Kyl, McCain, GOP Blowing AZ Jobs, Oil Independence

From Andrew Sullivan:

An absorbing the dizzying series of foreign policy challenges facing this president and the next, one factor obviously stands out. Oil - the damage it does and the tyrants it enables - is the great enemy, from Georgia to Iraq. Finding a way to get ourselves off this stuff is the most urgent national security need we have. Which is why this progress on solar power is so encouraging:

At 800 megawatts total, the new plants will greatly exceed the scale of previous solar installations. The largest photovoltaic installation in the United States, 14 megawatts, is at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, using SunPower panels.

Spain has a 23-megawatt plant, and Germany is building one of 40 megawatts. A recently built plant that uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight, called Nevada Solar One, can produce 64 megawatts of power.

And that, my pretties, is why Arizonans should be furious at Kyl and McCain. Not just for blocking solar advancement, which is why all Americans should repudiate them, but also for allowing their partisan fusion with Big Oil to imperil 2,000+ jobs in our state. As long as McCain and Kyl and the rest of the GOP hold renewable energies hostage to offshore oil drilling (to granting more of our offshore real estate to Big Oil, that is), AZ's impressive solar projects are on hold.