Douglass and uranium
By: The Editorial Board| GoDanRiver
Published: November 02, 2012 Updated: November 02, 2012 - 12:13 PM
Published: November 02, 2012 Updated: November 02, 2012 - 12:13 PM
To the editor:
We Virginians have an opportunity to determine our own destiny at the polls Nov. 6. This election is — or should be — a single-issue referendum on uranium mining which could destroy vast areas of our state.
Our present representative, Robert Hurt, has done nothing over the past two years to protect us from that monster, nor is he likely to. His father, Henry Hurt, is invested in Virginia Uranium Inc., and he has been a mining proponent from the very beginning. Robert Hurt tries to distance himself from this issue, but he cannot because of his family’s involvement that, while enriching the Hurt family, could destroy our land, our heritage and health forever. It is telling that Hurt has failed to support the “Keep the Ban” movement. I think Hurt has a conflict of interest here and the honorable thing to do would be to step aside so that someone else could represent the people of the Fifth District.
I have studied uranium mining from an engineering perspective for the past 30 years and I can say without reservation that uranium mining is the greatest threat our state has ever faced; far greater than the Civil War.
Robert Hurt is a very nice young man, but we do not need a nice young man with family ties to uranium mining representing us in Washington. We need someone who will fight this monster head-on, and we have such a person in retired Brig. Gen. John Douglass. I urge everyone to go to the polls and vote for Douglass, who is adamantly opposed to uranium mining and has pledged to keep it out of Virginia.
A defeat of Robert Hurt would send a message to Washington and Richmond that “We the People” will not tolerate uranium mining in our state. I urge everyone to put aside party politics and vote for Douglass.
JACK DUNAVANT
http://www2.godanriver.com/
But these achievements, and much more, are at risk in November.
At a time when many larger, arguably more pressing issues demand attention, little thought has been given to the fact that Teddy Roosevelt’s own party is running on a platform that could harm America’s National Parks and even sell off our public lands.
In fact, the central plank of Romney’s proposed energy policy would transfer control of energy production on federal lands to the states—a long-sought goal of the 1970s Sagebrush Rebellion (a concerted Western campaign for more "local"—i.e. industry—control of public lands), most recently expressed in bills and ballot initiatives pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council and its right-wing puppets in several Western states. The sole stated purpose of such a transfer is to expedite oil and gas extraction on those lands by essentially monopolizing them for industrial use. As Romney knows, the states are far friendlier to fossil fuel extraction than the federal government, and their regulatory mechanisms are woefully ill-equipped to deal with complicated health and safety concerns, according to Christy Goldfuss, director of the public lands project for the Center for American Progress.
Transferring lands to the states, Goldfuss says, would mean that “the number one use for our public lands will be to drill for oil and gas.”
The Republican Party’s ultimate goal, however, is not state stewardship of public land but privatized ownership.
The GOP platform this year explicitly questions whether public lands “could be better used for ranching, mining, or forestry through private ownership.” After deriding Theodore Roosevelt’s “big ideas of big forests and big national parks,” Republican Representative Steve Pearce of New Mexico told a conservative group in Colorado this month that Romney understands the need to “reverse this trend of public ownership of lands.” Romney himself famously told the Reno Gazette-Journal that he didn’t even know “what the purpose is” of public lands.
Paul Ryan has demonstrated that he would like to do exactly that. Despite the fact that he lives in a house overseen by the parks service, Ryan’s 2013 budget would likely eviscerate the agency and force the partial closure of hundreds of national parks, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Ryan, an avid hunter, also proposed to directly sell millions of acres of those federal lands on which hunters rely, leading one outdoorsman to ask the brave question, “Is the Republican Party anti-hunting?”
But the Republican ticket’s hostility to the conservationist ethos isn’t fiscal; it’s ideological.
Last year, Ryan voted for an unsuccessful amendment that would have repealed the president’s power to name new national monuments, as enshrined in Theodore Roosevelt’s Antiquities Act of 1906 and utilized by 16 of the 19 presidents since then. And when Romney ridiculed Obama in their second debate for taking action against North Dakota companies accused of allowing oil to spill into neighboring wetlands, he tossed the words “migratory bird act” out like a punch line.
Romney did not mention that the chairman and CEO of one of those companies,
Continental Resources, is multi-billionaire Harold Hamm, recently described by the Wall Street Journal as the “discoverer” of North Dakota’s oil. He is also Romney’s chief energy advisor and a major fundraiser. By early September, Hamm had already far exceeded the legal limits for donations to candidates in addition to the nearly $1 million he gave to the pro-Romney SuperPAC, Restore Our Future.
Not only is it literally true that Romney’s “plan is to let the oil companies write the energy policies,” as Obama claimed during the second debate, but he is also willing to go before the American people as a paid lobbyist for the industry. “This has not been Mr. Oil or Mr. Gas or Mr. Coal,” Romney said of President Obama in the debate—proudly implying that he would be all three.
The Romney campaign represents their most brazen attack on our public lands in over a century.
For those interested in preserving what the writer Timothy Egan calls “one of the greatest perks of this democracy”—our massive, though nonrenewable, reserves of publicly-owned land—the stakes could not possibly be higher.
http://www.thenation.com/
We Virginians have an opportunity to determine our own destiny at the polls Nov. 6. This election is — or should be — a single-issue referendum on uranium mining which could destroy vast areas of our state.
Our present representative, Robert Hurt, has done nothing over the past two years to protect us from that monster, nor is he likely to. His father, Henry Hurt, is invested in Virginia Uranium Inc., and he has been a mining proponent from the very beginning. Robert Hurt tries to distance himself from this issue, but he cannot because of his family’s involvement that, while enriching the Hurt family, could destroy our land, our heritage and health forever. It is telling that Hurt has failed to support the “Keep the Ban” movement. I think Hurt has a conflict of interest here and the honorable thing to do would be to step aside so that someone else could represent the people of the Fifth District.
I have studied uranium mining from an engineering perspective for the past 30 years and I can say without reservation that uranium mining is the greatest threat our state has ever faced; far greater than the Civil War.
Robert Hurt is a very nice young man, but we do not need a nice young man with family ties to uranium mining representing us in Washington. We need someone who will fight this monster head-on, and we have such a person in retired Brig. Gen. John Douglass. I urge everyone to go to the polls and vote for Douglass, who is adamantly opposed to uranium mining and has pledged to keep it out of Virginia.
A defeat of Robert Hurt would send a message to Washington and Richmond that “We the People” will not tolerate uranium mining in our state. I urge everyone to put aside party politics and vote for Douglass.
JACK DUNAVANT
http://www2.godanriver.com/
The Candidates On (and Off) Energy Issues
11/02/2012
Even an impending superstorm couldn't pull the presidential candidates into reckoning with climate change. Here's a rundown of their stands (and silences) on energy, with some of the implications for rural people and places.
Hurricane Sandy and her ensuing storm bore down on us in the rural South, bringing floods in the "surge inundation" zones near the coast and blizzards to our mountains. Things were clearly even direr to the north. Did the storm’s severity bear any relationship to climate change? Democracy Now asked Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground.
“Whenever you add more heat to the oceans, you’ve got more energy for destruction,” Masters explained. “There’s been ample evidence over the last decade or so that hurricane season is getting longer—starts earlier, ends later.” And with a prolonged hurricane season, Masters said, “you’re more likely to have this sort of situation where a late October storm meets up with a regular winter low-pressure system and gives us this ridiculous combination of a nor’easter and a hurricane that comes ashore, bringing all kinds of destructive effects.”
Coal:
Residents of Southern Appalachia face the destruction of the mountains and continuing illnesses from mountaintop removal (mtr) coal mining in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Coal is also at issue in Montana and Wyoming where the Bureau of Land Management auctions off mining rights, it is argued, at below-market prices and on Navaho lands, where the Office of Surface Mining allows the expansion of strip mining. Cases of black lung, a result of both mtr and deep mining, are increasing, not declining.
Gas and oil:
Fracking methods continue to raise questions about effects on groundwater, and the Keystone pipeline proposed to carry oil from Canada’s tar sands across the Great Plains to the Texas Gulf Coast has prompted citizens to ask whether the potential impacts on farming, ranching and the water supply have been adequately evaluated.
Uranium:
After a moratorium in Virginia since 1982, a company formed by landowners continues to lobby heavily to start uranium mining operations in Virginia, despite threats outlined in a report by the National Academy of Science. In the West, the Navaho Nation has contended with the aftermath of mining. In 2009, the EPA estimated that 30% of the Navaho Nation had no access to drinking water uncontaminated by uranium.
