In USA’s Presidential campaign – Republican climate denialism is at fever pitch
Dahr Jamail | As Climate Disruption Advances, UN Warns: “The Future Is Happening Now” TruthOut, , 02 May 2016 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout “……… Report Denial and Reality
The ongoing Republican presidential campaigning means that anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) denial is reaching a fever pitch.
Republican presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and front-runner Donald Trump both vowed to undo several Obama administration policy efforts aimed at mitigating ACD impacts.
Meanwhile, former governor of Alaska and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin claimed that ACD was “bogus” and a myth that scientists and policy makers “are peddling” in order to advance political agendas.
Also on the denial front, the group Media Matters cataloged the questions asked during both the Republican and Democratic presidential debates, and found that of the 1,477 questions asked by the various networks to the candidates, only 22 of them (approximately 1.5 percent) were about ACD. Of all the networks that hosted debates, the one that asked the most ACD-related questions was the Spanish-language network (Univision, which is US-based).
Back to reality, recent polling shows that the vast majority of Americans now believe that ACD is real and ongoing, and that the US government needs to do something about it.
Meanwhile, scientists in a global coalition known as Climate Feedback have begun working together with the aim of sorting fact from fiction in US media ACD coverage.
According to Michael Levitin, the group’s communications coordinator, the new group will use a web platform to verify facts and annotate online articles and include their comments on top of the original story. They will then use a rating system so readers are able to judge the stories’ scientific credibility.
“Recognized by NASA, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and California Gov. Jerry Brown, among others, Climate Feedback is already improving journalistic standards by flagging misreported climate science in mainstream outlets,” Levitin said…….http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35860-as-climate-disruption-advances-un-warns-the-future-is-happening-now
USA Republicans – half of them accept the science of climate change
Half of U.S. Conservatives Say Climate Change Is Real, Bloomberg, Trump and Cruz reject global warming, while more Republicans see it as a threat.Eric Roston eroston
The new survey results, “Politics & Global Warming 2016,” suggest a growing gap between what most registered Republican voters understand to be true and what the party leadership says it believes, particularly on the presidential campaign trail this year.
Liberal-to-moderate Republicans say climate change is real in much higher numbers than the party’s right wing does. More than 70 percent of GOP moderates say they know the world is warming, up 10 percentage points from two years ago. But only half of these Republicans, and just 26 percent of conservative Republicans, identify the problem as caused mostly by human activities (PDF)…….
The survey confirms that while only liberal Democrats put climate change near the top of their agenda, it remains a litmus test for credibility among many registered voters. Respondents were more likely to pick a candidate who strongly supports fighting climate change, 43 percent to 14 percent. They also reported feeling less likely to vote for an opponent to climate policy.
The issue is generational as well as partisan, according to Sheril Kirshenbaum, director of the University of Texas-Austin Energy Poll. Younger Americans are much likelier to understand climate change—but that doesn’t mean they’ll vote…..
Climate change is also the most divisive of the 23 issues—a fact the researchers will look at in more detail next week, when it reports on what each presidential candidates’ supporters think about the issue. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-27/half-of-u-s-conservatives-say-climate-change-is-real
Michael Douglas wants presidential candidates to start talking about nuclear weapons.
Tribeca: Michael Douglas Calls for Presidential Candidates to Talk Nuclear Weapons http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tribeca-2016-michael-douglas-nuclear-887171 The actor is working on a doc about a San Fernando Valley family who grew up near a Boeing plant which had a nuclear accident in the 1950s. “[It] basically poisoned the whole neighborhood. The whole family has thyroid cancer,” says Douglas. 4/23/2016 by Ashley Lee
At a 2016 Tribeca Film Festival discussion before the immersive closing-night film the bomb, Douglas said the world is “on the advent of a new Cold War advancement in nuclear weapons — the U.S. is talking about a trillion dollars to spend, the Russians have their new missiles out,” he explained. “It’s just very difficult to believe. … Maybe, just maybe, we can look at a new generation to look at what I think is the most serious issue that we have on the planet right now.”
