http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/weekinreview/08wald.html
Running in Circles Over Carbon
By MATTHEW L. WALD
New York Times
June 8, 2008
WASHINGTON— Cutting carbon dioxide emissions is a fine idea, and a lot of companies would be proud to do it. But they would prefer to be second, if not third or fourth.
This is not a good way to get started in fighting global warming.
As efforts to pass a global warming bill collapsed in the Senate last week, companies that burn coal to make electricity were looking for a way to build a plant that would capture its emissions. There is a will and a way — several ways, in fact — to do just that.
Capturing carbon from these plants may become a lot more important soon. Emissions from coal-fired power plants already account for about 27 percent of American greenhouse emissions, but as prices for other fuels rise, along with power demand, utilities will burn more coal. And if cars someday run on batteries, a trend that $4-a-gallon gasoline will accelerate, then the utilities will burn even more fuel to generate the electricity to recharge those batteries.
This could be good news, because controlling emissions from a few hundred power plants is easier than controlling them from tens of millions of house chimneys, or hundreds of millions of tailpipes. And in the laboratory, at least, there are three very promising systems for capturing carbon dioxide before pumping it underground.
But supplying electricity is not like most other businesses. Unlike the companies that make microchips, clothing for teenagers or snack foods, the companies that make electricity can see no advantage in going first. This is true for the traditionally regulated utilities that can charge everything to a captive class of customers (if regulators approve), and it is also true for the “merchant generators,” who build power plants and sell their output on the open market.
“No one wants to go into the new world,” said Armond Cohen, executive director of the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit group that favors stringent controls on power plant emissions. “We have very few takers because of the price premium.”
By price premium, Mr. Cohen meant not only the costs of going first, with the high probability of mistakes that others can learn from, but the costs of the new technology itself. The problem is, the premium is of unknown size, which makes everyone in the industry especially wary.
[IF THIS IS THE CASE, HOW CAN U.S. SENATOR BARBARA BOXER HONESTLY SAY THAT THE 'CAP & TRADE' CLIMATE CHANGE BILL SHE SUPPORTS WILL NOT RAISE ENERGY, GOODS & SERVICES PRICES???].
The point was illustrated by a recent decision by the Virginia State Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities, to turn down an application by the Appalachian Power Company to build a plant that would have captured 90 percent of its carbon and deposited it nearly two miles underground, at a well that it dug in 2003. The applicant’s parent was American Electric Power, one of the nation’s largest coal users, and perhaps the most technically able. But the company is a regulated utility and spends money only when it can be reimbursed.
The Virginia commission said that it was “neither reasonable nor prudent” for the company to build the plant, and the risks for ratepayers were too great, because costs were uncertain, perhaps double that of a standard coal plant. And in a Catch-22 that plagues the whole effort, the commission said A.E.P. should not build a commercial-scale plant because no one had demonstrated the technology on a commercial scale.
Thus an approach that makes collective sense — trying out technologies that could be helpful over the long term — is unattractive to individual participants.
That is not the only where-to-get-started problem. Another is that building a plant might make sense to a utility regulator, or to a company that builds power plants on speculation, if it generated pollution credits that the company could then sell to other polluters, for instance, or could help the plant meet emissions quotas. But there are, as yet, no credits to buy or sell and no quota to meet.
When Congress debates the idea, one of the drawbacks is that no one is sure where to set the caps on emissions, because no one is sure what the carbon regulation would cost. So there is no regulation, no plant built to meet the regulation, and thus no plant for lawmakers to look at to determine how strict a regulation to pass.
Carbon capture is not the only field in which nobody wants to go first; another is nuclear power. Builders in that industry also recognize that the first to build a next-generation reactor (the last one ordered that was actually built was in 1973) will pay a lot more than the builders who follow. But Congress has tried, at least, to solve that problem by offering generous loan guarantees and risk insurance for the first few reactors. There was a plan to heavily subsidize a single capture-and-storage coal plant, but when the estimated construction price nearly doubled, to $1.8 billion, the Energy Department dropped the plan.
And without full-scale tests, nobody knows what all this would cost.
