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Environment

Obama vs. McCain: Saving the Environment May be Our Best Hope for the Economy -- Voter Guide

AlterNet. Posted October 17, 2008.


From climate change to energy independence, a look at where the candidates stand on this year's top 10 environmental issues.
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Download this Voter Guide as a .PDF

The pressing issues on Americans' minds today are the election and the economy. But as we cast our votes for who we think can best right a near sinking financial ship and throw a life perserver around our own economic prospects, there is another important issue to consider: the enviornment.

Our economic crises are intertwined with energy, food, water and climate issues. In order to save our economy we have to abandon a system that rewards polluters and stiffles new, green solutions.

Leaders in the field of economic, green growth, like Van Jones, have called for a green economy, that will "lift all boats," so what is good for one group in the U.S. will be good for all and what is good for the planet will be good for people, too.

There is no doubt that the next president will need to tackle a whole bunch of environmental issues after taking office -- some of which are so important that the rest of the world is waiting and watching.

Clearly the most prominent of these is global warming. The world's leading scientists that form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have found that human activity, namely the burning of fossil fuels, is dramatically affecting the Earth's climate. They found that over the next 100 years, we are likely to witness rising sea levels, which will displace millions of people in coastal areas; the loss of snow from all but the highest mountains, which will threaten water sources for people and nature; an increase in deserts, resulting in even less water; an acidification of the oceans, which will lead to the destruction of coral reefs; and an increase in the severity of heat waves, which already claim thousands of lives each year.

This would be an economic catastrophe as well as an environmental and humanitarian one as well.

As the world leader in greenhouse gas emissions, the United States thus far has played no part in working with the international community on solutions or making any commitments for change. Billions across the world are hoping that will change with our next election.

As Bill McKibben writes, "He who comes next is the Climate Change President." Across the globe, people are holding their breath to see whether the United States will finally join the rest of the world in trying to stop climate change. So who's the best pick?

Below, we take a look at where McCain and Obama both stand on this issue, but we don't stop there. We also examine nine other pressing environmental topics and how the presidential candidates match up. Of special interest are energy issues, which are of course also linked to global warming. The League of Conservation Voters reports: "An election-day poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research found that in 2006, energy was the most important issue for independent voters. In 2008, as gas prices skyrocket and time to head off the effects of global warming runs out, recent polling shows energy to the be the single most important issue for the entire electorate."

So where do the candidates stand on energy issues like drilling, nuclear, renewables, coal, energy efficiency and biofuels? And how do they compare on other hot-button environmental issues like clean air, green jobs and water?

Read below and find out what the candidates say they'll do and what they've actually done.


1. CLIMATE CHANGE

We face economic, humanitarian and environmental crises from unchecked global climate change, including the loss of important water sources that help quench the needs of our industry, agriculture and homes. Our coastal cities will also be threatened by rising sea levels, and the frequency and severity of storms are predicted to increase.

  • Solution: We need to pass a comprehensive bill on climate change to cut emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, as the world's leading scientists of the IPCC have prescribed.
  • Obama's position: Obama supported legislation to cut emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 and has a plan to achieve that through a market-based cap-and-trade system.
  • McCain's position: McCain co-sponsored the first bill in the Senate calling for mandatory reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, in 2003. He supports action on climate change, but his proposals fall far short of what is recommended by scientists. His plan only calls for a 60 percent drop below 1990 levels by the year 2050.

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Comments closed.
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.
View:
My List
Posted by: PaulK on Oct 17, 2008 1:55 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Transit:

I want the government to pay 1000 inventors subsistence wages and office/lab/garage space for 1000 transit inventions. The entry fee for a transit inventor is $100 million per entry, for crash testing, so nobody invents anything. What a waste! This country should be building 500 mpg (electricity equivalent) automated above-grade personal vehicles built on tracks at 1/10 current freeway expenses. Right now we have commuter headaches, 3 million injuries a year from car crashes, and 100,000 deaths a year from asthma.