Even more so, “we’ve got elections coming up this year. Once we get through these primaries and once more attention is brought to just how this arms race is continuing now, there should be a huge discussion coming this fall,” said the actor and longtime advocate of nuclear non-proliferation. “It looks like it’s gonna be [Donald] Trump and Hillary Clinton, with diametrically different opinions on this important issue — one who wants to nuke ‘em, and somebody else.”
Command & Control director Robert Kenner added, “If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, I think there will be more discussion on nuclear weapons because he is the best argument for abolition that we can make.”
As seen in action flicks like Pacific Rim and Independence Day, Hollywood tends to portray nuclear weapons onscreen as the ultimate and necessary arsenal, and Douglas said that won’t change anytime soon. “Not in Hollywood — we’re based on a business of balances, commerce with filmmaking. Commerce has to win out,” said the actor. “Any movie where the message gets ahead of the drama … unless you’re doing documentaries, you can’t get ahead of yourself. They’re not interested.”
Still, Douglas said he’s working on a documentary “about a young man living in the San Fernando Valley who grew up near a Boeing plant which had a nuclear accident in the 1950s and basically poisoned the whole neighborhood. The whole family has thyroid cancer.”
The panel — also featuring Command & Control author Eric Schlosser, Emma Belcher of the MacArthur Foundation and the bomb filmmaker Smriti Keshari — discussed that nuclear weapons and climate change are the two most important global issues, and because of the visual proof of climate change that’s emerged, the world has begun responding with urgency.
“The terrifying thing about the nuclear issue is … you’re really gonna have to wait for a dirty bomb. It’s gonna make 9/11, Paris, Brussels, everything a miniscule amount before the amount of people who are going to be killed [by a nuclear bomb],” said Douglas. “The only optimism I see, is of these two major issues, the two most important in the world, we can eliminate nuclear weapons. It’s really easy. … We as humans can do something about it — we actually can, it’s within our grasp.”
Douglas began his activism against nuclear weapons after making The China Syndrome, James Bridges’ 1979 film co-starring Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon about a cover-up of safety hazards at a nuclear power plant. To prepare for its finale, the shoot included consultations with General Electric quality assurance experts who “gave us a breakdown of the most logical accident that might happen at a power plant,” the actor and producer recalled. “That power plant was the ultimate villain — it’s a horror picture.
“Thirteen days after the movie came out, Three Mile Island happened in Pennsylvania,” said Douglas, as news outlets ran split-screen footage of the real-life tragedy and the film. “It was an epiphany for me, the closest thing to a religious experience I might have ever had.”
Washington Post and New York Times in the arms of the nuclear lobby?
Trampling Science to Boost Nuclear Power, FAIR, By Jim Naureckas 20 Apr 16, When the Washington Post and New York Times are making the same corporate-friendly point, it’s safe to assume that some PR agency somewhere is earning its substantial fees.
In this case, the subject is the need for nuclear power—and, for the Post editorial board (4/18/16), for fracking as well. Standing in the way of this in the Post’s version is favorite target Bernie Sanders, while the Times business columnist Eduardo Porter (4/19/16) blames the “scientific phobias and taboos” of “progressive environmentalists.”
“While campaigning in New York, Mr. Sanders has played up his opposition to nuclear power,” the Post editorialists wrote, citing his contention that the Indian River nuclear plant, 25 miles from Manhattan, is a “catastrophe waiting to happen.” Sanders’ “criticism came as little surprise,” the Post declared; “he had already promised to phase out nuclear power nationwide by steadily retiring existing reactors.”
“If we are serious about global warming, we will ignore Mr. Sanders’ sloganeering,” the paper urged. “Nuclear accounts for about a fifth of the country’s electricity, and it is practically emissions-free.”
In reality, nuclear power is not emissions-free; the process of mining and enriching uranium fuel, along with constructing nuclear plants, operating backup generators during reactor downtime, disposal of nuclear waste and eventual decommissioning of plants all contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. According to an analysis published by the journal Nature (9/24/08), nuclear power does produce 14 times less in greenhouse gas emissions than coal, and seven times less than natural gas—but twice as much as solar cells and seven times as much as onshore wind farms. For halting climate change, in other words, there are more serious options than nuclear.