“The estimates are accurate to within plus 20 percent to plus 100 percent,” said John Rowe, the chief executive of Exelon, which burns coal and also operates nuclear reactors, and leans toward the latter for new projects. “These are very complicated projects, with a great deal of both science and engineering and of public acceptability tests that have simply not happened yet,” he said. In contrast, he argued, nuclear is easier.
While others differ, or argue that solar or wind would be a better bet, the failure to get started does have a certain circularity to it. Companies will not run to build plants that sequester their carbon because Congress has not set a price for emitting the pollutant. Without the early plants, Congress has little clue how many tons the economy can afford to capture and sequester.
[CONGRESS NEEDS TO INCENTIVIZE THE TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION CYCLE, NOT PENALIZE IT.]
Showing posts with label pop environmentalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pop environmentalism. Show all posts
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Political CO2 Emissions Threat in US Capitol Extinguished At Least For Now, as Disingenuous Climate Change Bill is Withdrawn From Senate Debate
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,363642,00.html
Climate Change Bill Heads for Vote, But GOP Opposition Could Prevail
June 06, 2008
Associated Press
Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a global warming bill that would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases, pushing debate over the world's biggest environmental concern to next year for a new Congress and president.
Democratic leaders fell a dozen votes short of getting the 60 needed to end a Republican filibuster on the measure and bring the bill up for a vote, prompting Majority Leader Harry Reid to pull the legislation from consideration.
The Senate debate focused on bitter disagreement over the expected economic costs of putting a price on carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas that comes from burning fossil fuels.
Opponents said it would lead to higher energy costs.
The 48-36 vote fell short of a majority, but Democrats produced letters from six senators — including both presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain — saying they would have voted for the measure had they been there.
"It's just the beginning for us," proclaimed Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a chief sponsor of the bill, noting that 54 senators had expressed support of the legislation, although that's still short of what would be needed to overcome concerted GOP opposition.
"It's clear a majority of Congress wants to act," Boxer said at a news conference.
She and other Democrats said this now lays the groundwork for action on climate change next year with a new Congress and a new president that will be more hospitable to mandatory greenhouse gas reductions.
Both Obama and McCain have called for capping carbon dioxide and other emissions linked to climate change. President Bush has opposed such measures and said he would have vetoed the Senate bill if he had received it.
The bill would have capped carbon dioxide coming from power plants, refineries and factories, with a target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 71 percent by mid-century.
"It's a huge tax increase," argued Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a prominent coal-producing state. He maintained that the proposed system of allowing widespread trading of carbon emissions allowances would produce "the largest restructuring of the American economy since the New Deal."
Supporters of the bill accused Republicans of muddying the water with misinformation.
"There is no tax increase," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., one of the bill's chief sponsors said. She said the emissions trading system would provide tax relief to help people pay energy prices. And supporters disputed that it would substantially increase gasoline prices.
[THIS IS A BOLD-FACED LIE BY A U.S. SENATOR WHO IS SWORN TO UPHOLD AND PROTECT THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.]
Four Democrats joined most Republicans in essentially killing the bill.
Obama and McCain, as well as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who is recovering from cancer surgery, were absent, although they each sent a letter supporting the bill.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/07/washington/07climate.html?ref=environment
After Verbal Fire, Senate Effectively Kills Climate Change Bill
By David M. HERSZENHORN
New York Times
June 7, 2008
WASHINGTON — Before the anticlimactic demise on Friday of legislation to combat global warming, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, called climate change “the most important issue facing the world today.” Senator George V. Voinovich, Republican of Ohio, a critic of the bill, nonetheless called it “the most significant piece of legislation to ever come out of the Environment and Public Works Committee.”
Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said the effort to limit heat-trapping gases was “one of the greatest challenges of our generation.” Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said in a statement, “The future of our planet is at stake.”
[DISCERNING READERS WILL NOTE THAT THIS IS 'AL GORE LANGUAGE'. AFTER ALL, AL GORE IS ADVISING BARACK OBAMA'S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN...].
And even Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, the leading opponent of the legislation, called it “probably the largest bill ever considered by the Senate in its impact on the economy and our way of life.”