Solar and wind power prices should be driven down to maybe 2 cents/kwh, again by 500 independent inventors taking small and measured chances. This would crush coal and nuclear.

Another 500 inventors on heating houses and offices, please. Cheaper, safer, more effective.

I don't forget improvements to industrial processes.

Nor do I forget ameliorating the effects of global warming. We can reverse summer Arctic warming and stop the methane bomb. What's that worth to the world?

Another 200 inventors on appropriate technology desalinization, please.

My list is cheap to implement and has an explosively positive ecological effect upon the world. The only thing left to invent is an election that actually works.

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9. NUCLEAR ENERGY: There is nothing "progressive" about Alternet's ignorant innumerate opinion.
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 17, 2008 11:04 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I AM NOT the nuclear industry trying to "rebrand" nuclear power. I am a retired
civil servant telling you the truth which Alternet seems to be incapable of learning.
As I have said many times, I am not working for the nuclear power industry, and I
never have. I am a scientist and an engineer and I actually understand the issue.
I am telling you the TRUTH, as opposed to just another ignorant innumerate
opinion.

Alternet is working for the coal industry whether it knows it or not because the
only alternative to nuclear power is coal. Alternet has taken advertising money
from the coal industry and may be doing so now. How about some full disclosure,
Alternet? As I have explained many times, neither wind nor solar nor geothermal
nor wave power nor a combination of them can save us from global warming soon
enough to make a difference. Wind, solar, geothermal and wave power are
research projects, not deployable solutions.

Alternet has consistently understated the danger involved in global warming.
Neither the fall of civilization nor the extinction of Homo Sapiens is a partisan issue.
Politics should not be involved in what is an engineering issue that should be
decided by people who understand the issue. The people who understand the
issue are engineers and scientists. It is clear that journalists, especially Alternet,
either cannot understand the truth or refuse to understand the truth. Truth is
discovered by experiment, not voted on. The political affiliation of a scientist or
engineer has nothing to do with how that scientist or engineer decides an
engineering issue or reports an experiment.

Once elected, Barack Obama will be forced by the facts to build a lot more nuclear
reactors than John McCain has proposed. Barack Obama has said that he would
gather a group of scientists and engineers who actually understand the issue to
advise him on how to proceed to cure global warming. Their political affiliation
doesn't matter. There is only one answer that will actually save us from the global
warming collapse of civilization. That one answer is nuclear power. President
Obama will adopt nuclear power in a really big way. He will have to. There is
no alternative. I will vote for Obama, but I may run for congress with the Green
party.

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The web is the wrong place to look for truth.
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 17, 2008 11:20 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Reference: "Web Dragons" by Witten, Gori and Numerico 2007.

The search engines do not understand the web pages they find for you. They are
just machines. They have no idea of whether or not the web pages they find tell
the truth. In the US, we have "freedom of speech," which means that nobody has
to prove that anything is true before publishing it. We also have a coal industry
that has a gross income of $100 BILLION per year. That $100 BILLION per year
could be easily sunk by the nuclear industry unless you can be persuaded that
nuclear power is dangerous. [The truth is that a coal fired power plant puts 100
times as much radiation into your environment as the nuclear power plant. The
truth is also that natural background radiation is 10 times what you get from a coal
fired power plant.] Do the coal companies have an incentive to lead you astray?
Yes. Is $100 BILLION per year enough incentive? Yes. Can the coal industry
afford to hire doctors, economists, environmentalists, website designers, computer
scientists, psychologists, advertising agencies, and lots of other people on $100
BILLION per year? Of course. Can the coal industry afford to set up hundreds
of web pages on hundreds of computers in hundreds of locations and "game" the
search engines on $100 BILLION per year? Yes. And they do.

