Come back, Dennis Kucinich! These Guys All Love Coal
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 03.25.08
Come back, Dennis Kucinich, all is forgiven and we need you. At least you had a grasp of the true nature of coal and did not pander to anyone about it. Hillary is running off about mountaintop removal and now promising coal plants:
Right away I have been advocating that we fund 10 large scale carbon capture and storage projects that will utilize a range of coal types and power plant types and storage locations because it's imperative that we do everything we can to get to a technology that enables us to use clean coal.
And so is Obama:
We could be investing in renewable sources of energy, and in clean coal technology, and creating up to 5 million new green jobs in the bargain, including new clean coal jobs. And we could be doing it all for the cost of less than a year and a half in Iraq.
Even Ralph Nader is even looking good these days. Or maybe the Green Party. Via Solveclimate
PLEASE COME BACK DENNIS!!!
I agree wholeheartedly with this plea. These two candidates are idiots, especially compared to him.
Even beyond environmental policy, Hilary is just a big fat liar. It's an asinine comment, but it's true. Most recent example:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BfNqhV5hg4
As someone from a former coal mining town (Carbondale), I can tell you first hand that strip pits and unusable land left by coal plants is not worth pursuing coal. Not to mention the financial devastation is causes when an area runs out of coal and all of a sudden thousands of jobs are lost. Can we get on with wind and water power already people?! Instead of destroying the beautiful land along the Mississippi River with coal mining, let's harness the power of the water flow!
Coal Sucks people. Let's get together, work for a new day, let's do something, just do something
So carbon storage is now a bad thing? I would have thought keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere would be a good thing as would developing technologies that could be exported to other countries.
But if your opposition is to mining then we can close down the iron mines to produce steel for windmills and the silica mills which go towards solar cell production.
As long as there is money to be made from coal people will bribe politicians to push for it so the best thing to do is require them to be cleaner like we do for automobile emissions.
Better solution: Yes, you can have your "clean coal." But you pay for your destruction of the Appalachians, pay for shipping it to the plant, pay for the storage and pay for a fund to deal with the possible release of sequestered gas.
If it's still competitive with wind, solar and geothermal, go for it.
Although Obama is not perfect on coal, he does not support mountain top removal as implied in this story.
You would think that there was a primary election in Pennsylvania or something the way these two are kissing the coal god.
Ohhh. Really, there is a Democratic primary scheduled in PA, third largest coal producing state? You don't say!
There's still Mike Gravel (a democratic candidate soon to be an independent), Cynthia McKinney, Nader...
And what did Treehugger ever do to help Dennis Kucinich?
I don't believe that Obama is really that sold on coal, I just think that he is politicking and not trying to look to left leaning. I love Dennis, but he's so "honest" with his speech that he's polarizing. I think that it would be great if Obama made him Secretary of Energy. I wouldn't put it past him.
America is broken. I'm getting my degrees and moving to Europe.
Kucinich, Gravel, Nader. All derider as kooks. They're just the only real liberals. As it stands, the Democrats are just the left side of Conservatism. They're puppy dogs. The media has the Liberal voters thinking that Obama and Clinton are Liberals. Hillary herself said that she isn't that Liberal.
I spend a lot of my time being ashamed of America.
Yeah. Agree.
Treehugger did not help Dennis Kucinich.
I agree TH did nothing to help the greenest 'mainstream' candidate, and should have. I remember they did profiles of the candidates and originally didn't even include him. Could have done a lot to help promote his candidacy to a very wide audience. T_T
Obama a closet conservative? Apparently none of you have looked at his website or his record. The reason Kucinich an Nader are not "viable" candidates could be contributed to not having strong political machines, like the clintons, or it could be that they are both egomaniacle idealists. Nader is a blowhard who claims that every other candidate is in some kind of corporate conspiracy. Look at his website, he offers nothing but vague talking points and no real meat on any issues he believes in. And while I agree with a lot of what Kucinich says, he has a tendency to demonize and polarize certain people in this country. Plus despite the fact that Obama is in the Senate and Kucinich is in the house, they both have very similar records and are considered two of the most liberal people in congress, so claiming Obama is a closet conservative would be claiming the same thing for Kucinich. I could continue listing reasons but I'm assuming most people here are looking for the Enviro-messiah, and since Kucinich and Nader have no chance in hell of ever getting into the White House, its easy to assume that they would be some kind of amazing revolutionaries, even though reality shows us otherwise.
re Joel
It's public record. Look it up.
Obama and Clinton vote almost identically - when they're even there. They both missed about 1/3 of their votes before running for pressident and over 2/3 of their votes since running.
McCain also missed well over half of the votes.
Kucinich only missed about 10% of the votes.
Who cares about doing their job?