And so it was, with a chorus of Senate voices having proclaimed the urgency and importance of the issue that the Great Climate Change Debate of 2008 ended on Friday morning, after three and a half days, with a procedural vote that effectively shelved the bill until next year. A motion by Democrats to end debate and move to a final vote, requiring 60 votes to succeed, fell far short, with 48 senators in favor and 36 against.
The bill would cap the production of heat-trapping gases and force polluters to buy permits to emit carbon dioxide. Critics, including many Republican senators, said it would raise energy prices, including the cost of oil, at a time when Americans are struggling with record gasoline prices.
But there were also critics at the other end of the political spectrum who said the bill’s limits on carbon emissions were not strict enough. They said the legislation would allow some industries to prosper while forcing average Americans to pay higher energy prices.
The result left lawmakers pointing fingers at one another. Democrats said Republicans had obstructed their efforts to address a most crucial issue, while Republicans said the Democrats were never serious about passing the bill, as evidenced by their unwillingness to allow a serious and lengthy debate over amendments.
Environmental groups, meanwhile, were left struggling to read the tea leaves of yet another procedural step by the Senate, which has been called the world’s greatest deliberative body but can also be its most mercurial and maddening.
In a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday, the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, mocked the Democrats as trumpeting the magnitude of the climate change but then seeking to cut off debate and move swiftly to a final vote.
“What are they afraid of?” Mr. McConnell asked. “Why don’t they want to consider amendments to a bill addressing what they call ‘the most important issue facing the world today?’ If it is the most important issue facing the world today, it certainly deserves a lot longer debate than a few days.”
[THIS IS AN EXCELLENT QUESTION. WHAT ARE THEY AFRAID OF?? TELLING THE TRUTH??? WHY DO THEY SEEK TO DENY AMERICANS THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL DUE PROCESS RIGHT TO KNOW??]
Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, echoed Mr. McConnell’s remarks at her daily briefing.
The Democrats insisted that comments by Mr. McConnell and other Republicans were disingenuous because Republicans never intended to allow an open and honest debate, never intended to allow the bill to come to a final vote, never intended to support it regardless of what amendments were made, and had no intention of pressuring President Bush, who had made clear that he would not sign the bill.
“They do not want to address the most important issue of the day, so they stalled,” Mr. Reid said, noting that Republicans insisted on having the entire nearly 500-page bill read aloud on Wednesday. “They are doing everything they can to maintain the status quo.”
Some lawmakers and experts on the national debate on climate said there was merit in bringing the bill to the Senate floor for what amounted to a trial run, drawing out supporters and opponents and their particular concerns.
“We have a road map as to where our colleagues are,” said Mrs. Boxer, who was a main sponsor of the bill with Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut. “We will give the road map to the next president so he knows where our colleagues are and where are the consensus areas and where are the difficult areas.”
But even after the vote, it was hard to discern where many lawmakers stood, with 10 Democrats among the 48 senators who voted to close debate saying they would have opposed the bill had it come to a final vote.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DN-carbon_08edi.ART.State.Edition1.460958e.html
Climate bill meets disappointing end
Editorial
Dallas Morning News
June 8, 2008
For a moment, the climate appeared to be changing in the U.S. Senate.
Last week's decision to bring landmark global warming legislation to the Senate floor signified the start of a long overdue discussion about the most important environmental and energy issues facing this country. And while the bill faced long odds from the get-go – and a likely presidential veto – this was an opening to begin tackling tough questions and to establish a baseline for future dialogue.
Unfortunately, opponents weren't satisfied with simply voting the bill down. They viewed this as an opportunity to avenge past political defeats and impede debate.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky forced Democrats to have all 492 pages of the legislation read aloud – a nearly nine-hour ordeal that he said was prompted by residual anger over judicial nominations. On Friday, filibuster was the Republicans' weapon of choice, as they effectively killed the bill before a scheduled vote.
These obstructionist tactics were unnecessary political ploys that only served to further delay urgently needed action on climate change. Much to our disappointment, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison joined Republican colleagues in thwarting the vote.
