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The Presidential Candidate With a Plan To Run the US On 100% Clean Energy
merbs writes: Thus far, no other candidate has said they're going to make climate change their top priority. Martin O'Malley has not only done that, but he has outlined a plan that would enact emissions reductions in line with what scientists say is necessary to slow global climate change—worldwide emissions reductions of 40-70 percent by 2050. He's the only candidate to do that, too. His plan would phase out fossil-fueled power plants altogether, by midcentury.
Thus far, no other candidate has said they're going to make climate change their top priority.
Ever notice how politicians' plans are always far out in the future? Sure, 35 years is within the scope of of most of our lives, but usually they are well past the time that the politicians proposing them will be around to face the consequences. We hear the same thing all the time about balancing the budget and paying down the deficit ever since Reagan, but neither one has happened yet.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Then it's not a plan. It's just a bullshit pipe dream that he's selling you for your vote.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
His Op-Ed doesn't mention nuclear even once. Going full renewable in 35 years is one hell of a goal to shoot for. We have all the renewable energy we will ever need available but we don't currently have any way to store it in a grid scale type of way - and he only mentions storage once.
Nuclear isn't clean by any stretch, but it is 'clean air' which is what we probably need most right now. I'd love to see full renewable but a more reasonable plan would be nuclear in the short (30-50) year term while renewable/storage becomes grid capable.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Thus far, no other candidate has said they're going to make climate change their top priority.
Ever notice how politicians' plans are always far out in the future? Sure, 35 years is within the scope of of most of our lives, but usually they are well past the time that the politicians proposing them will be around to face the consequences. We hear the same thing all the time about balancing the budget and paying down the deficit ever since Reagan, but neither one has happened yet.
Amen to that.
If we are gonna claim to be serious about cutting emissions, France has already proven the technology to do so has already existed for a long time. We can start funding the deployment of nuclear power on a large scale now. The technology all existed to transition years ago already when France did it and used it to this day to sell energy to the rest of Europe.
Meandering mouth service to researching solar or wind or some other solution isn't bad per se, but it is absolutely inadequate to stop there. There are real concrete actions that can be taken today by anyone that is truly motivated and convinced of the importance to do so.
The Presidential Candidate with an Unrealistic Campaign Promise
bonus: you can reuse it for any of them
Many of us in Maryland know this character ALL too well already. Typical liberal "tax and spend" agenda is what you can expect from him. "We're the government and we know what's best for you."
Thanks, but no thanks.
Look, "climate change" may be the hot discussion topic right now - but it's crazy thinking we can put a serious dent in it and "turn it around" simply by shutting down a bunch of our nation's power generation plants! (Right now, we're finally coming around in energy self-sufficiency, largely because of the discovery of large natural gas and shale oil deposits. Folks like O'Malley would discard all of this as "bad fossil fuels", even though much of the rest of the world will keep on using fossil fuel energy sources anyway. That means we're at a big economic disadvantage. Will be far cheaper to get things done in the nations that have lower cost energy to get them done for us -- so leads to more outsourcing of manufacturing and jobs, not to mention job loss in our country for people in the business of gathering, processing and selling those forms of energy.)
Fossil fuel usage will decline as better alternatives become economically viable. (Who wouldn't rather get "free energy" from the wind, the natural flow of water, or the sun shining down on us?) Those options are being worked on by lots of people and we're putting them into use as fast as it makes economic sense to do so. But you can't just "legislate them into exclusive usage" and pretend that's a problem solver! Whenever you're legally FORCED to use a technology that doesn't make good economic sense, you just increase the cost of living, destroy job availability and drive people to find other places in the world where alternatives are still allowed.
Frankly, I think nuclear power is still the obvious best option for large scale centralized power generation -- but the type of reactors needed to do it safely are VERY costly to construct and still have to overcome a lot of negativity from "OMG, nuclear! It's gonna kill us all!" types who don't understand the technology very well. Again, it's something that will naturally come with time (and as given fossil fuels become scarce enough to run their price up enough to make these alternatives look better).
