FAIRBANKS -- In what may be the best idea since state-funded pregnancy tests in barroom bathrooms, Sen. Pete Kelly wants to have a state-funded study of defying the federal government.

Kelly wants to spend money to see what it would take to build giant coal-fired power plants on state land without federal permits. The plants will be on standby so that when Doomsday arrives, Alaskans will at least have access to cheap power.

"The purpose of building it on state land is that we don't need permission to do that on state land," Kelly said, describing his master plan to fellow legislators. "The question is whether you turn it on or not," he said. "That's a big question obviously."

We have precedent for spending hundreds of millions on a coal plant only to keep it idle -- the experimental power plant at Healy, which will have an ultimate price of about $500 million, has been closed for 15 years since Kelly's brother, Mike, ran the Golden Valley Electric Association.

But that's only a 50-megawatt plant, largely funded by the feds. Kelly wants plants that could be four to 40 times more powerful, funded by the state. We would need these new plants when disaster strikes, according to Pete.

"Then if the federal government told us we couldn't do that, then we could go through all the lawsuits and all that kind of stuff while we're providing our people power," Kelly told other legislators.

Kelly wants to spend $75,000 studying defiance, but people who know something will tell you that is hardly enough to do the subject justice. The real cost would be in the tens or hundreds of millions, which is steep enough to prove that we don't need no stinking studies.

What we need from Juneau is action, not a half-hearted jab at Uncle Sam or another speech about federal overreach. Kelly says we need to "dream big to protect the generations of the future," but a real dream requires no consultants and no studies.

Kelly predicts there will be a world-shattering disruption sometime in the future that will "stagger us and possibly shut our economy down."

In one hearing, he compared the actions of Russian leader Vladimir Putin to Hitler's actions against Czechoslovakia and Poland 75 years ago. He said a calamity of some kind is coming and mentioned the bombing of Israel.

"If we come to that situation when we wake up and Tel Aviv is a memory and energy prices have gone through the roof, is that the time to build this power plant? Is that the time to take action to protect ourselves from an event that's coming. I don't know what it is. It may only be an economic event."

Kelly did not give his prediction on what would happen to oil prices when the event happens. In the past, turmoil overseas has led to budget surpluses in Alaska. In fact, the budget surpluses built up during the last major spike in oil prices are insulating us and distracting us from a $2 billion-plus deficit in Juneau this year.

But don't worry about that. We have no time to study. We need coal plants.

Let's save the Kelly study money and put it all into building illegal power plants that we may find a use for. Who could oppose that idea?

With no federal permits to worry about, it should be easy to get plants up and running in no time. We could use this same logic to build a gas line or Susitna dam without federal interference.

Kelly said we would build plants to federal pollution standards, but I'm surprised that he would surrender state sovereignty on that key point without a fight.

Federal bureaucrats and lawyers wrote those pollution rules, which are simply a way of making coal power more expensive and mistreating Alaskans. It would be much cheaper to build power plants to the standards of 1950.

If we are going to defy all logic, we need to be consistent.

Contact Dermot Cole at dermot(at)alaskadispatch.com. Follow him on Twitter @dermotmcole