The Post went on:
Shutting down that much clean electricity generation would put the country into a deep emissions hole. Mr. Sanders argues that he will invest heavily in renewables. Yet every dollar spent to replace one carbon-free source with another is a dollar that could have been spent replacing dangerous and dirty coal plants. Under Mr. Sanders’ vision, either the country would fail to maximize emissions cuts, or it would waste huge amounts of money unnecessarily replacing nuclear plants.
Sanders actually favors “a moratorium on nuclear power plant license renewals in the United States”—in other words, as the Post had earlier described it more accurately, “phas[ing] out nuclear power nationwide by steadily retiring existing reactors.” So it’s not a question of using money to replace a nuclear plant that could have gone to replacing a coal plant; the nuclear plants need to be replaced with something when they reach the end of their useful lives.
And if you put that money into renewables rather than into a new nuclear plant, you can reduce emissions more quickly. The investment bank Lazard analyzes the “levelized cost of energy”—the cost of building and operating an electrical plant per unit of electricity produced. In its latest report (11/15), the bank found that nuclear’s LCOE ranged from $97 to $136 per megawatt-hour, while wind costs between $32 and $77; utility-scale photovoltaic solar was priced between $50 to $70. Note that these costs for nuclear do not include the decommissioning of obsolete plants, which can add $1 billion–$4 billion to the lifetime cost, nor the cost of accidents like the Fukushima meltdown, which is expected to cost Japan some $300 billion (Renewable Energy World,4/28/16).
The Post concluded that the best bet would be to put a tax on carbon, then “let the market find the fastest and most efficient road to slowing the warming of the planet.” The irony is that if you had a truly market-driven energy system, there’d be no need for a moratorium on nuclear licenses; if you didn’t have thePrice-Anderson Act capping industry liability for nuclear accidents—requiring it to pay less than 2 cents on the dollar of the projected costs—it’s unlikely that another plant would ever be built………
The Times column offered some pre-emptive criticism of its own analysis: “Highlighting the left’s biases may seem like a pointless effort to apportion equal blame along ideological lines.” It’s not pointless at all, though: It’s a great way to sell pro-corporate policies under the guise of objective truth.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. He can be followed on Twitter:@JNaureckas. http://fair.org/home/trampling-science-to-boost-nuclear-power/
Hillary Clinton calls Donald Trump “reckless” on nuclear policy
Clinton blasts Trump’s ‘dangerous’ nuclear talk, Politico By NICK GASS 04/14/16 Hillary Clinton ratcheted up her attacks on Donald Trump’s national security expertise Thursday with a blistering New York Daily News op-ed in which she laid out her nuclear proposals and called his statements perhaps the “most reckless” from “any major presidential candidate in modern history.”Referring to Trump’s frequent insistence that the United States needs “unpredictability” from a commander in chief and that he would not take the nuclear option “off the table,” Clinton said Trump would risk a dangerous arms race in East Asia and in the Middle East. The Republican front-runner said late last month that he would consider withdrawing U.S. forces from both countries and suggested that both nations should arm themselves with nuclear weapons.
“Trump’s policies would reverse decades of bipartisan consensus. Even letting friendly nations go nuclear would make it harder for us to prevent rogue regimes from doing the same,” the former secretary of state wrote in the Daily News, which on Wednesday endorsed her over Bernie Sanders.
Clinton also noted that the terrorists involved in last month’s Brussels attacks had been monitoring a Belgian nuclear scientist and nuclear plant, calling it “a chilling warning that ISIS may be pursuing the sabotage of a nuclear site or acquisition of material to make a dirty bomb.”……….http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/04/hillary-clinton-trump-national-security-221942
Hillary Clinton unsuited to task of confronting climate change, too enmeshed in corporate thinking
So let’s forget the smoking guns for the moment. The problem with Clinton World is structural. It’s the way in which these profoundly enmeshed relationships—lubricated by the exchange of money, favors, status, and media attention—shape what gets proposed as policy in the first place…….
At the center of it all is the canonical belief that change comes not by confronting the wealthy and powerful but by partnering with them.
The Problem With Hillary Clinton Isn’t Just Her Corporate Cash. It’s Her Corporate Worldview.
