Nelson To Give Energy Speech: Innovate, Baby, Innovate

Posted Sep 4, 2008 by William March

Updated Sep 4, 2008 at 09:34 PM

With Republicans chanting, “Drill, baby, drill” at their convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson will give a speech Friday, billed as a major speech on energy, advocating a different path.

Nelson will say the real answer to high gas prices is closing a loophole that exempted oil speculators from regulation, plus higher mileage standards, “alternative fuels, like ethanol, from things we don’t eat,” plus “solar, wind and thermal energy, and safer nuclear power.”

Nelson will repeat the arguments he has made previously against expanded Gulf drilling—that already-leased areas are going unused; that it would interfere with the last unfettered pilot’s military training range in the Gulf.

“The U.S. has only three percent of the world’s oil reserves, while it uses nearly one-fourth of the world’s supply,” an advance text says. “That means we cannot drill our way out of this problem.”