Moniz: Congress Should Authorize Interim Nuclear Fuel Storage, Morning Consult, JACK FITZPATRICK|OCTOBER 24, 2016 Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz warned Monday that Congress and businesses need to act with more urgency to work out a medley of challenges in promoting nuclear power.
The United States is on track to experience a wave of nuclear plant retirements around 2030. …… Because raising capital and making the necessary business decisions on nuclear power is a slow process, there are only about five years left to start relicensing before many nuclear plants close. If more nuclear plants can extend their licenses to run for 80 years rather than 60, that would be “a very big deal” in terms of keeping nuclear power available, Moniz said.
This is important because the lack of a clear solution for storage of spent nuclear fuel creates a “significant headwind” for opening new nuclear facilities, Moniz said. He called on Congress to pass legislation creating an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel.
Moniz previously told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee the department might be allowed to store nuclear waste at a privately managed facility without congressional approval.
Even so, Moniz said Monday that it would help if Congress acted on the issue. “If Congress acted to give us the authorities — and whether public or privately held storage — we could be having a pilot facility running in not much more than five years,” he said…..
“I believe that consolidated storage, sometimes called interim storage, is absolutely essential,” Moniz said. “No matter when a geological repository is realized, interim storage should be part of the system.”……
Commentary: Debates pitch climate change shutout. A few decades from now, when the realities of climate change have hushed even the loudest, densest deniers, we may look back on October 2016 as the month political journalism died. Environmental Health News, October 19, 2016 Peter Dykstra
On Wednesday evening during the final presidential debate of the campaign, Hell did not freeze over. Moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News, where climate denial plays nothing but home games, passed on the final opportunity to ask Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton about climate change.
This presidential campaign has been a catastrophe for American democracy and for American political journalism.
Amid the relentlessly tawdry campaign news, most Americans haven’t even noticed the absence of virtually any high-level campaign discussion of environmental issues, let alone what many have called the biggest challenge of the 21st century.
For now.
But I invite you to think ahead to that “oh-crap” moment that awaits us all, 5, 10, or 25 years from now when America looks back to reckon with our self-imposed climate silence in the debates.
Journalism —and the memes of our day— have failed us……..
Debate decline
Aside from the “Town Hall” debates—where carefully selected members of the public get to ask questions—you have to go back to 1992 to find a non-TV journalist doing the interrogating at a presidential debate. That was the last election year in which a panel of reporters posed questions to the candidates. Perhaps print journalists don’t fare as well on TV, but it could also be argued that TV journalists don’t always fare well with journalism.
Since then, every journalist’s debate question has come from a network TV anchor or political correspondent. That’s six election cycles, 18 presidential debates where every question came from a well-compensated news celebrity based in New York or Washington. They conduct the debates under the auspices of a non-partisan commission that’s currently led by former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf and Mike McCurry, Bill Clinton’s former Press Secretary. If that’s not an inside job, I don’t know what is……..
For the record, the last, and one of only two, climate change questions ever posed by a journalist at a presidential debate was October 15, 2008. Bob Schieffer of CBS asked about “energy and climate control.” Props to Senator John McCain for gently correcting the moderator and realizing that the question was not about commercial property storage facilities. Then both he and Senator Barack Obama pretty much ducked the climate part of the question and talked about reducing foreign oil imports.
This year’s second debate offered prime evidence of how easily we’re distracted by bright, shiny objects…….
The fervent Trump supporter has told his viewers that the both US president, Barack Obama, and the Democrat nominee, Hilary Clinton, were “literal demons” who smelt of sulphur. I kid you not.
In Australia, we have a senator who similarly sees climate change as a thing made up by the UN. Our top-rating radio host, Alan Jones (no relation), has said climate science is “witchcraft”.
There’s now a whole media ecosystem that climate science denialism can exist inside, where there’s little scrutiny of the views of deniers. US-based sites like the Drudge Report, Infowars, Breitbart and Daily Caller are part of that ecosystem.
For a while, maybe the Trumpocene and the Anthropocene can coexist.
But even though they exist on separate plains, can we really afford to dismiss the impact of either of them?