For both parties, this was a missed opportunity.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and putting a price on carbon will be a difficult and complex process. Whether Congress chooses to begin what inevitably will be a long negotiation now or next year, it's not going to get any easier.
Scientific evidence, though, makes clear that lawmakers can't afford to dally with nine-hour dramatic readings while the planet warms. Opponents of the bill passed up the chance for a serious debate that should include a full airing of their concerns about the proposal's economic impact.
[SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE TO DATE ONLY DEMONSTRATES A CORRELATIVE, NOT A CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GLOBAL WARMING AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY - POLITICIANS ARE EXPLOITING PUBLIC IGNORANCE OF THIS KEY DISTINCTION.]
Sadly, just advancing the bill to the Senate floor was progress. But moral victories will not move the country closer to shedding its distinction as a global warming laggard.
[IT IS SOMETIMES BETTER TO DO NOTHING THAN TO DO HARM. IN THIS CASE, THE PROPOSED BOXER-SUPPORTED CLIMATE CHANGE CAP & TRADE LEGISLATION WOULD HAVE SEVERELY HARMED THE U.S. ECONOMY AND ADVERSELY AFFECTED AMERICANS' STANDARD OF LIVING. THE DEFEAT OF THIS BILL IS NOT ONLY A MORAL VICTORY, IT IS ALSO A VICTORY OF: 1) COMMON SENSE OVER 'FEAR-MONGERING & POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM; and 2) INDIVIDUALISM OVER COMMUNALISM.]
Climate Change Bill Heads for Vote, But GOP Opposition Could Prevail
June 06, 2008
Associated Press
Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a global warming bill that would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases, pushing debate over the world's biggest environmental concern to next year for a new Congress and president.
Democratic leaders fell a dozen votes short of getting the 60 needed to end a Republican filibuster on the measure and bring the bill up for a vote, prompting Majority Leader Harry Reid to pull the legislation from consideration.
The Senate debate focused on bitter disagreement over the expected economic costs of putting a price on carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas that comes from burning fossil fuels.
Opponents said it would lead to higher energy costs.
The 48-36 vote fell short of a majority, but Democrats produced letters from six senators — including both presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain — saying they would have voted for the measure had they been there.
"It's just the beginning for us," proclaimed Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a chief sponsor of the bill, noting that 54 senators had expressed support of the legislation, although that's still short of what would be needed to overcome concerted GOP opposition.
"It's clear a majority of Congress wants to act," Boxer said at a news conference.
She and other Democrats said this now lays the groundwork for action on climate change next year with a new Congress and a new president that will be more hospitable to mandatory greenhouse gas reductions.
Both Obama and McCain have called for capping carbon dioxide and other emissions linked to climate change. President Bush has opposed such measures and said he would have vetoed the Senate bill if he had received it.
The bill would have capped carbon dioxide coming from power plants, refineries and factories, with a target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 71 percent by mid-century.
"It's a huge tax increase," argued Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a prominent coal-producing state. He maintained that the proposed system of allowing widespread trading of carbon emissions allowances would produce "the largest restructuring of the American economy since the New Deal."
Supporters of the bill accused Republicans of muddying the water with misinformation.
"There is no tax increase," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., one of the bill's chief sponsors said. She said the emissions trading system would provide tax relief to help people pay energy prices. And supporters disputed that it would substantially increase gasoline prices.
[THIS IS A BOLD-FACED LIE BY A U.S. SENATOR WHO IS SWORN TO UPHOLD AND PROTECT THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.]
Four Democrats joined most Republicans in essentially killing the bill.
Obama and McCain, as well as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who is recovering from cancer surgery, were absent, although they each sent a letter supporting the bill.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/07/washington/07climate.html?ref=environment
After Verbal Fire, Senate Effectively Kills Climate Change Bill
By David M. HERSZENHORN
New York Times
June 7, 2008
WASHINGTON — Before the anticlimactic demise on Friday of legislation to combat global warming, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, called climate change “the most important issue facing the world today.” Senator George V. Voinovich, Republican of Ohio, a critic of the bill, nonetheless called it “the most significant piece of legislation to ever come out of the Environment and Public Works Committee.”
Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said the effort to limit heat-trapping gases was “one of the greatest challenges of our generation.” Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said in a statement, “The future of our planet is at stake.”
[DISCERNING READERS WILL NOTE THAT THIS IS 'AL GORE LANGUAGE'. AFTER ALL, AL GORE IS ADVISING BARACK OBAMA'S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN...].
And even Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, the leading opponent of the legislation, called it “probably the largest bill ever considered by the Senate in its impact on the economy and our way of life.”
And so it was, with a chorus of Senate voices having proclaimed the urgency and importance of the issue that the Great Climate Change Debate of 2008 ended on Friday morning, after three and a half days, with a procedural vote that effectively shelved the bill until next year. A motion by Democrats to end debate and move to a final vote, requiring 60 votes to succeed, fell far short, with 48 senators in favor and 36 against.
The bill would cap the production of heat-trapping gases and force polluters to buy permits to emit carbon dioxide. Critics, including many Republican senators, said it would raise energy prices, including the cost of oil, at a time when Americans are struggling with record gasoline prices.
But there were also critics at the other end of the political spectrum who said the bill’s limits on carbon emissions were not strict enough. They said the legislation would allow some industries to prosper while forcing average Americans to pay higher energy prices.
The result left lawmakers pointing fingers at one another. Democrats said Republicans had obstructed their efforts to address a most crucial issue, while Republicans said the Democrats were never serious about passing the bill, as evidenced by their unwillingness to allow a serious and lengthy debate over amendments.
Environmental groups, meanwhile, were left struggling to read the tea leaves of yet another procedural step by the Senate, which has been called the world’s greatest deliberative body but can also be its most mercurial and maddening.
In a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday, the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, mocked the Democrats as trumpeting the magnitude of the climate change but then seeking to cut off debate and move swiftly to a final vote.
“What are they afraid of?” Mr. McConnell asked. “Why don’t they want to consider amendments to a bill addressing what they call ‘the most important issue facing the world today?’ If it is the most important issue facing the world today, it certainly deserves a lot longer debate than a few days.”
[THIS IS AN EXCELLENT QUESTION. WHAT ARE THEY AFRAID OF?? TELLING THE TRUTH??? WHY DO THEY SEEK TO DENY AMERICANS THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL DUE PROCESS RIGHT TO KNOW??]
Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, echoed Mr. McConnell’s remarks at her daily briefing.
The Democrats insisted that comments by Mr. McConnell and other Republicans were disingenuous because Republicans never intended to allow an open and honest debate, never intended to allow the bill to come to a final vote, never intended to support it regardless of what amendments were made, and had no intention of pressuring President Bush, who had made clear that he would not sign the bill.
“They do not want to address the most important issue of the day, so they stalled,” Mr. Reid said, noting that Republicans insisted on having the entire nearly 500-page bill read aloud on Wednesday. “They are doing everything they can to maintain the status quo.”
Some lawmakers and experts on the national debate on climate said there was merit in bringing the bill to the Senate floor for what amounted to a trial run, drawing out supporters and opponents and their particular concerns.
“We have a road map as to where our colleagues are,” said Mrs. Boxer, who was a main sponsor of the bill with Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut. “We will give the road map to the next president so he knows where our colleagues are and where are the consensus areas and where are the difficult areas.”
But even after the vote, it was hard to discern where many lawmakers stood, with 10 Democrats among the 48 senators who voted to close debate saying they would have opposed the bill had it come to a final vote.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DN-carbon_08edi.ART.State.Edition1.460958e.html
Climate bill meets disappointing end
Editorial
Dallas Morning News
June 8, 2008
For a moment, the climate appeared to be changing in the U.S. Senate.
Last week's decision to bring landmark global warming legislation to the Senate floor signified the start of a long overdue discussion about the most important environmental and energy issues facing this country. And while the bill faced long odds from the get-go – and a likely presidential veto – this was an opening to begin tackling tough questions and to establish a baseline for future dialogue.
