Lori Sturdevant: Does energy brighten Pawlenty's résumé?

If prescience is a vetting criterion, Gov. Tim Pawlenty must be near the top of John McCain's vice presidential list.

Back when oil was selling for about $70 a barrel -- only a little more than a year ago -- Pawlenty chose the theme "Securing a Clean Energy Future" for his year as chair of the National Governors Association.

That choice alone is a mark of Pawlenty's political courage, his fans insist. They note that a year ago, legions of Republicans were still ridiculing climate change as a fantasy of the loony left, and respectable economists were still betting that oil prices wouldn't go much higher.

But it was also possible a year ago for a prescient pol to see the steep oil-price trend line since 2003, to note mounting evidence of global warming and to observe how "going green" can improve a conservative candidate's image with moderate voters. Pawlenty evidently decided that energy-policy change was a good signature issue for a young governor who'd like to ply political waters for years to come.

And how! Last week, it seemed that every political pronouncement under the summer sun was about $144-a-barrel oil, $4-a-gallon gas and how to ease the pain they are causing.

As he winds up his term as NGA chair next weekend and steps up his stumping (or is it auditioning?) for McCain, Pawlenty can present himself as an old hand on energy policy. He's a credible contender not only for a vice presidential nod, but also for secretary of energy.

He can brag about Minnesota's leadership since the 1990s in developing renewable-energy sources like ethanol and wind, and about this state's aggressive new goals for using more of these sources -- even though he didn't originate those policies and wasn't always friendly toward them.

He can talk about solutions, as he did in a June 24 National Public Radio interview with Minnesota native Michele Norris.

Unremarkably, the ideas he touted that day happened to be the same ones that McCain has been promoting. They didn't include more-controversial ideas he's peddled at NGA, such as getting more states to join Minnesota in setting tough goals for generating electricity with renewable sources. That idea reportedly took a beating from governors of oil-producing states at a February NGA meeting.

Neither did he mention the Midwestern governors' work on a carbon emissions cap-and-trade system. That's too bad. Legislators who sat in on last week's project meeting came away saying it's setting its sites too low. It could use a Pawlenty push.

Pawlenty's NPR comments were aimed at a national audience. But he's not on the GOP ticket -- yet, anyway. When he talks energy, Minnesotans are still the people who ought to listen hard (you can, at tinyurl.com/6y2bb3). He pitched more oil drilling off U.S. coasts -- an easy position for a Minnesotan to take.

He talked up a summertime federal gas-tax holiday, invoking his late father's fuel dependence as a truck driver. Pawlenty's allergy to any tax is well-known. Even so, interrupting the nation's highway money stream is an odd proposal from the leader of a state that suffered a major interstate bridge failure just 11 months ago.

And he said: "Maybe we need to reopen the door on nuclear energy."

Those should be attention-getting words in the only state that has banned new nuclear power plants by statute. Minnesota has two electricity-generating reactors now, at Prairie Island and Monticello; it put a moratorium on more in 1994.

Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung elaborated last week: "Gov. Pawlenty believes expanding nuclear energy production is one part of a comprehensive energy solution for our country. Minnesota should be open to this option, although leading utilities in Minnesota have no plans to build additional nuclear plants in the near and intermediate term."

Under President McCain, those plans could change fast. He's talking about 45 more U.S. nuclear reactors by 2030.

Pawlenty said Minnesotans "are now more open to nuclear energy, particularly if we can reprocess the waste, the way France is doing."

That notion is disputed by David Morris of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a 34-year-old grass-roots organization that would likely be in the forefront of opposition to more nuclear power generation.

"We can't have more nuclear power in this country unless government were going to intervene aggressively," Morris said. What does that mean -- expedited permitting? Insurance? Finally forcing nuclear waste into some American back yards? That and more, Morris said: "I think it would require martial law" to quell the protests that would ensue.

"It's a remarkable technology for a conservative Republican to support," Morris said -- especially one who might be willing to use military force to keep another country from generating electricity with enriched uranium.

Energy policy change may have been easy for Pawlenty to take as his NGA theme song a year ago. But actually making meaningful change is bound to be much more difficult for him, no matter which office he occupies in 2009.

Lori Sturdevant is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com. Next week her column begins its annual midsummer hiatus. Look for its return in August.