Websites pushing climate science denial are growing their audience in an era where populist rhetoric and the rejection of expertise is gaining traction For years now geologists have been politely but forcefully arguing over the existence or otherwise of a new epoch – one that might have started decades ago.
Some of the world’s most respected geologists and scientists reckon humans have had such a profound impact on the Earth that we’ve now moved out of the Holocene and into the Anthropocene.
Dropping nuclear bombs and burning billions of tonnes of fossil fuels will do that to a planet, as will clearing swaths of forests to make way for food production and supermarket car parks and the like.
That’s all in the real world though, and sometimes you might get the horrible, chilling idea that when it comes to the production of our thoughts and ideas, that’s not the place a lot of us live anymore.
So I’d like to also propose the idea of an impending new epoch – the Trumpocene – that in the spirit of the era itself is based solely on a few thoughts held loosely together with hyperlinks and a general feeling of malaise.
In the Trumpocene, the epoch-defining impacts of climate change are nothing more than a conspiracy. Even if these impacts are real, then they’re probably good for us.
The era is named, of course, for the phenomenon that is Donald Trump, the Republican pick for US president whose candidacy has been defined by a loose grasp of facts, jingoistic posturing, populist rhetoric, his amazing hair and his treatment of women.
So what are the things that might define the Trumpocene?
Is it the point at which large numbers of people started to reject the views of large groups of actual experts – people with university qualifications and things – in exchange for the views of anyone who agrees with them? (Brexit, anyone?)Continue reading →
The agreement removes uncertainty about the costs of storing interim and final waste and gives investors greater clarity over the future finances of E.ON, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall [VATN.UL].
The utilities will remain responsible for dismantling the country’s nuclear plants, the last of which will be shut down in 2022 as part of Germany’s abandonment of the technology, a decision triggered by Japan’s Fukushima disaster five years ago.
(Reporting by Markus Wacket; Writing by Caroline Copley; Editing by Joseph Nasr)
Why the silence on climate in the US presidential debates? The Conversation, Marc Hudson, October 20, 2016 As scientists become more gloomy about keeping global warming below the allegedly “safe” limit of 2℃, the issue is disappearing from the US presidential debates. There was a brief mention in the second debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton debate, with climate change treated as an “afterthought”.
It’s an odd phenomenon, because awareness of the threat of climate change goes back more than half a century, well before its sudden arrival on public policy agendas in 1988…….
A combination of growing scientific alarm about the growth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a long hot summer in 1988 made climate change an election issue. On the campaign trail, then-Vice President George H. W. Bush announced in his presidential compaign:
Those who think we’re powerless to do anything about the “greenhouse effect” are forgetting about the “White House effect”. As President, I intend to do something about it… In my first year in office, I will convene a global conference on the environment at the White House… We will talk about global warming… And we will act.
They didn’t get on with it, of course……… It was 2000 before presidential candidates debated the issue. George W. Bush (2000-09) said:
I think it’s an issue that we need to take very seriously. But I don’t think we know the solution to global warming yet. ……
Obama framed climate change as an energy independence issue, arguing that:
…we’ve got to walk the walk and not just talk the talk when it comes to energy independence, because this is probably going to be just as vital for our economy and the pain that people are feeling at the pump – and you know, winter’s coming and home heating oil – as it is our national security and the issue of climate change that’s so important.
Despite a petition with 160,000 signatures, the debate moderators for the 2012 debate did not put the issue on the agenda……
What happened? In two words: Tea Party. The emergence of the hyper-conservative Tea Party Republican faction was the culmination of a longer-term trend of what two American academics call “anti-reflexivity”.
For example, Marco Rubio, from Florida – a state that is already being hit by climate impacts – cannot take a position on it.
The second reason is more gloomy, because it is more intractable. Those who have denied climate change for so very long will find it very costly – both politically and psychologically – to reverse their position and admit that they have been wrong. Climate change denial has become a cultural position, as academics like Andrew Hoffman have noted.
