Well, Romney has finally come up with some specifics on energy. Sort of.

His big bold new plan for Energy Independence, announced today, is a vague mish-mash of same-old: lots more goodies for oil and coal, plus cuts for renewable energy that could cost 37,000 jobs and turn the global energy future over to the Chinese.

$2.3 to $4 billion a year in subsidies for oil, the most profitable industry in the history of profits.

Less regulation of oil and coal (because dead miners is an acceptable price to be paid for cheap electricity high coal company profits).

high coal company profits). New and creative ways to ram fossil fuels down our throats, like turning federal lands over to the states when it comes to oil, gas and coal decisions (states tend to be industry-friendly, and care less when their spills cross state lines) while fast-tracking nuclear plants at the Federal level (the locals tend to block nukes in their own backyards). Yes, that means Jan Brewer of Arizona could decide to drill, baby, drill in the Grand Canyon.

Doubling oil production in seven years. Which will be tricky, since under Obama oil production is already way up. They’ll basically have to drill everywhere, from the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to the Virginia Coast to the National Mall.

Keep ethanol in gasoline (because he wants votes from the corn states!).

Approving the Keystone XL pipeline – because nothing says “energy independence” like re-routing oil from the American heartland to Gulf Coast refineries so it can be exported to South America. (Note: Philip Bump at Grist points out that Romney is calling for “North American” – not “American” – energy independence. So actual US energy independence is a pipe dream, and Canada’s tar sands oil will be a big part of this…)

Ending national subsidies for renewables – because nothing says “energy independence” like turning the future over to the Chinese.

And as for climate? The word “climate” does not appear in this 21-page plan.

Assesments

Philip Bump at Grist:

This energy proposal is the culmination of Romney’s long trek toward denialism and fossil-fuel-company bootlicking. There is literally nothing in his proposal that would cause a single sleepless night for executives at Shell or Chevron. Romney didn’t have to upend the dominance of the oil and gas industry, but he could at least have challenged them, moved slightly back toward the Mitt Romney he once was.

Meteor Blades at DailyKos:

Calling the plan backward-thinking is far too generous. It’s the culmination, among other things, of 20 years of climate-change denial, taking exactly the opposite direction from where we should be going.

Brad Plumer at the Washington Post:

The idea that North America wouldn’t need to import oil directly from Saudi Arabia or other OPEC countries is alluring. Still, as various energy experts have argued, there’s no such thing as “true” oil independence. Oil is traded on the world market. If tensions in the Middle East cause prices to spike, everyone is affected, regardless of where they get their crude. The easiest way to observe this is to look at Canada. Canada is a net oil exporter, a bona fide oil-independent nation. But gasoline prices in Canada still rise and fall in accordance with world events, just as they do in the United States or Japan or Europe.

ThinkProgress:

In spite of record-breaking temperatures, severe droughts and raging wildfires plaguing the U.S. this year and worsened by manmade climate change, Mitt Romney has put the interests of big donors over science once again. The Romney-Ryan energy plan is simply a handout to their biggest polluter supporters, ignoring the devastating impacts of continuing to rely on a fossil-fuel based economy that does nothing either to address the growing threat of global warming or to increase our competitiveness in the growing clean energy economy.

You can read the full proposal if you have the stomach for it) at Grist…