This is politics at it's best, say something which everybody agrees with, even if it's not possible. Claim you have a plan! We can pass a law! Never mind that what you are promising is simply not possible.
There is no such thing as "CLEAN" energy on an industrial scale. Literally EVERYTHING has negative environmental impact. You simply cannot avoid it. Of course you can just declare that some technology is clean (i.e. "Clean Coal") if you want, but that doesn't make it so, nor does it mean you fulfilled your promise.
Now when some candidate comes out and starts saying things like "environmentally responsible energy sources" and mentions that he likes fracking for natural gas because it's domestic, fairly clean and we have a lot of it, that's the politician I'm going to pay attention to. The guy that starts talking about conservation of the energy we now use is more likely to get my vote than this nut job. They are thinking about the issue, not just dropping politically correct phrases on us.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Followed the link, searched for nuclear, didn't find it in the story. Closed the page.
If you are espousing 0 emission energy in the next 35 years, and you don't mention nuclear as a necessary component, then you are lying.
Followed the link, searched for nuclear, didn't find it in the story. Closed the page.
If you are espousing 0 emission energy in the next 35 years, and you don't mention nuclear as a necessary component, then you are lying.
I agree if you do NOT mention using nuclear power you are lying or stupid. Tim S.
I heartily support the construction of all nuclear plants that have an competitive lifecycle cost. I'm sure they will a fill a niche in the market that the currently endless flood of solar, wind, and grid-storage bids at a quarter the cost cannot possibly fill.
Sarcasm aside, take a look at some of the recent studies showing how to decarbonize electricity production in the next 20 to 40 years with no new research, and coincidentally, very little new nuclear capacity. The ONLY barriers are social and political--even now the economics are so compelling that every call for projects solicits more than regulators and utilities want to accept. In another 2-5 years, battery tech will invalidate every last excuse they have been using to discourage wind and solar, and the fuel-free future will finally take off.
Because http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg
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Ooh, an economy alarmist bullshitter.
Before the Civil War they said freeing the slaves would ruin the economy. The US had to free them because it was a moral imperative. The war cost us 5% of the US population in casualties. The sum total of the monetary value of all slaves at the start of the civil war was roughly one trillion dollars in today's dollars. The slaves were freed and the US became the world's greatest economic power as a result.
Fast forward to today. The oligarchic elites (the Koch brothers and other greedy billionaires) control roughly fourteen trillion dollars in fossil fuels. In order to monetize their investment they need to suck it out of the earth and burn it. The resulting pollution would kill at least millions, if not render the entire planet uninhabitable. There is a moral imperative to not do that.
If one trillion dollars was sufficient to justify killing or wounding 5% of all Americans, I shudder to think how many people the Koch brothers and their friends are willing to kill or wound for fourteen trillion dollars.
Our economy was based on slave labor. We emancipated the slaves, and surprise! We prospered anyway. Now our economy is based on generating poison gas from fossil fuels. When we stop burning fossil fuels, I predict we'll prosper anyway. Maybe not the Koch brothers. Oh boo-hoo.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
And yet Germany is making even better progress with true, natural energy. No nukes needed thank you. Sun, wind and tide can get the job done. But I do fear that assassins will be used to keep big oil and big coal going.
We have cars coming off the assembly line now that will take 20 years to fully phase out. As much as I'd love to just throw fossil fuels out the window, the transition will take time.
Unless you believe in magic.
Before the Civil War they said freeing the slaves would ruin the economy. The US had to free them because it was a moral imperative. The war cost us 5% of the US population in casualties. The sum total of the monetary value of all slaves at the start of the civil war was roughly one trillion dollars in today's dollars. The slaves were freed and the US became the world's greatest economic power as a result.