Poll finds support for nuclear phaseout, SwissInfo Ch By Urs Geiser , 21 Oct 16
A proposal to decommission Switzerland’s nuclear power plants by 2029 has the backing of a majority of citizens, according to a survey conducted seven weeks ahead of a nationwide vote. Despite this, pollsters believe the initiative is likely to be defeated on November 27.
Supporters of the Green Party proposal had a 21% lead over opponents seven weeks before polling day, while 7% of respondents were undecided, results published on Friday showed.
“The political left, women and citizens in the French-speaking part of the country are in favour,” said Claude Longchamp of the leading GfS Bern research and polling institute.
Supporters face a strong alliance of opponents, including centre-right parties, parliament, the government and the business community.
Nuclear power industry seeks new tax credits, Union Bulletin.com
The nuclear industry has faced a host of issues in the past decade that have shrunk its profits. By JEREMY DILLON of CQ-Roll Call , 20 Oct 16 WASHINGTON — Beset by low natural gas prices and tax advantages for its competitors, the nuclear power industry is seeking new tax credits to help it find its footing in an increasingly challenging marketplace.
The Nuclear Energy Institute’s newly tapped president and CEO Maria Korsnick said last week the trade association is exploring a proposal for new production or investment tax credits to help “even the playing field” against other power sources.
Korsnick currently serves as NEI’s chief operating officer and will take over as president and CEO at the start of 2017, the association announced earlier this month.
She said the credits could be temporary, helping to sustain the industry until the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the market for electricity shared by utilities across the electric grid, enacts changes she said would more accurately reflect nuclear’s value as a reliable, low-carbon energy source. Korsnick could not predict when FERC would act.
Georgia Power customers would receive little protection or relief
Jennifer Rennicks, SACE, 865.235.1448 Atlanta, Ga. Late Thursday the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) Staff issued a proposed Stipulation Agreement that fails to protect Georgia Power customers for increased costs associated with the now 45-month delayed, over budget nuclear reactors under construction at Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro along the Savannah River. The estimated capital cost forecast has increased $1.262 billion for Georgia Power’s share of the project to $5.680 billion from the original $4.418 billion. The PSC press statement identified what appear to be only phantom savings to utility ratepayers while granting the Company guarantee of collection of billions of dollars in increased project costs.
Key items in the proposed Stipulation include:
A defacto extension of the construction schedule from the current 39-month delay to 45 months with acknowledgement that it could be even further delayed, with nominal penalty for the Company.
Capital costs up to $5.680 billion are considered reasonable and prudent thus no review in the future; despite the fact that $3.68 billion has been spent in capital costs as of the 15th Vogtle Construction Monitoring (VCM) report. This appears to represent approval of $2 billion in advance of those capital costs even being spent.
The phantom cost savings to customers over the next four years appears to be due to merely slowing down the collection of financing costs versus actually denying the Company collection of these costs.
Below is a statement from Southern Alliance for Clean Energy’s High Risk Energy Choices Program Director Sara Barczak, an intervening party in the Vogtle Supplemental Information Review process, which the clean energy organization has criticized as an expedited, quasi-prudency review:
Halloween came early in Georgia given the clear treats offered to Southern Company (parent Company of Georgia Power) and the tricks doled out to utility customers. The proposed Stipulation is a major disappointment to consumers for many reasons.
Not one penny of construction costs associated with the construction delay was disallowed, including the $700 million in additional financing costs caused by the delay. Georgia Power will collect 100% of its financing costs. Most of the $325 million in phantom cost reduction to customers is only a delay in collecting financing charges. Georgia Power shareholders may see a tiny drop in their earnings but remain largely protected.
While Georgia Power has spent $3.68 billion on the Project to date, the Stipulation certifies $5.680 billion in construction costs as “prudent” and “reasonable” – essentially an advance approval of $2 billion dollars.
Finally, there is no public record to evaluate whether the PSC Staff negotiated a fair deal or rolled over to the utility company demands.
The proposed Stipulation clearly rewards Southern Company for their and their Contractors’ bungling of the troubled Vogtle nuclear construction project, which has been plagued with a plethora of serious design, engineering and construction problems from Day One that were identified by PSC Staff over years of testimony.
