[jimotis4heisman]

Environmental Capital - WSJ.com : Presidential Priorities: What We'd Ask Obama, McCain, in the Debate

To both candidates: The European Union has been pushing for stronger action on global warming for years, and even laid out its own aggressive blueprint. But now that the economic crisis is starting to bite, many European governments are shuddering at the potential costs involved in an economy-wide cap-and-trade scheme similar to the one you both espouse. During this time of financial and economic turmoil, how exactly do you sell the American people on a scheme designed to raise energy prices and the cost of doing business in order to curb greenhouse-gas emissions?

To Sen. John McCain: “Drill, baby, Drill” became your party’s informal mantra during the convention, shortly after oil prices peaked at nearly $150 a barrel. Since then, the oil price has nearly halved, and the price of gasoline has fallen $1 a gallon. Is more domestic drilling still the key to American energy independence? At the same time, oil prices have fallen in large part because rich countries like the U.S. cut back sharply on consumption. Do you still put more faith in supply-side solutions, rather than demand-side remedies, to the energy crunch?

To Sen. Barack Obama: You favored taxing windfall profits from oil companies to help underwrite some of your energy proposals. How will they be funded if falling oil prices erase those “windfall profits”? (Hat tip)

To Sen. McCain: You favor a massive expansion of nuclear power in the U.S., and have said that could create 750,000 new jobs. Given the growing federal deficit and sclerotic credit markets, how would the nuclear renaissance be funded, exactly? And where exactly do those job estimates come from?

To Sen. Obama: You say that a clean-energy revolution will create 5 million new jobs—more than twice as many people as work today in the oil and gas industries. Is the goal of your clean-energy program to create energy as cleanly and efficiently as possible, or is the plan to create as many jobs as possible, regardless of the impact on national productivity? (Thanks, Geoff.)