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Forging an Energy Path
Congress should dramatically revise President Bush’s backward-looking budget
Almost 90 percent of the nation's electricity comes from plants powered by nuclear energy or by the burning of coal or natural gas.
This is unfortunate because emissions from burning coal and natural gas heavily contribute to global warming and lead to health problems for many people. Also, coal emissions are largely responsible for the buildup of acid in lakes and the world's oceans.
Nuclear power, meanwhile, produces deadly waste for which no safe, permanent disposal solution has been discovered. A federal plan conceived in the 1980s to bury the waste northwest of Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain is so scientifically flawed it is now, quite properly, moribund.
The federal government should be setting timetables for reducing conventionally produced energy and increasing the amount of energy generated by renewable sources such as solar, wind and geothermal.
President Bush, however, has failed this leadership test during his more than seven years in the White House. He talks of the need for more renewable energy, but makes only token gestures in that direction.
His fiscal year 2009 budget, released this week, is a prime example. Las Vegas Sun reporter Phoebe Sweet noted in a Wednesday story that the budget does not extend soon-to-expire tax credits for emerging renewable energy industries.
Sweet also quoted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who said the budget improves funding for coal by 25 percent and for nuclear energy by 37 percent. In contrast, Reid said, the budget reduces spending by almost 30 percent for renewables and programs striving for greater energy efficiency, such as the home weatherization program for low-income families.
The budget stubbornly resists forward-looking energy trends that even major lenders are adopting. Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley, three of the nation's largest investment banks, announced this week that they will be assiduously assessing the environmental impacts of coal-fired power plants before making any decisions to finance new ones.
Bush's budget even includes $495 million for continued work at Yucca Mountain. As Congress sets about revising the budget, it should eliminate the Yucca Mountain money and dramatically change the funding priorities for energy to give the country the start it needs toward a cleaner, healthier future.
© Las Vegas Sun, 2008
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9 Comments so far
Show AllThe policy of criminals:
"Sweet also quoted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who said the budget improves funding for coal by 25 percent and for nuclear energy by 37 percent. In contrast, Reid said, the budget reduces spending by almost 30 percent for renewables and programs striving for greater energy efficiency, such as the home weatherization program for low-income families."
Weatherization has been completely zero-out.
Our nation is on the brink of barbarism. We have been Enronized and our children sold into slavery. The Bushes own over 400,000 acres on an aquifer in Paraguay where they cannot be prosecuted for war crimes. Dick Cheney has put over $10 million into inflation-protected Euro funds. Their minions in the media have aided and abetted them without shame and have been richly rewarded for their allegiance.
Smell the stench of corruption. Hear the buzzing of flies in the future hellish summers and the bite of the freak winter storms. Savor the taste of a betrayal so deep, so profound that the cut shall leave an open wound that cannot be healed.
That is the legacy we have inherited.
the nuke power industry continues to gouge the public for a failed technology it cannot get funded from the private sector. Yucca Mountain is a dormant volcano with an earthquake running through it and water perched inside, ready to create a steam blast from any radioactive materials stored below. it's time to totally pull the plug on this failed fiasco and move to what works, which is green power & conservation/efficiency, and it's good to see this coming from a major newspaper.
I once lived in a town where the people hated taxes so much that they voted themselves out of a library and fire protection. George Bush has led the way to keep all Americans out of a sustainable future in the name of financial "security." One thing for sure, we're going to at least have the military in place to shoot anybody who looks at us funny while the sun silently glares down on us unharnessed and potentially lethal, the world's geothermal energy remains untapped and, one by one, the polar bears disappear from the face of the earth forever.
I recently visited Yucca mountain on a university geology trip around the united states, most people, including Bush, dont realize that this site is on numerous fault lines, the last place I would put nuclear waste, IF you were to look at this from a scientific stand point that is. Even the workers at the site were trying to push their agendas on us college students, by trying and trying to show this site is the best fit for nuclear storage, even when there was visible evidence of water leakage and a map of fault lines running through the site.
Revolutionary08: I doubt that, from a geological point of view, there is any place for a "safe" repository for nuclear waste. Even the most stable crustal formation - the North American craton - is subject to earthquakes, as would be expected on any cooling and shrinking planet. Gelogiclly speaking, time mocks our brief lives and the understanding an individual can have of this place.
STIV WHITMAN & VINCE LAWRENCE: Eloquent postings.
Lots of fossil fuel will be burned mining, processing and transporting uranium for nuclear plants and lots of corporate welfare funded by taxpayers' money will be handed over to the industry. Hordes of investors, including Warren Buffet are applying for nuclear power plant licenses this year so they can get on the gravy train.
Although the subject energy legislation purports to reduce oil imports, it will actually result in the need for more imported oil.
Residents of Nevada will also be happy to learn that a company called Energy Solutions is planning to import radioactive waste from abroad to be buried in several US states, including Utah, Nevada's next door neighbor.
I disagree about nuclear. Its a technology that is improving, including the waste problem, but reductions in funding for conservation and renewables is unbelieveable. Words cannot describe how stupid!
Somebody in an earlier article mentioned that Scientific American magazine's January issue had an article about the feasibility of switching to renewable by 2050. There are two excellent articles, one even discussing political roadblocks and talking points for ways around them.
If you've ever read SciAm, you might be put off by its technical nature. These articles are written to be very understandable, and they should be circulated. There is an engineer where I work who is constantly talking up nuclear (well, nukuler, whatever that is) and I can't believe that someone with a science background is so full of shit about this stuff. I dropped this on a lunch-time conversation and brought everyone there over to the good side in just a couple of minutes; it immediately silenced Mr. Bad Science. I'm sure he's tuned in to Rush to find out what he should say next, even as I type.
http://www.sciam.com/search/index.cfm?q=solar+power&submit.x=36&submit.y=10