Georgia Power customers will realize little benefit should the Georgia Public Service Commissioners approve this proposal. It’s really sad to see yet another big power company receiving essentially a free pass for their mistakes that will cost families and businesses money.
Additional information: Originally Vogtle reactor Unit 3 was scheduled to come online April 1, 2016 and Unit 4 one year later. As of the 15th VCM report, schedule estimates were June 2019 and June 2020 respectively, a 39-month delay, with a cost estimate of $7.862 billion. The current certified cost for Georgia Power’s share of the project is approximately $6.113 billion. Customers are already paying an additional 9.4% on their monthly bills for the Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery (NCCR) costs due to anti-consumer state legislation passed in 2009 to incentivize building new reactors. Over $1.8 billion in pre-collected financing costs have been charged to ratepayers and the financing costs represent the largest share of the project’s cost overruns. The original approximately $14.1 billion Vogtle project is now estimated to cost well over $20 billion. Georgia Power is 45.7% owner in the project (remaining utility partners are Oglethorpe Power (30%), MEAG (22.7%) and the City of Dalton (1.6%)).
Find more information about Plant Vogtle’s expansion here.
Minister Joematt-Pettersson said in October that Eskom was best-placed to drive the procurement process. Gaye Davis | 2 hours ago
CAPE TOWN – Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe says Cabinet will discuss a proposal that Eskom become the procurement agent for thecountry’s nuclear power programme at its next meeting.
Radebe was responding to questions after briefing on the outcomes of yesterday’s Cabinet meeting.
Energy Minister Tina Joematt-Pettersson said earlier this month Eskom was best-placed to drive the procurement process, while the Department of Energy would act as co-ordinator.
The plan to put Eskom in the nuclear driving seat is set to come before Cabinet in two weeks’ time.
Radebe says, “Eskom being the agency is going to be discussed in the next Cabinet (meeting).The minister of energy will be bringing forth those issues for finalisation by Cabinet.”
Joematt-Pettersson told Parliament’s energy committee earlier this month that Eskom will leverage its own balance sheet to raise the money needed.
Eskom says it wants the first of two nuclear reactors operational in 10 years’ time.
But a revised integrated resource plan, which tries to calculate the country’s long-term energy needs and ways of meeting them, has yet to be approved by Cabinet.
How to Ensure the Iran Nuclear Deal Survives the Next President, NYT, By ARIANE TABATABAI, OCT. 20, 2016 WASHINGTON — With every presidential debate this year, Americans are reminded that the Iran nuclear deal remains as controversial as ever. Iranians, too, are watching the election, dreading the potential consequences for the deal — and for their country’s future.
With only three months before the Obama administration leaves office, the United States and Iran need to work fast to strengthen the deal’s foundations and ensure that the improvement in relations that took place over the course of President Obama’s tenure survives.
Both presidential nominees will most likely increase pressure on Tehran, but they differ on the nuclear deal. Donald J. Trump has denounced it as “one of the worst deals ever negotiated.” Hillary Clinton, on the other hand,played a role in forging it and has pledged to continue its implementation. But she has also vowed to be tough on Iran for its ballistic missile program and its support for terrorism.
Iran is also preparing for presidential elections, scheduled for May. The contenders haven’t yet announced their candidacies, but President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate, is likely to face tough conservative challengers, some of whom opposed negotiations with the Americans and believe he agreed to too many concessions. His opponents say that the deal affords Iran no tangible benefits because, although sanctions have been lifted, the economy has hardly recovered.
Against this backdrop, the nuclear agreement will enter the second year of implementation in early 2017.
But even now, there are many challenges to Iranian-American relations. Iran has tested the United States by arresting American citizens, continuing its ballistic missile program and conducting cyberattacks against American interests. For its part, the United States Congress has placed obstacles in the way of the deal’s implementation, such as trying to stall the sale of civilian aircraft to Iran. And while the State Department has tried to encourage businesses to re-enter the Iranian market, many remain reluctant because the Treasury Department has been slow to provide clarity on sanctions.
But thanks to open channels of communication between Washington and Tehran, nothing yet has derailed the nuclear deal.
Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif of Iran have developed a good working relationship. In January, communication between the two led to the quick release of American sailors who were detained after entering Iranian waters. These channels are one of the greatest achievements of the nuclear talks and key to the deal’s success, allowing two adversaries to finally settle disputes diplomatically. But unless these means of dialogue are sustained, hiccups could turn into bigger crises, ultimately undoing the improvement in relations — and the nuclear deal.
To protect them, the United States and Iran should institutionalize their relationship. The State Department and Iran’s Foreign Ministry should have conversations not just at the highest levels, but across their diplomatic corps. By starting now to move interactions with Iran from top-level political appointees to others within the State Department, the United States can create the building blocks for the next administration……http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/opinion/how-to-ensure-the-iran-nuclear-deal-survives-the-next-president.html?_r=0
Clues to the end of the world shared during final 2016 presidential debate, Mondoweiss, Wilson Dizard on October 20, 2016 “……Four minutes is what it takes between the president’s decision to fire nuclear missiles, Clinton claimed during the debate, and their launch………..Here is the most illuminating exchange on nuclear weapons, according to a transcript published by the Washington Post. Clinton gave a clinical description of how fast nuclear weapons can be fired away at a president’s command. That information was perhaps a subtle way of warning Russian president Vladimir Putin that we remain the fastest guns in the West.
CLINTON: “I — I find it ironic that he’s raising nuclear weapons. This is a person who has been very cavalier, even casual about the use of nuclear weapons. He’s advocated more countries getting them, Japan, Korea, even Saudi Arabia. He said, well, if we have them, why don’t we use them, which I think is terrifying.
But here’s the deal. The bottom line on nuclear weapons is that when the president gives the order, it must be followed. There’s about four minutes between the order being given and the people responsible for launching nuclear weapons to do so. And that’s why 10 people who have had that awesome responsibility have come out and, in an unprecedented way, said they would not trust Donald Trump with the nuclear codes or to have his finger on the nuclear button……..
What Trump doesn’t seem to understand that defending Saudi Arabia, Germany, Japan and South Korea means defending major trading partners and, in the case of Saudi Arabia, a sand seared ocean of oil. But if the American nuclear umbrella suddenly closed, all of those countries could have nuclear weapons ready within weeks or months. The details are unimportant. What’s nauseatingly disturbing is that we are discussing the possibility of nuclear war at all. After all, this is 2016, right? If the arc of history bends towards justice, a nuclear holocaust is the thing that would blow that arc to smithereens. The real end of history
Clinton, for her part, recommitted herself to a no-fly zone in Syria, a provocation to Russian air forces the U.S. blames for bombing civilians and Western-friendly rebels. She also said that the occupation of Iraq would “not be in our interest,” while not mentioning that the Iraqis also have their objections to American military occupation. Classic Clinton.
AP FACT CHECK: Donald Trump is wrong to say that only Russia can still create warheads under the New START treaty limiting nuclear weapons A claim from the final presidential debate and how it stacks up with the facts:
DONALD TRUMP: Referring to a 2010 U.S.-Russia treaty limiting both countries to 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads, Trump said, “They create warheads. We can’t.”
The FACTS: Incorrect. The New START treaty, which Trump called “Start Up,” does not prevent either the U.S. or Russia from building nuclear warheads. It restricts each country to a total of 1,550 warheads deployed on bombers, submarines and in underground silos and requires that this limit be reached by February 2018.
Trump also said that after the treaty was signed, “They expanded and we didn’t.”
It’s true that the Russians have increased the number of their deployed warheads to 1,796, and the U.S. warhead total has dropped to 1,367. But it also is true that their total was far below that of the U.S. when the treaty went into effect in 2010. New data published by the State Department this month showed that although Russia has added to its warhead total, its inventory of missile launchers, such as underground silos, has shrunk.
Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, who closely tracks U.S. and Russian strategic forces, says the rise in Russian deployed warheads is temporary and is to be followed by the retirement of older nuclear weapons so that Moscow gets under the treaty limits. “Russian compliance with the treaty by 2018 is not in doubt,” he wrote recently.
byPAUL STREETI have more than once heard fellow U.S. leftists describe the choice between dismal Democrats and rancid Republicans as like a choice of how one would like to be executed: firing squad or hanging; electric chair or gas chamber; guillotine or liquid injection. With the official range of selection narrowed to Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton for U.S. President, we might extend the metaphor to all of humanity (and to the other species homo sapiens hasn’t already eradicated) and ask: which is your preferred near-term path of extinction, accelerated anthropogenic (really capitalogenic) global warming (AGW) or thermonuclear world war?
If one wants to work with the dichotomy of “greater” and “lesser” evil, Trump is quite probably the “greater evil” on climate change, whose existence he denies. If president, he says, he would “deregulate [American] energy.” He would help the nation’s fossil fuel firms and their customers extract, sell, and burn as much coal. gas, and oil as they could (and the executive branch can do quite a bit in that regard). Noam Chomsky is right that this could signal “almost a death knell for the species.” We are speeding to ecosystem collapse with AGW in the lead of numerous interrelated “ecological rifts.” A stepped-up carbon orgy under a Trump administration could well seal the tipping-point deal.
But Hillary Clinton is the greater evil when it comes to World War III. She is showing signs that she would view a landslide victory against Trump as what the left analyst Glen Ford calls “a mandate for war with [nuclear] Russia.” The nuclear “dice on humanity’s future” (Ford) are already being shaken by the Obama administration. Consistent with Obama’s long-time commitment (shared the Clintons, Madeline Albright, and the rest of the Council on Foreign Relations crowd) to the Zbigniew Brzezinski project of humiliating Russia, Washington has helped install a vicious right wing and pro-Western government in Ukraine, a key state on Russia’s western border (one that past European invaders have marched through on a path to Moscow). Last May, Washington announced the installation of a so-called European missile defense system in Romania – a deployment that Russia naturally interpreted as an attack on its nuclear deterrence capacity. The White House disingenuously claimed that the system was meant to protect Europe from Iran, something that Moscow immediately and reasonably denounced as a lie. Russia suggested that it might retaliate by placing nuclear missiles in Crimea and Kaliningrad, its exclave on the Baltic Sea, between Poland and Lithuania.
The key hotspot in the U.S. and Western-led “new Cold War” now is of course Russia- and Iran-backed Syria, where U.S. and other Western airplanes “mistakenly” killed 62 Syrian troops one month ago. The attack effectively blew up a Syrian “ceasefire” Washington had arranged with the Syrian government’s key ally Russia just a week before. Now, Pepe Escobar reports, “the Pentagon – supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff – …is peddling ‘potential strikes’ on Syria’s air force to ‘punish the regime’ for what the Pentagon actually did; blow up the ceasefire.” Washington disingenuously claims to have deep humanitarian concerns for the 250,000 or so civilians who are trapped on the eastern side of the city of Aleppo, a rebel/al Qaeda-controlled territory under siege by the Syrian army and Shia paramilitary forces from Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. This follows a provocative Washington Post story leaking reports that the Obama administration is thinking about undertaking a direct U.S. covert war on the ground against the Syrian state.
All of this has quite naturally elicited a stern response from Moscow. The Russian Ministry of Defense telling Washington to “weigh the consequences” of its schemes. Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov informed the world that it was ready and willing to use its state-of-the-art air defense systems to shoot down U.S. war planes attacking Syrian troops or Russian military installations. If and when that happens, Konashenkov added, things will be moving too fast for the Russians to use the “hotline” to give Washington the “exact flight program” of its air defense missiles in Syria.
This is all bad enough, but Hillary seems to want to up the ante. Listen to her language in her second “presidential” “debate” with Trump. “The situation in Syria is catastrophic,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And every day that goes by, we see the results of the regime by Assad in partnership with Iranians on the ground, the Russians in the air…when I was Secretary of State, I advocated and I advocate today a no-fly zone and a safe zone.” Continue reading →
Donald J. Trump the Hawk, Counter Punch bySHELDON RICHMAN, OCTOBER 14, 2016 Donald Trump is no peacenik. Leave aside Trump’s proclamation that he “love[s] war” and unpredictability, and that he is more “militaristic” than anyone. Forget that he wants to enlarge the military and that he refuses to forswear first use of nuclear weapons. Ignore his bellicosity toward Iran and China or his promise to support Israel unconditionally. Pay no attention to Trump’s 2002 endorsement of the invasion of Iraq and his imploring Obama to invade Libya and overthrow Muammar Gaddafi.