Really? The US didn't become the number one economy until 1916 - about the time that most of the European powers (specifically, the UK - which was the biggest economy before the US stepped into that role) were deep into World War I. World War II pretty much cemented our position as the rest of the first world (and much of the 2nd) was bombed and broken. I don't think it was the slaves that made us the greatest economic power, but rather the fact we have two large bodies of water keeping us relatively safe from wars in Europe and Asia.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Amazing. Glossing over facts, ignoring the difference between disproven hypotheses and modern economic theory. Baldly dishonest claims about the effects of petroleum as a fuel.
Our economy was not based on slave labor. The North won the war largely because its non-slave economy was stronger. The South could have had an economy stronger than it was if it had just slowly transformed into a market economy (because free labor is more productive than slave.) (Historically not possible, due to culture and laws of slave states.)
That is just plain dishonest. Our economy is enhanced by, not based on, energy production from fossil fuels. The primary byproducts are carbon dioxide and water, neither of which is a poison at the concentrations at which they are currently generated. You are a liar, and you know it.
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Yes, perhaps we too can do it the German way. All we need to do is reopen all our old coal-fired power plants, while at the same time encouraging Mexico to install nuclear, so we can buy it from them.
Umm, the "rest of the world" have waited 20yrs for the US to stop obstructing international negotiations on climate change, all of a sudden it's now the rest of the world not pulling their weight?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
First, there's the obvious matter of how much said plant will cost, not only in nominal monetary terms, but also in terms of potential damage to the environment in order to acquire the materials necessary to build it. Solar has a reliance on rare earth metals and the DOE has pegged China as having about half of the world's estimates and they're rather protective of them, never mind their poor record on doing anything in an environmentally friendly manner. However, I'm rather optimistic that within 30 years we'll have solutions that work just as well if not better than what we currently have without these requirements.
Next, there's the obvious issue of constraints on energy production, which is where nuclear really stands out as it doesn't matter whether the sun is shining or which way the wind is blowing. To some extent you need a reliable source of power that can be tapped into regardless of what the conditions may be like, especially on a local level. I'm also fairly optimistic that we'll eventually solve many of the issues related to transmitting energy over long distances, but for now it's a good idea not to waste a lot of energy in moving that energy to where it needs to be.
Finally, we have nuclear solutions that can work today. The technology is already there and works well. It's not something that will be ready in five* years or some indeterminate point in the future. If I'm going to be just as optimistic here, nuclear can also get a lot better as well, especially if it were to get the same kind of money and mind-share thrown at it as some of the other alternatives.
Is nuclear the be-all, end-all solution? Of course not. Much like coal or any other fossil fuel, there's a limit to the amount of fuel we can extract from the Earth, but the energy density is rather good and many of the resources are untapped. I imagine that we'll get to some real space-age shit that we can't even comprehend at this point before we run out of nuclear fuel or that a combination of improvements in solar and general energy efficiency of products will be able to sustain humanity's needs over several centuries.
Not sure if that's the nonsense you were looking for.
And why should that make it acceptable to not care about the longer term consequences?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Actually, until very recently, the Social Security budget was running in the black and contributing to the ability of the US government to spend. Unfortunately, all of the Social Security surplus was invested, in accordance with the law, in US Treasury bonds, and those debts were not counted as part of the federal budget deficits. So the problem is not in the Social Security budget, per se, but in Congress having already spent all of the Social Security surpluses of the past.
You are correct, except in your definition of a Ponzi scheme. Simply paying people out of current receipts is not a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme involves creating the illusion of high returns on investment by paying out the capital from new investors and calling it profit on the old investments while claiming that all of the original investments are still there. The difference is that Social Security does not claim you have any capital invested nor that you are making any profit - it has always been portrayed as paying current retirees from a tax on current workers (albeit, with some money put aside to smooth out the highs and lows caused by the employment and retirement numbers). The numbers can deceive people about the federal budget deficit, but it is not a Ponzi scheme by Social Security.