Unfortunately, opponents weren't satisfied with simply voting the bill down. They viewed this as an opportunity to avenge past political defeats and impede debate.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky forced Democrats to have all 492 pages of the legislation read aloud – a nearly nine-hour ordeal that he said was prompted by residual anger over judicial nominations. On Friday, filibuster was the Republicans' weapon of choice, as they effectively killed the bill before a scheduled vote.
These obstructionist tactics were unnecessary political ploys that only served to further delay urgently needed action on climate change. Much to our disappointment, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison joined Republican colleagues in thwarting the vote.
For both parties, this was a missed opportunity.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and putting a price on carbon will be a difficult and complex process. Whether Congress chooses to begin what inevitably will be a long negotiation now or next year, it's not going to get any easier.
Scientific evidence, though, makes clear that lawmakers can't afford to dally with nine-hour dramatic readings while the planet warms. Opponents of the bill passed up the chance for a serious debate that should include a full airing of their concerns about the proposal's economic impact.
[SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE TO DATE ONLY DEMONSTRATES A CORRELATIVE, NOT A CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GLOBAL WARMING AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY - POLITICIANS ARE EXPLOITING PUBLIC IGNORANCE OF THIS KEY DISTINCTION.]
Sadly, just advancing the bill to the Senate floor was progress. But moral victories will not move the country closer to shedding its distinction as a global warming laggard.
[IT IS SOMETIMES BETTER TO DO NOTHING THAN TO DO HARM. IN THIS CASE, THE PROPOSED BOXER-SUPPORTED CLIMATE CHANGE CAP & TRADE LEGISLATION WOULD HAVE SEVERELY HARMED THE U.S. ECONOMY AND ADVERSELY AFFECTED AMERICANS' STANDARD OF LIVING. THE DEFEAT OF THIS BILL IS NOT ONLY A MORAL VICTORY, IT IS ALSO A VICTORY OF: 1) COMMON SENSE OVER 'FEAR-MONGERING & POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM; and 2) INDIVIDUALISM OVER COMMUNALISM.]
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Former Greenpeace Co-Founder Exposes 'Pop-Environmentalism' as the Root of Climate Change Hysteria, While Calmly Discussing Virtues of Nuclear Energy
http://www.newsweek.com/id/131753
A Renegade Against Greenpeace: Why he says they're wrong to view nuclear energy as 'evil'
Fareed Zakaria
NEWSWEEK
Apr 12, 2008
Patrick Moore is a critic of the environmental movement—an unlikely one at that. He was one of the cofounders of Greenpeace, and sailed into the Aleutian Islands on the organization's inaugural mission in 1971, to protest U.S. nuclear tests taking place there.
After leading the group for 15 years he left abruptly, and, in a controversial reversal, has become an outspoken advocate of some of the environmental movement's most detested causes, chief among them nuclear energy.
NEWSWEEK's Fareed Zakaria spoke to Moore about his sparring with the green movement, and why he thinks nuclear power is the energy of the future.
Excerpts:
ZAKARIA: At Greenpeace, you fought against nuclear energy. What changed?
MOORE: My belief, in retrospect, is that because we were so focused on the destructive aspect of nuclear technology and nuclear war, we made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons, as if all things nuclear were evil. And indeed today, Greenpeace still uses the word "evil" to describe nuclear energy. I think that's as big a mistake as if you lumped nuclear medicine in with nuclear weapons. Nuclear medicine uses radioactive isotopes to successfully treat millions of people every year, and those isotopes are all produced in nuclear reactors.
A Renegade Against Greenpeace: Why he says they're wrong to view nuclear energy as 'evil'Fareed Zakaria
NEWSWEEK
Apr 12, 2008
Patrick Moore is a critic of the environmental movement—an unlikely one at that. He was one of the cofounders of Greenpeace, and sailed into the Aleutian Islands on the organization's inaugural mission in 1971, to protest U.S. nuclear tests taking place there.
After leading the group for 15 years he left abruptly, and, in a controversial reversal, has become an outspoken advocate of some of the environmental movement's most detested causes, chief among them nuclear energy.
NEWSWEEK's Fareed Zakaria spoke to Moore about his sparring with the green movement, and why he thinks nuclear power is the energy of the future.
