\r\n\r\nDr. Jill Stein, the Green Party’s 2012 presidential nominees noted,\r\n\r\n
<\/a>\r\n“You can’t give your child an ‘all of the above diet’ with toxic\r\nlead and arsenic, and think that adding some spinach and blueberries\r\nis going to make it OK. Likewise, reducing carbon pollution from\r\ncoal does not make fracking, tar sands oil, deep water and Arctic\r\ndrilling OK. The climate is spiraling into runaway warming. Obama’s\r\npromotion of cheap dirty fossil fuels makes coal regulations just\r\nwindow dressing on a disastrous policy.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\nIn addition to its broad concerns on fossil fuel use, the Cabinet\r\nstrongly opposes the Obama administration’s continued push to\r\nrevitalize the expensive, dangerous, nuclear power industry. The\r\nmassive subsidies required by the nuclear industry siphon away funds\r\nneeded to expand renewable energy. Nuclear power still has lethal,\r\nunsolvable, long term waste-storage problems. In addition, the White\r\nHouse’s proposed plants could not be built in time to have a\r\nsignificant impact on greenhouse gas emissions.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nIndeed, Google already got almost as much wind and solar power,\r\non time, and on budget, as both new nukes at Plant Vogtle are\r\nsupposed to produce, and spend less than the Vogtle cost overruns so far<\/a>.\r\nBy the time the Vogle schedule slips again beyond the current 19 months late,\r\nGoogle and many others will have built far more solar and wind power\r\nthan those nukes would ever produce.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\nI do think the Green Shadow critique missed that\r\n\r\nObama set a standard<\/a> for the Keystone XL\r\npipeline that will be very difficult to meet:\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n
<\/a>\r\nAllowing the Keystone pipeline to be built requires a finding that\r\ndoing so would be in our nation’s interest. And our national\r\ninterest will be served only if this project does not significantly\r\nexacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. (Applause.) The net\r\neffects of the pipeline’s impact on our climate will be absolutely\r\ncritical to determining whether this project is allowed to go\r\nforward. It’s relevant.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nYes, I know opinions vary<\/a> about that passage.\r\nIt would have been interesting to hear the Green Shadow version of it.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\nAnd they missed the opportunity provided by Obama’s\r\n
\r\n\r\n“Invest. Divest.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nOK, let’s divest from nuclear vendors!\r\nYes, that’s a little tricky in that the companies actually building the\r\nnew nukes, such as Southern Company aren’t actually nuke vendors;\r\nthey’re electric utilities with fingers in many pies.\r\nBut some of their vendors and contractors are much more specific to nukes.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\nAbout China:\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n
<\/a>\r\n[Steve] Breyman added that, “International leadership, a major theme of the\r\nPresident’s speech, is only possible when national policy is at the\r\nleading edge. Unfortunately, Obama has yet to match the carbon\r\nreduction policies we see in other countries, including China, the\r\nworld’s other global warming superpower.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nWhile it’s true\r\n\r\nChina is back in the lead<\/a> as the world’s largest investor\r\n\r\n
<\/a>\r\nin solar and wind,\r\nso far China is\r\n\r\nstill only talking about a carbon tax<\/a>.\r\nWhich is more than the U.S. is doing.\r\nWe shall see.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\nMeanwhile, nuke-building companies like Southern Company\r\n\r\n
<\/a>\r\nand Georgia Power will either\r\n\r\nfind a way to get on with<\/a> rooftop solar\r\nand wind offshore,\r\nor\r\nthey’re going to be left in the dust as\r\n\r\nthe electric utility paradigm shifts out from under them<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s refreshing to see cogent criticism with a minimum of personal attacks. While I think President Obama’s climate speech was indeed the best by any president ever, that bar is low, and there is substantial room for improvement. PR from Green Shadow Cabinet yesterday, RELEASE: Obama’s climate proposals fall dangerously short, ignore time-critical opportunity to […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[47,216,18,6124,104,23,24,36],"tags":[937,8719,8753,8701,8708,6514,6513,6511,8702,12,7,562,8737,8713,8714,108,6512,6,8716],"class_list":["post-4380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-coal","category-georgia-power","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-wind","tag-barack-obama","tag-climate-change","tag-coal","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-green-party","tag-green-shadow-cabinet","tag-jill-stein","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-southern-company","tag-steve-breyman","tag-valdosta","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-18E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4380"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4384,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380\/revisions\/4384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}