nuclear-news

Comparing the policies of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Jill Stein

 Both the Obama and Romney campaigns are enthusiastically supportive of nuclear power, with Obama touting the licensing of the first new nuclear power plant in decades, and Romney vowing to speed up licensing of new nuclear power plants.

Jill Stein opposes the use of nuclear power.

Stein gets the nod on renewables as well.

Obama, Romney, or Stein: Who Has the Greenest Energy Policy? Tree Hugger, Mat McDermott, September 7, 2012 There may be a stark difference between Obama and Romney in their climate change rhetoric (let’s turn a blind eye for a second to climate change action), but what about on energy policy?

After all, in different degrees both Obama and Romney pay lip service to supporting both fossil fuels and renewable energy. And what about Dr Jill Stein, the presidential candidate from the Green Party?

Let’s take a quick look at several key energy issues and what Obama, Romney and Stein propose doing about it.
Fracking: …..
Expanding Domestic Oil Drilling…..
Tar Sands & the Keystone XL Pipeline: …..
Nuclear Power: Both the Obama and Romney campaigns are enthusiastically supportive of nuclear power, with Obama touting the licensing of the first new nuclear power plant in decades, and Romney vowing to speed up licensing of new nuclear power plants.

That Romney has made such a big deal about governmental support of
renewable energy and how unfair that is, it’s not just a bit ironic
that he overlooks the fact that without significant government help
nuclear power would be simply not be financially feasible.

Jill Stein opposes the use of nuclear power.
Coal: ….
Renewable Energy: The Romney campaign continually tries to make
political hay out of the failure of Solyndra—that private investors
lost millions and that the government loan program for renewable
energy has otherwise been very successful seems beside the point—and
proposes concentrating “alternative energy funding on basic research”
instead. Romney also says (counterfactually) “the failure of windmills
and solar plants to become economically viable or make a significant
contribution to our energy supply is a prime example” of wrong-headed
“politically favored” approaches to energy development.

In contrast, the Obama campaign touts the genuinely noteworthy
expansion of wind and solar power in recent years, and would expand
incentives for renewable energy. It’s a positive approach to
renewables, but not as ambitious as the Stein campaign, which favors a
transition towards a 100% renewable energy mix by 2050.

Stein gets the nod on renewables as well.
Stein = Dark Green, Obama = Greenish with Brown Spots, Romney = Dark Brown
It’d perhaps be a surprise if Dr Jill Stein, running on the Green
Party ticket, came away with anything other than the greenest energy
policy of all the presidential candidates. Indeed, in the broad
stroke, Stein advocates for exactly the type of ambition and change we
need when it comes to energy in the United States……. President
Obama clearly believes that renewable energy is the future—as he
clearly believes that climate change needs to be dealt with and is a
grave threat—and supports expanding some of the support and vision
needed to bring more and more of it online. But, as with his climate
change vision, he’s both constrained by the US political system and by
an apparent unwillingness to go out forcefully and say (as Stein has)
that we need to get off fossil fuels as fast as practical, not as fast
as the fossil fuel industry would like. …..
Romney is clearly the least green option for US energy policy. While
the talk of achieving energy independence is noble, he proposes going
down the dead end path of continued fossil fuel use to do so…
http://www.treehugger.com/energy-policy/obama-romney-stein-greenest-energy-policy.html

September 17, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized