by Rod Edwards on February 16, 2010
Looks like the US is putting rubber on the road in regards to the greening of its energy grid. Of course, some would argue that nuclear is the farthest from green that one can get; Personally, I side with the nuclear crowd, and place my faith in new technologies like molten salt thorium reactors to deliver copious amounts of clean energy to areas not effectively served by renewable sources.
President Obama is announcing funding to break ground on the first new nuclear power plant in nearly three decades. In Lanham, Maryland Tuesday morning, Mr. Obama will announce the first loan guarantee for the construction and operation of two new nuclear reactors at a Southern Company plant in Burke, Georgia. Southern Company says approximately 3,000 onsite construction jobs and approximately 850 permanent operations jobs will be created and the facility will power 550,000 homes.
via President Obama Announces Loan for Nuclear Power Plant « Row 2, Seat 4.
by Rod Edwards on August 4, 2009
“…try naming a U.S. city whose air quality is even remotely as bad as Beijing’s, or an American river as polluted as the Han: You can’t. America, the richer and more industrialized country, is also by far the cleaner one.
People who live in Third-World countries—like Mexico, where I grew up—tend to understand this, even if First-World environmentalists do not. People who live in oppressive Third World countries, like China, also understand that it isn’t just greater wealth that leads to a better environment, but greater freedom, too.” [WSJ]
So then, according to Bret Stephens, rational climate change policy would focus not on emission-capping third world nations (incensing their people and slowing their development) – but in fact on the opposite: trying to push those countries along the development industrialization curve as fast as possible.
I agree with the spirit of his point, but would argue that there is a middle ground to be found. While America may be clean and green today (tip: its not), the past century has seen its share of environmental atrocities, premature deaths from air pollution, etc. Many of those disasters – personal and environmental – could have been avoided without appreciably slowing the pace of development had the people of the time had access the technologies and knowledge that exists today.
It strikes me then that climate change policy should focus on building a green incentive framework that speeds development in the right directions – not a ham-fisted cap system that pitches east against west in the minds of the poor, and not the free-for-all regulatory vacuum that America has spent the last 50 years patching itself up from.