How hard is it to find the truth on the web? Very hard. Most web sites have a
monetary reason for existing. People who know the truth and are willing to tell
you the truth don't have much economic reason to do so. It is hard to make money
by telling the truth. Nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence
or overestimating the gullibility of the average person. So how are you going to
find out the truth for sure? There is only one way. You have to become a
scientist. You will have to spend a minimum of 4 years in college to get the
minimum degree, the B.S. You should really spend more like 15 years and get a
post doctoral degree.

THERE ARE ZERO HUMAN AUTHORITIES.
Scientists do not vote on what is the truth. There is only one vote and Nature
owns it. We find out what Nature's vote is by doing Scientific [public and
replicable] experiments. Scientific [public and replicable] experiments are the
only source of truth. [To be public, it has to be visible to other people in the
room. What goes on inside one person's head isn't public unless it can be seen on
an X-ray or with another instrument.]
Science is a simple faith in Scientific experiments and a simple absolute lack of
faith in everything else. Do not trust any human, not even yourself. Trust only
the experiments that you personally perform. Otherwise, you will be misled.

If Google does its own research on energy, then when you google any subject
involving energy, my guess is that you will get Google's research results as your
answer. Let's hope that Google does an honest job of researching the subject.
See: www.RealClimate.org for Truthful information from Scientists.

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Nuclear power is the safest of all.
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 17, 2008 11:34 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Deaths per terrawatt year [twy] for energy industries, including
Chernobyl. terra=mega mega

fuel......... ........fatalities... .....who......... .......deaths per twy
coal......... .........6400...... ......workers........... .........342
natural gas..... ..1200...... .....workers and public... ...85
hydro........ .......4000..... .......public............ ............883
nuclear........ .........31...... ......workers............ .............8

Nuclear power is proven to be the safest. Source: "The Revenge
of Gaia" by James Lovelock page 102.

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James Lovelock on Nuclear Waste
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 17, 2008 11:52 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"The Revenge of Gaia" page 91: "A television interviewer once
asked me, "But what about nuclear waste? Will it not poison the
whole biosphere and persist for millions of years?"" I knew this
to be a nightmare fantasy wholly without substance in the real
world. I also knew that the natural world would welcome nuclear
waste as the perfect guardian against greedy developers, and
whatever slight harm it might represent was a small price to pay.
One of the striking things about places heavily contaminated by
radioactive nuclides is the richness of their wildlife. This is true
of the land around Chernobyl, the bomb test sites in the Pacific,
and areas near the United States' Savannah River nuclear weapons
plant of the Second World War. Wild plants and animals do not
perceive radiation as dangerous, and any slight reduction it may
cause in their lifespans is far less a hazard than is the presence of
people and their pets. It is easy to forget that now we are so
numerous, almost anything extra we do in the way of farming,
forestry and home building is harmful to wildlife and Gaia. The
preference of wildlife for nuclear waste sites suggests that the best
sites for its disposal are the tropical forests and other habitats in
need of a reliable guardian against their destruction by hungry
farmers and developers."

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COAL contains Uranium
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 18, 2008 12:25 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Coal is almost pure carbon, except for the URANIUM, ARSENIC, LEAD,
MERCURY, Antimony, Cobalt, Nickel, Copper, Selenium, Barium, Fluorine,
Silver, Beryllium, Iron, Sulfur, Boron, Titanium, Cadmium, Magnesium,
Calcium, Manganese, Vanadium, Chlorine, Aluminum, Chromium, Molybdenum
and Zinc that are coal's impurities. Coal smoke and cinders are commercially
viable ORE for the above elements. Coal also contains organic hydrocarbons.
Chinese industrial grade coal is sometimes stolen by peasants for cooking. The
result is that the whole family dies of arsenic poisoning because Chinese
industrial grade coal contains large amounts of arsenic. Coal varies a lot.
You have to analyze it not only mine by mine but even lump by lump.
Reference:
OUR NUCLEAR FUTURE:
THE PATH OF SELECTIVE IGNORANCE
by Alex Gabbard
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TN
Selections from the 19th Annual Conference
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
March 14,15,16, 1996
Nashville, Tennessee