Clinton is uniquely unsuited to the epic task of confronting the fossil-fuel companies that profit from climate change. The Nation By Naomi Klein Twitter APRIL 6, 2016
But that’s not all. There is also a lot more money from sources not included in those calculations. For instance, one of Clinton’s most prominent and active financial backers is Warren Buffett. While he owns a large mix of assets, Buffett is up to his eyeballs in coal, including coal transportation and some of the dirtiest coal-fired power plants in the country.
Then there’s all the cash that fossil-fuel companies have directly pumped into the Clinton Foundation. In recent years, Exxon, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron have all contributed to the foundation. An investigation in theInternational Business Times just revealed that at least two of these oil companies were part of an effort to lobby Clinton’s State Department about the Alberta tar sands, a massive deposit of extra-dirty oil. Leading climate scientists like James Hansen have explained that if we don’t keep the vast majority of that carbon in the ground, we will unleash catastrophic levels of warming.
During this period, the investigation found, Clinton’s State Department approved the Alberta Clipper, a controversial pipeline carrying large amounts of tar-sands bitumen from Alberta to Wisconsin. “According to federal lobbying records reviewed by the IBT,” write David Sirota and Ned Resnikoff, “Chevron and ConocoPhillips both lobbied the State Department specifically on the issue of ‘oil sands’ in the immediate months prior to the department’s approval, as did a trade association funded by ExxonMobil.”
Did the donations to the Clinton Foundation have anything to do with the State Department’s pipeline decision? Did they make Hillary Clinton more disposed to seeing tar-sands pipelines as environmentally benign, as early State Department reviews of Keystone XLseemed to conclude, despite the many scientific warnings? There is no proof—no “smoking gun,” as Clinton defenders like to say. Just as there is no proof that the money her campaign took from gas lobbyists and fracking financiers has shaped Clinton’s current (and dangerous) view that fracking can be made safe.
It’s important to recognize that Clinton’s campaign platform includes some very good climate policies that surely do not please these donors—which is why the fossil-fuel sector gives so much more to climate change–denying Republicans.
Still, the whole funding mess stinks, and it seems to get worse by the day. So it’s very good that the Sanders camp isn’t abiding by Krugman’s “guidelines for good behavior” and shutting up about the money in a year when climate change has contributed to the hottest temperatures since records began. This primary isn’t over, and Democratic voters need and deserve to know all they can before they make a choice we will all have to live with for a very long time……..
The mission of the Clinton Foundation can be distilled as follows: There is so much private wealth sloshing around our planet (thanks in very large part to the deregulation and privatization frenzy that Bill Clinton unleashed on the world while president), that every single problem on earth, no matter how large, can be solved by convincing the ultra-rich to do the right things with their loose change. Naturally, the people to convince them to do these fine things are the Clintons, the ultimate relationship brokers and dealmakers, with the help of an entourage of A-list celebrities.
So let’s forget the smoking guns for the moment. The problem with Clinton World is structural. It’s the way in which these profoundly enmeshed relationships—lubricated by the exchange of money, favors, status, and media attention—shape what gets proposed as policy in the first place…….
At the center of it all is the canonical belief that change comes not by confronting the wealthy and powerful but by partnering with them.
Viewed from within the logic of what Thomas Frank recently termed “the land of money,” all of Hillary Clinton’s most controversial actions make sense. Why not take money from fossil-fuel lobbyists? Why not get paid hundreds of thousands for speeches to Goldman Sachs? It’s not a conflict of interest; it’s a mutually beneficial partnership—part of a never-ending merry-go-round of corporate-political give and take.
Books have been filled with the failures of Clinton-style philanthrocapitalism. When it comes to climate change, we have all the evidence we need to know that this model is a disaster on a planetary scale. This is the logic that gave the world fraud-infested carbon markets and dodgy carbon offsets instead of tough regulation of polluters—because, we were told, emission reductions needed to be “win-win” and “market-friendly.”
If the next president wastes any more time with these schemes, the climate clock will run out, plain and simple……http://www.thenation.com/article/the-problem-with-hillary-clinton-isnt-just-her-corporate-cash-its-her-corporate-worldview/
Bernie Sanders understands what needs to be done about climate change
The Problem With Hillary Clinton Isn’t Just Her Corporate Cash. It’s Her Corporate Worldview.
Clinton is uniquely unsuited to the epic task of confronting the fossil-fuel companies that profit from climate change. The Nation By Naomi Klein Twitter APRIL 6, 2016
“…….. If we’re to have any hope of avoiding catastrophe, action needs to be unprecedented in its speed and scope. If designed properly, the transition to a post-carbon economy can deliver a great many “wins”: not just a safer future, but huge numbers of well-paying jobs; improved and affordable public transit; more liveable cities; as well as racial and environmental justice for the communities on the frontlines of dirty extraction.
Bernie Sanders’s campaign is built around precisely this logic: not the rich being stroked for a little more noblesse oblige, but ordinary citizens banding together to challenge them, winning tough regulations, and creating a much fairer system as a result.
Sanders and his supporters understand something critical: it won’t all be win-win.
Sanders and his supporters understand something critical: It won’t all be win-win. For any of this to happen, fossil-fuel companies, which have made obscene profits for many decades, will have to start losing. And losing more than just the tax breaks and subsidies that Clinton is promising to cut. They will also have to lose the new drilling and mining leases they want; they’ll have to be denied permits for the pipelines and export terminals they very much want to build. They will have to leave trillions of dollars’ worth of proven fossil-fuel reserves in the ground.
Meanwhile, if solar panels proliferate on rooftops, big power utilities will lose a significant portion of their profits, since their former customers will be in the energy-generation business. This would create opportunities for a more level economy and, ultimately, for lower utility bills—but once again, some powerful interests will have to lose (which is why Warren Buffett’s coal-fired utility in Nevada has gone to war against solar).
A president willing to inflict these losses on fossil-fuel companies and their allies needs to be more than just not actively corrupt. That president needs to be up for the fight of the century—and absolutely clear about which side must win. Looking at the Democratic primary, there can be no doubt about who is best suited to rise to this historic moment.
The good news? He just won Wisconsin. And he isn’t following anyone’s guidelines for good behavior. http://www.thenation.com/article/the-problem-with-hillary-clinton-isnt-just-her-corporate-cash-its-her-corporate-worldview/
Nuclear split between Clinton and Sanders
New York nuclear plant’s future further divides Sanders and Clinton
Sanders says Indian Point facility is ‘a catastrophe waiting to happen’, but former New York senator says he’s late to the issue and site simply needs more oversight, Guardian, Alan Yuhas 8 Apr 16. The Indian Point Energy Center, a controversial and ageing nuclear plant near New York City, has split the Democratic presidential candidates .
As campaigning continued before the New York primary on 19 April, Bernie Sanders called the facility “a catastrophe waiting to happen”. Hillary Clinton said only that it needed more oversight.
A senior member of the Union of Concerned Scientists told the Guardian “the whole New York metropolitan area is potentially imperiled by an accident at Indian Point”.
Last week, the company that runs Indian Point revealed that 227 bolts holding the interior of a nuclear reactor at the site have “degraded” or gone missing. In February, the plant reported that a radioactive material, tritium, had leaked into groundwater.
The plant, about 40 miles north of midtown Manhattan on the eastern bank of the Hudson river, has a 40-year history of accidents, fires and complaints. Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered an investigation into February’s “unacceptable” leak. He has called for the plant to close.
“In my view, we cannot sit idly by and hope that the unthinkable will never happen,” Sanders said in a statement. “It makes no sense to me to continue to operate a decaying nuclear reactor within 25 miles of New York City where nearly 10 million people live.”
The Vermont senator elaborated on his stance, calling for the US to phase out nuclear plants along with more polluting resources such as fossil fuels.
“Nuclear power is and always has been a dangerous idea because there is no good way to store nuclear waste,” he said………
The disagreement between Sanders and Clinton mirrors their stances on fracking for natural gas. The senator has called for a ban, citing growing evidence that drilling causes earthquakes. The former secretary of state has called for intense regulation of the industry.
“I want the federal government to regulate much more toughly than we have in the past,” she said on Monday.
In 2014 Cuomo signed a law that banned fracking in New York. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/07/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-indian-point-nuclear-plant
Bernie Sanders’ strategy for phasing out nuclear power
Bernie Sanders Wants to Phase Out Nuclear Power, Mother Jones, What would replace it?—By Ben Adler Tue Apr. 5, 2016“………The aging nuclear fleet in the US is becoming increasingly uneconomical. “As reactors get older, they get more expensive to maintain. It’s not competitive with renewables or natural gas,” says Matthew McKinzie, a nuclear energy expert and advisor to the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. “By mid-century, we might have 20 reactors operating.”
Getting older nuclear plants in good enough shape to get relicensed can be expensive, as environmental and safety standards have been raised since the plants were built. Renewables advocates argue that the money could be put to better uses…….
HOW THE NUCLEAR PHASEOUT FITS INTO SANDERS’ BIGGER PLAN
Sanders’ critics are right to note that under the current set of policies in place in the US, renewables won’t account for a majority of our energy portfolio for at least another two decades, so it’s not safe to assume that a retired nuclear plant would be replaced by clean energy. In that context, lopping 20 years off the life of a nuclear reactor may very well mean higher carbon emissions than if you relicensed it.
But Sanders’ desire to phase out nuclear power makes a lot more sense in the context of his broader climate and energy plan. He would make fossil fuels more expensive through a carbon tax, and make major investments in clean energy, so renewables would be better poised to replace power lost from shuttered nuclear plants.
The sticking point, of course, is that even if Sanders got to the White House, he wouldn’t get a cooperative Congress, so his larger climate plan would not be enacted. In that case, deciding whether to relicense nuclear plants would be a trickier matter.
The Sanders campaign declined to comment directly on what Sanders would do if he were president and found himself in that situation, offering only this emailed statement from spokesman Karthik Ganapathy: “Sen. Sanders knows there are lots of reasons why nuclear power is a bad idea. Whether it’s the exceptional destructiveness of uranium mining, the fact that there’s no good way to store nuclear waste or the lingering risk of a tragedy like Fukushima or Chernobyl in the US, the truth is: nuclear power is a cure worse than the disease. Safer, cleaner energy sources like wind and solar will help us meet America’s energy needs while protecting the health of our people and combatting the threat of climate change.”
Those views put Sanders right in line with environmental groups like the Sierra Cluband Greenpeace, which oppose nuclear power across the board……http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/04/grist-bernie-sanders-wants-to-phase-out-nuclear-power-plants
Close Indian Point nuclear station, wean off nuclear power – Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders calls for closing Indian Point nuclear facility, wean off nuclear energy http://www.utilitydive.com/news/bernie-sanders-calls-for-closing-indian-point-nuclear-facility-wean-off-nu/416842/ By Robert Walton | April 5, 2016
Dive Brief:
- Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is calling for Indian Point, the controversial nuclear plant near New York City, to be closed down over safety concerns, just weeks ahead of the state’s Democratic primary, NBC News reports.
- Sanders will face fellow candidate Hillary Clinton, who has been critical of the plant but has called for making it safer rather than closing it down entirely.
- Sanders is the only presidential candidate calling for an end to nuclear power; he wants the United States to grow its renewable resources like wind and solar instead.
Dive Insight:
Entergy’s Indian Point nuclear facility has become an issue in the Presidential race, with Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders saying the plant is too near New York City to be safely operated.
“I am very concerned that the Indian Power nuclear power reactor is more than ever before a catastrophe waiting to happen,” Sanders said in a statement issued yesterday. “In my view, we cannot sit idly by and hope that the unthinkable will never happen. We must take action to shut this plant down in a safe and responsible way. It makes no sense to me to continue to operate a decaying nuclear reactor within 25 miles of New York City where nearly 10 million people live.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has pushed to shutter the facility over safety concerns, and in February called for an investigation into the plant after monitoring weeks showed it was leaking contaminated water. Entergy has maintained the plant is safe and the power is essential to the region.
But while Cuomo supports Entergy’s continued operation of other nuclear units in the state, Sanders has established himself as the only candidate calling for the United States to move entirely away from nuclear power.
“Even in a perfect world where energy companies didn’t make mistakes, nuclear power is and always has been a dangerous idea because there is no good way to store nuclear waste,” he said in his statement. “That is why the United States must lead the world in transforming our energy system away from nuclear power and fossil fuels.”
Sanders will face Hillary Clinton in the New York Democratic primary later this month. Clinton, who lives less than 20 miles from the plant, has been critical of the facility but does not want to see it shut down and instead has called for improving operations at the facility.
Donald Trump – very good at contradicting himself on nuclear and fossil fuel issues
Trump contradicts himself on nuclear weapons – as it happened, Guardian, Alan Yuhas, 4 Apr 16, “……
- Donald Trump suggested that Japan and South Korea should build nuclear weapons or pay protection fees to the US – and then said his greatest fear is the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
- “Maybe they would be better off if they defended themselves from North Korea,” he said in one interview. “I think if somebody gets nuclear weapons that’s a disaster,” he said in another……..
- The senator also defended his claims that Clinton receives millions in donations from fossil fuel interests, although employees of the industry have given her about $308,000 and him about $54,000. He cited a Greenpeace study that links the contributions of lobbyists, fundraisers and Super Pacs to the industry………http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2016/apr/03/donald-trump-ted-cruz-republicans-wisconsin-sanders-clinton-live
Only Bernie Sanders has taken a principled position on nuclear weapons
The new nuclear arms race , LA Times, 3 Apr 16 Doyle McManus Contact Reporter
“………Sen. Bernie Sanders has said he thinks the modernization plan is a waste of money. Hillary Clinton has suggested that she’s worried about the cost, but hasn’t taken a firm position. Sen. Ted Cruz has said he wants to spend more money on defense, including nuclear weapons.
And Donald Trump? When conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Trump for his position on the nuclear triad last year, the businessman was flummoxed.
“For me, nuclear is just the power,” Trump replied. “The devastation is very important to me.”
We deserve better answers. It’s a matter of survival.
doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0403-mcmanus-nuclear-danger-20160403-column.html
TIME analyses Donald Trump’s ill-informed opinions on nuclear security
Trump Wants to Free the Nuclear Genie, TIME, Mark Thompson @MarkThompson_DC March 30, 2016 Policy would mark a major, and dangerous, shift in U.S. foreign policy
As the world’s leaders gather Thursday in Washington for a two-day Nuclear Security Summit dedicated to keep such weapons in check, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is once again shaking things up: he argues that U.S. allies should build their own nuclear weapons so they no longer have to rely on an impoverished America’s atomic umbrella.
It’s amazing his defense of campaign manager Cory Lewandowski, charged with grabbing a reporter Mar. 8, is getting more attention than his suggestion that it may be time for Japan and South Korea to outfit themselves with nuclear arms to counter the threat posed by North Korea.
“Every President since Harry Truman has tried to stop other nations from going nuclear,” says Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a non-profit group dedicated to reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons. “John F. Kennedy started the effort to get the Non-Proliferation Treaty because Japan and Germany—countries we had just defeated in war—were researching nuclear weapon programs. We stopped them, and South Korea and dozens of other nations. And now Trump wants give them the bomb? This is insane.”
Trump actually backed into this mess. “Biggest problem, to me, in the world, is nuclear, and proliferation,” he told the New York Times last Friday. But he made clear on Tuesday that letting Japan and South Korea develop their own nuclear deterrent may be the best way to handle North Korea. “At some point we have to say, you know what, we’re better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea, we’re better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself,” he told CNN. “Wouldn’t you rather, in a certain sense, have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?”
Trump doubled down Wednesday, when he refused to say he wouldn’t use a nuclear weapon somewhere in Europe or the Middle East. “I’m not going to take it off the table,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. To do so, he suggested, would weaken U.S. deterrence. “Why are we making them?” he asked of the nation’s thousands of atomic weapons. Then he made a rhetorical U-turn: “I’m not going to use nuclear, but I’m not taking any cards off the table.”
Trump’s approach to nuclear matters seems to be a work in progress. He appeared ignorant about the bomber, submarine and ICBM legs of the U.S. nuclear triad in a December debate. Tuesday, he cited his purchase of “thousands” of South Korean televisions—“because I am in the real estate business, you know, in my other life”—to suggest South Korea is smart and rich enough to build its own nuclear arsenal. And he mentioned an uncle, John G. Trump, who was a professor at MIT, to lend credence to his nuclear insights.