Excerpts:
ZAKARIA: At Greenpeace, you fought against nuclear energy. What changed?
MOORE: My belief, in retrospect, is that because we were so focused on the destructive aspect of nuclear technology and nuclear war, we made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons, as if all things nuclear were evil. And indeed today, Greenpeace still uses the word "evil" to describe nuclear energy. I think that's as big a mistake as if you lumped nuclear medicine in with nuclear weapons. Nuclear medicine uses radioactive isotopes to successfully treat millions of people every year, and those isotopes are all produced in nuclear reactors.
That's why I left Greenpeace: I could see that my fellow directors, none of whom had any science education, were starting to deal with issues around chemicals and biology and genetics, which they had no formal training in, and they were taking the organization into what I call "pop environmentalism," which uses sensationalism, misinformation, fear tactics, etc., to deal with people on an emotional level rather than an intellectual level.Why do you favor nuclear energy over other non-carbon-based sources of energy?
Other than hydroelectric energy—which I also strongly support—nuclear is the only technology besides fossil fuels available as a large-scale continuous power source, and I mean one you can rely on to be running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Wind and solar energy are intermittent and thus unreliable. How can you run hospitals and factories and schools and even a house on an electricity supply that disappears for three or four days at a time? Wind can play a minor role in reducing the amount of fossil fuels we use, because you can turn the fossil fuels off when the wind is blowing. And solar is completely ridiculous. The cost is so high—California's $3.2 billion in solar subsidies is all just going into Silicon Valley companies and consultants. It's ridiculous.
A number of analyses say that nuclear power isn't cost competitive, and that without government subsidies, there's no real market for it.
That's simply not true. Where the massive government subsidies are is in wind and solar. I know that France, which produces 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear, does not have high energy costs. Sweden, which produces 50 percent of its energy with nuclear and 50 percent with hydro, has very reasonable energy costs. I know that the cost of production of electricity among the 104 nuclear plants operating in the United States is 1.68 cents per kilowatt-hour. That's not including the capital costs, but the cost of production of electricity from nuclear is very low, and competitive with dirty coal. Gas costs three times as much as nuclear, at least. Wind costs five times as much, and solar costs 10 times as much.
What about the issue of nuclear waste?
As is now planned, I'd establish a recycling industry for nuclear fuel, which reduces the amount of waste to less than 10 percent of what it would be without recycling. How many Americans know that 50 percent of the nuclear energy being produced in the U.S. is now coming from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads?
The environmental movement is going on about how terrible it will be if someone does something destructive with these materials. Well, actually the opposite is occurring: all over the world, people are using former nuclear-weapons material for peaceful purposes—swords into plowshares. This constant propaganda about the cost of nuclear energy—that's just activists looking for the right buttons to push, and one of the key buttons to push is to make consumers afraid that their electricity prices will go up if nuclear energy is built. In fact, it's natural gas that is causing [energy] prices to go up.Don't you worry about proliferation?
You do not need a nuclear reactor to make a nuclear weapon. With centrifuge technology, it is far easier, quicker and cheaper to make a nuclear weapon by enriching uranium directly. No nuclear reactor was involved in making the Hiroshima bomb. You'll never change the fact that there are evil people in the world. The most deaths in combat in the last 20 years have not been caused by nuclear weapons or car bombs or rifles or land mines or any of the usual suspects, but the machete. And yet the machete is the most important tool for farmers in the developing world. Hundreds of millions of people use it to clear their land, to cut their firewood and harvest their crops. Banning the machete is not an option.
Are you optimistic that there will be an aggressive move toward nuclear power in the industrial world, and in particular in the United States?
There are 32 nuclear plants on the drawing boards right now. Last year four applied for their licenses and this year we expect 10 or 11 more. That's just in the United States. There are hundreds of nuclear plants on the drawing boards around the world. This is a completely new thing: the term "'nuclear renaissance" didn't exist three years ago, and now it's a widely known term. Unfortunately, the environmental movement now is the primary obstacle here. If it weren't for their opposition to nuclear energy, there would be a lot fewer coal-fired power plants in the United States and other parts of the world today.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