Published by the
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
1996
Edited by Jack D. Arters, Ed.D.
Conference Director
The truth is, all natural rocks contain most natural elements. Coal is a rock.
The average concentration of uranium in coal is 1 or 2 parts per million. Illinois
coal contains up to 103 parts per million uranium. A 1000 million watt coal
fired power plant burns 4 million tons of coal each year. If you multiply 4
million tons by 1 part per million, you get 4 tons of uranium. Most of that is
U238. About .7% is U235. 4 tons = 8000 pounds. 8000 pounds times .7% =
56 pounds of U235. An average 1000 million watt coal fired power plant puts
out 56 to 112 pounds of U235 every year. There are only 2 places the uranium
can go: Up the stack or into the cinders.
Since a reactor full fuel load is around 11 tons of 2% U235 and 98% U238, and
one load lasts about 10 years, and what one coal fired power plant puts into the
air and cinders fully fuels a nuclear power plant.
Compare 4 Million tons per year with 1.1 tons per year. 1.1 divided by 4 Million
= 2.75 E -7 = .000000275 =.0000275%. Remember that only 2% of that is
U235. The nuclear power plant needs ~44 pounds of U235 per year. The coal
fired power plant burns coal by the trainload. The nuclear power plant consumes
U235 in such small quantities yearly that you could carry that much weight in a
briefcase.
See also: http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/coalmain.html

Coal is a $100 Billion per year industry in the US alone. That is why stopping
coal is going to be difficult.

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RECYCLE nuclear fuel
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 18, 2008 12:34 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Yucca Mountain contains an enormous supply of nuclear fuel that
should not be wasted. We don't recycle nuclear fuel because
spent fuel is valuable and people steal it. The place it went that it
wasn't supposed to go to is Israel. This happened in a small town
near Pittsburgh, PA circa 1970. A company called Numec was in
the business of reprocessing nuclear fuel. I almost took a job
there, designing a nuclear battery for a heart pacemaker. [The
army offered me more money to work on nuclear weapons
effects.] [A nuclear battery would have the advantage of lasting
many times as long as any other battery, eliminating many
surgeries to replace batteries.] Numec did NOT have a reactor.
Numec "lost" a quantity of reactor grade uranium. It wound up in
Israel. The Israelis have fueled both their nuclear power plants
and their nuclear weapons by stealing nuclear "waste." See:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/
x/pittsburghtrib/news/specialreport
s/buriedlegacy/s_87948.html
It could work for any other country, such as Iran or the United
States. It is only when you don't have access to nuclear "waste"
that you have to do the difficult process of enriching uranium,
unless you have a Canadian "CANDU" reactor or a British
Magnox reactor, both of which run on unenriched uranium.
Numec is no longer in business. The reprocessing of nuclear fuel
in the US stopped. That was the only politically possible solution
at that time, given that private corporations did the reprocessing.
My solution would be to reprocess the fuel at a Government
Owned Government Operated [GOGO] facility. At a GOGO
plant, bureaucracy and the multiplicity of ethnicity and religion
would disable the transportation of uranium to Israel or to any
unauthorized place. Nothing heavier than a secret would get out.

I have no financial stake in the nuclear power industry, and I
never have. Nobody is paying me to say this.

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» RE: CYCLE nuclear fuel Posted by: igmuska1
The proper way to write the CO2 law
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 18, 2008 8:00 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The proper way to write a law to require the use of NON-fossil-fuel
energy to make electricity is to cap and lower the carbon dioxide
put into the air per 1000 megawatt years. It is now 14.7 million
tons per 1000 megawatts in one year for a coal fired power plant.
Lower the amount of CO2 allowed per 1000 megawatt years each
year. Allow the private sector to figure out how to do it. If you
just require that a certain percentage of power come from
renewable resources, the production of CO2 will diminish only
slightly because of the "Spinning Reserve" problem, described
below.