Like many of Trump’s proposals, there’s a certain initial logic to his push to free the nuclear genie in east Asia. He cites the $19 trillion U.S. debt as the key reason for surrendering the U.S. nuclear shield over east Asia. “We can’t afford it anymore,” he told CNN Tuesday. “It’s very simple.”
But the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal accounts for only about 10% of the Pentagon’s annual $600 billion budget—and nearly all of that nuclear spending would have to continue to deter China and Russia. The added cost to tuck Japan and South Korea under the U.S. nuclear umbrella is minimal. The far bigger costs are the conventional, non-nuclear forces the U.S. has in both countries. There are about 53,000 military personnel (39,000 onshore and 14,000 afloat in nearby waters), 43,000 dependents, and 5,000 Pentagon civilian employees in Japan (the $1.6 billion that Tokyo pays Washington annually for their presence foots only a portion of their cost). Seoul pays about half as much to support the nearly 30,000 U.S. troops based on South Korean soil.
But the ultimate downside to Trump’s stance is so great that his arguments collapse. The first is that the U.S. benefits greatly in terms of trade from a stable east Asia, something a regional nuclear-arms race could throw into a tailspin. The U.S. has been the key guarantor of stability in the region since World War II. The economic benefits Americans get from such trade eclipses by far the cost of U.S. military support in the neighborhood…….http://time.com/4276960/trump-wants-to-free-the-nuclear-genie/
Obama expresses the widely held concerns of national leaders, about Donald Trump’s nuclear comments
Obama Rebukes Donald Trump’s Comments on Nuclear Weapons, NYT, By MARK LANDLER APRIL 1, 2016 WASHINGTON — President Obama on Friday questioned Donald J. Trump’s fitness for office after statements from the Republican front-runner that the United States and its allies should move away from decades of constraints on the use of nuclear weapons. “We don’t want somebody in the Oval Office who doesn’t recognize how important that is,” Mr. Obama said.
Speaking to reporters at the end of a summit meeting devoted to nuclear security, the president said the comments by Mr. Trump reflected a person who “doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world in general.”
Mr. Obama has not hesitated to criticize Mr. Trump for contributing to a coarse tone and circuslike atmosphere on the campaign trail. But his criticism of the candidate’s comments on nuclear proliferation was not about public language or personal style, but about one of the gravest responsibilities of an American president. It carried an extra edge because it involved an issue that Mr. Obama has made a central goal of his presidency.
He said world leaders and other participants at the conference had expressed concerns about Mr. Trump’s comments during private conversations with him at the summit meeting, which gathered more than 50 world leaders to discuss ways to reduce the threat of a nuclear attack, whether from the leakage of nuclear fuel or the theft of a bomb by a terrorist group………http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/world/middleeast/obama-nuclear-security-summit-iran.html?_r=0
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz agree on undoing Obama’s climate action work
Trump, Cruz vow to undo Obama environmental work, The Hill, By Devin Henry – 03/30/16 GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are pledging to undo several Obama administration climate efforts and block future work on global warming if elected this fall.
In responding to a survey from the American Energy Alliance, both candidates said they would undo major Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency rules on clean water and power plant carbon emissions, with Trump saying, “under my administration, all EPA rules will be reviewed.”
“The observed temperature evidence does not support the claims that carbon dioxide is dangerous,” Cruz wrote in his questionnaire.
The two said they would also reassess the Obama administration’s finding that carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases are harmful to the public. That decision is the basis for EPA rule-making on greenhouse gas emissions. …….
Both candidates have previously said they doubt the science behind climate change and have promised to undo what Obama has done on the issue. http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/274671-trump-cruz-vow-to-undo-obama-environmental-work
1 This Month
31st January – Challenging the War Machine – a DECLASSIFIED UK SUMMIT
Website of the Week
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
-
Archives
- January 2026 (227)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (377)
- September 2025 (258)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
- March 2025 (319)
- February 2025 (234)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 