believe that McCain will actually be willing to see energy prices rise through an act of government — even if it would begin to reshape the nation's energy use away from fossil fuels and toward renewable sources.

Of apparently more certain agreement are both camps' endorsement of nuclear.

McCain, of course, is much prouder about it, boasting that he'll "put his administration on track to construct 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030 with the ultimate goal of eventually constructing 100 new plants." Not even an official at the US nuclear industry's mouthpiece thinks he could get beyond 8 or 10. But McCain acknowledges no downside or doubt.

Obama, meanwhile, gave a nuclear shout-out in his acceptance speech, and his website says "it is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table." But he follows that up with a comment that, in essence, undercuts his "support" by adding that "there is no future for expanded nuclear without first addressing four key issues: public right-to-know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation." No one has yet devised a storage solution for poison that lasts for millennia, and the security and proliferation issues are pretty thorny, too.

Of the two, I'd have to say McCain is more into his stance than Obama is into his; the latter seems disingenuous, though, of course, I'd be glad that it was, even if I had to hold my nose at the posturing.

I've written previously that I'm OK if Congress wants to horse-trade permission to drill offshore in exchange for long-term tax incentives for renewable-energy industries and other advances. But the same most certainly does not apply to nuclear.

Just as France's plants were built by government backing for nuclear-plant investment, no plant in the States has been built without federal guarantees of one sort or another. The cost of a 1,500-megawatt reactor is $7 billion and rising, up from $2 billion to $3 billion two years ago, because of price increases for steel, concrete, and other materials.

Drilling is just about giving permission to private companies. If we decide 5 or 10 or 20 years from now that we want to phase out oil, we can just say that we don't want to buy any more.

But it won't be the same for nuclear. Public money, in tax credits or whatever, will have to go toward building the plants, and once we spend it on nuclear, we won't have it to spend on renewables. This is definitely an either/or. And once they're built, we'll have a public investment to protect, so there'll be no walking away, as we could from oil. That's also a 60-year commitment to the inevitable, lethal waste stream.

Why on earth would we think we could escape an energy paradigm that spoils the atmosphere with an energy paradigm that spoils the ground, with the potentially greater threat to life and health that nuclear accidents imply? This is a question right up there with the one about how the yahoos who scream "drill, baby, drill" could think that's actually going to help resolve anything.