All we have to do to see the real Trump is examine his allegedly dovish statements.
Trump takes heat every time he expresses a wish to get along with Russia. This in itself would be good: the United States and Russia could destroy the world with their nuclear weapons. But the ruling elite disagrees. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact alliance, U.S. rulers have provoked Russia by incorporating its former allies and republics into NATO and enabling a coup against an elected Russia-friendly president of Ukraine, jeopardizing Russia’s naval base in Crimea.
But would Trump really pursue peaceful relations with Russia? It’s not so clear. When asked about his views on Russia at the recent joint appearance with Hillary Clinton, he noted that Russia is “fighting ISIS,” which he implied puts the United States on the same side. “I believe we have to get ISIS,” he said. “We have to worry about ISIS before we can get too much more involved.”
Note the words before we can get too much more involved. Trump’s statement indicates that working with Russia is merely a matter of priorities. First ISIS, then … what? More intervention, presumably against Syria’s ruler, Bashar al-Assad.
After all, Assad is an ally of Iran, which Trump demonizes daily. We have no reason to think that if he presided over the defeat of ISIS, Trump would continue to cooperate on Syria with Russia, which like Iran would still have influence in the Middle East. Thin-skinned nationalist Trump is unlikely to suffer what he regards as impertinences from these nations, which resent having an American president define their places in the world…….
Trump wants to “bomb the shit” out of ISIS. He wants to torture suspected terrorists. He wants to kill the relatives of those suspects. That would only inspire more terrorism. Trump has obviously learned nothing from the wars he once supported and now falsely claims to have opposed…….. http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/14/donald-j-trump-the-hawk/
The Hillary Clinton Environmental Scorecard The former Secretary of State could inherit a number of ambitious eco-commitments established by President Obama. Here’s where she stands on each one. Outside By: Juliet Eilperin Oct 17, 2016 “…….
Climate Change and Renewable Energy
In contrast to Obama, who barely mentioned the issue when he was running for reelection in 2012, Clinton has made tackling climate change a major theme in her campaign. She’s mentioned it during both the primary and general election debates, mocking Trump during the first debate by saying, “Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real.” Trump replied, “I did not. I did not. I do not say that.” (He actually did tweet that, and he has also questioned whether global warming is even underway.)
Clinton has vowed to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, and 80 percent by mid-century. She’s also pledged to cut U.S. oil consumption by a third, ensure that half a billion solar panels will be installed by 2020, and carry out a ten-fold increase in renewable energy production on public lands. On top of that, she aims to provide $60 billion to state and city officials through a “clean energy challenge fund” so they can reduce their carbon output and enhance their resilience to climate impacts, along with another $30 billion to struggling coal communities.
Such ideas make Clinton attractive to environmentalists. “It’s probably fair to say that, by the time his term is over, President Obama will be regarded as the most environmental president we’ve ever seen, and yet we’re confident Secretary Clinton will build on this record, and even do more,” says League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski, whose group is pouring $10 million into the presidential race this cycle.
Clinton’s 2020 overall emissions target is more aggressive than what Obama has pledged under the Paris climate agreement. Her solar plan, for example, suggests that the U.S. will have 140 gigawatts of installed solar by the end of 2020, compared to the 100 gigawatts that’s now projected. But the question of whether she can deliver on her promises remains—especially since she has yet to embrace the idea of imposing a sweeping carbon tax, and it’s unlikely that Congress would hand over tens of billions of dollars to her administration if she’s elected. While Clinton has vowed to defend federal regulations limiting the carbon output of existing power plants, which are currently being challenged in court, she will have to do much more than that in order to meet her professed goals. …….http://www.outsideonline.com/2125806/hillary-clinton-environmental-scorecard