Wind energy wastes energy because the wind varies so much that
a "spinning reserve" is required in most locations. The coal fire
has to be kept burning so that the steam turbine will keep spinning
fast enough to generate electricity instantly when the wind dies.
If you are running the steam powered generator at the spinning
reserve rate, you may as well use the steam as your energy source
and forget about the wind. Wind turbines are decorations, not
sources of energy for the grid until we have room temperature
superconductors or super batteries. There are special locations
and circumstances where wind energy is useful, but wind cannot
replace coal and nuclear any time soon. The object of the new
law must be to shut down coal fired power plants by replacing
them with base load sources that don't make CO2.

We don't have batteries that are good enough and cheap enough to
solve the problem of wind variability yet. We need research into
energy storage and room temperature superconductors. The
research will take an unknown amount of time. We don't have
that time. Batteries and room temperature superconductors have
been under research for a very long time already, so don't expect
any breakthroughs next week.

There is one and only one practical way to replace coal fired
power plants at the present time. That one way is nuclear power.
Nuclear power works for base load and nuclear power is clean and
safe. Nuclear fuel is recyclable. There is no such thing as
nuclear waste. Since we need to build 10,000 new nuclear power
plants worldwide to replace coal fired power plants, there will be
more than enough jobs. Nuclear power is the greenest.

I am NOT connected with the nuclear industry in any way. I am
a retired Department of the Army civilian engineer and scientist.

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Third parties left out again on Alter-not
Posted by: Bliss Doubt on Oct 21, 2008 4:10 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Well, few of us have a chance once AsteroidMiner has started rampaging, but I'll give it a go.

Guess what? I know of a candidate who doesn't have to give even lip service to entrenched coal and oil companies or the nuclear/defense sector, doesn't have to dance around them or make half promises using nebulous language, because he has fresh, uncomplicated ideas for sustainable, renewable sources of energy.

See www.votenader.org for more.

Peace and blessings

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» usterroristnation Posted by: usterroristnation
» Wrong, my friend. Posted by: Bliss Doubt
freshlemon2
Posted by: freshlemon on Oct 22, 2008 7:26 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Hate to bring up politics when all comments have been about energy and its pros and cons, but....does John McCain ever attend any congressional work sessions? He seems to have been absent from the majority of votes on ALL of the major issues of the current campaign including the ones on energy as listed in this
article.

My contribution to the energy issues is to suggest that its time for the construction industry to start including solar energy in all new construction of housing and commercial buildings. There should also be a drive with incentives to convert older constructions to solar energy.

Nuclear power should only be encouraged when we have determined viable ways to recycle waste(not in the form of WMD please!!)
and have doubled down on fail safe methods and systems for the operation of nuclear power plants.

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upstartgreen
Posted by: upstartgreen on Oct 22, 2008 8:44 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I thought alternet was supposed to be an alternative to the mainstream media.This author completely whiteouts all the 3rd Party Candidates. If I wanted to read censored material I would subscribe to my local newspaper. I want to hear about Cynthia McKinney{Green}, Ralph Nader{Independent}, Bob Barr{Libertarian}, etc. The Two major parties are the problem not the solution. Does anyone know in which ring of Hell Dante placed writer's who used their talents to keep evil in power?

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Ms.Conry
Posted by: majenta on Oct 22, 2008 4:47 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Where are Ralph Nader's views? He is on my ballot and with a name like "ALter"net, one would think you just might be representing views other than the corrupt two-party system we now have in place!

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if McCain loves nuclear,store the waste at one of his 7 homes
Posted by: whealeydj on Oct 23, 2008 1:10 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
and make his progeny live there for 7 generations; what a hypocrite! he is pro nuclear because of uranium mining in AZ but doesnt want waste transported there. under GNEP one possible site for "temporary storage" of nuclear fuel rods for recycling is 5o miles from where I live and would be transferred from all over country and maybe the world. what a fiasco nuclear power is and has been also think Asteroid Miner and other pro nuclear advocates should be forced to live there too. nuclear power now, nuclear waste forever.

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