(Source: Providence Journal)
Sen. John McCain pretends to be serious about climate change, but his policy agenda exposes a business-as-usual approach that rewards big polluters while doing little to address the climate crisis.
That nuclear energy or the oxymoron known as "clean coal" will do anything to "reduce our dependency on foreign oil" is a red herring. Unless we are about to start fueling our automobiles with nuclear power or coal, neither has any role to play in addressing the oil crisis.
Yet McCain's energy plan is to build 45 new nuclear reactors, make "clean coal" a reality and drill for offshore oil.
McCain's nuclear hallucination is a financial fantasy. Even the utilities themselves are estimating the cost of a single reactor at upwards of $12 billion. Who will pay for this? Moody's declares that industry stock will plummet the minute reactor construction begins. That leaves the American taxpayer holding the bag, as it has done for decades.
Furthermore, it takes an estimated 7-10 years to bring one reactor on line, too slow to address climate change meaningfully or in time, even if nuclear energy were not dangerous, expensive and an emitter of radioactivity. Construction on the new Finnish reactor (the same design slated for seven new U.S. reactors) is already two years behind schedule.
McCain's fixation with nuclear, coal, and now with offshore drilling undermines any remaining credibility he might have as a champion of climate-change mitigation. Tired old 20th Century thinking like McCain's should be mothballed along with fossil- and fissile-fueled power plants.
LINDA GUNTER
Takoma Park, Md.
(c) 2008 Providence Journal. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