As unemployment remains high and the income gap widens, energy industries downplay the environmental and health risks their companies create and tout the jobs new production will provide. As West Virginia photographer Paul Corbit Brown this week told European bankers who finance coal:
I see all you've given me every day. I watch my father gasping for his next breath, just like my grandfathers did, all of them victims of Black Lung disease. I see children dying of brain cancer and my own mother suffering through two fights with cancer. I see the communities left in ravages after you make your profit and leave. I see the five counties in my state that produce the most coal are among the poorest counties in my entire country. And I see you pointing to the food you have laid upon our tables, for a time, as being merely a distraction to the fact that you have poisoned the vessel from which we drink.
Global Warming a.k.a Climate Change a.k.a Climate Disruption
Global warming was a lead topic in the last presidential race, with both Barack Obama and John McCain supporting versions of "cap and trade" to control carbon emissions. The failure of Congress to pass such legislation seemed to take the topic off the table. Betsy Taylor of Breakthrough Strategies and Solutions has argued, however, that Americans, having faced wildfire and drought, even before the hurricane, want "action to address the threat of climate change, and they strongly support clean energy."
Those who listened to the presidential debate on domestic policy in Denver October 3 (transcript here) may have hoped for something of substance on energy policy.
In fact, prior to the debate, writers such as Daniel J. Weiss and Mark Hertsgaard laid out questions which should be asked. Instead moderator Jim Lehrer, concentrated on tax and health insurance policy.
In October, climate activists launched a website, ClimateSilence.org, which tracks the candidates' public statements on global warming over the years. Obama fares better than Romney, who has morphed from an early supporter of clean energy, fuel efficiency and emissions caps to a climate change agnostic who has ridiculed the issue, saying, "I'm not in this race to slow the rise of the oceans or to heal the planet. I'm in this race to help the American people." The Climate Silence site indicts Obama, also, for relegating climate change to an afterthought and exacerbating the problem through his support of drilling and "clean coal.”
Both candidates lack substantial energy plans
As Dan Balz wrote for the Washington Post,
In Mitt Romney’s telling, Obama has slighted domestic production of oil, gas and coal while shoveling billions to alternative-energy companies, some of which have gone bankrupt and some of which are run by his contributors. To hear the president, Romney is a tool of big oil and other energy producers, defending tax breaks for the industry at a time of record profits and not willing to stand up to them on behalf of consumers.
To the extent that we can discern the candidates’ real positions on energy, here’s how they compare.
Renewable energy
Pablo Martinez Monsivais Pres. Barack Obama speaking at a Nevada solar plant in August, announced seven new wind and solor projects in Western states.
Obama supports continued use of ethanol by refiners of gasoline, despite criticisms that it raises prices for corn and is inefficient. He has vowed to double the use of renewable energy sources, primarily wind and solar power. The wind industry has doubled its capacity to 49.8 gigawatts, accounting for a third of new electricity generation but faces an end to tax credits. The economic stimulus bill in 2009 included a three-year extension of the “production tax credit” for wind energy, which the president favors extending; he told an audience in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Aug. 13 that “without these wind energy tax credits, a whole lot of these jobs would be at risk.” Solar power is also increasing.
Michael Grunwald writes that the stimulus has changed the direction of energy with very little fraud, despite both the attacks by Republicans and the Democrats’ failure to defend their own energy policies. In addition to the tax credits, Grunwald writes that the Obama administration’s record on energy has included --
*$5 billion for low-income weatherization programs, over $6 billion in grants for state and local governments; and several billion to modernize federal buildings, with a particular emphasis on energy efficiency * $11 billion for “smart grid” investments.
* $3.4 billion for "clean coal" carbon capture and sequestration demonstration projects
* $2 billion for battery research for electric cars, with additional money for loan guarantees
* $500 million to help workers train for “green jobs.”
* a tax credit extension for biomass, geothermal, landfill gas and some hydropower projects * an option for many developers to turn their tax credits into cash, with the government underwriting
Romney has criticized the energy lending and grant programs in the 2009 economic stimulus bill and has said he would eliminate tax credits and subsidies for renewable energy. He favors ethanol use by refiners of motor fuel. In general his plan concentrates on fossil fuels, proposing "reforms" to "strengthen environmental protection without destroying jobs or paralyzing industries." His policy statement on energy, which can be found here, says his administration would strengthen and streamline regulation, permitting and lawsuits, concentrate on research and development and "encourage the use of a diverse range of fuels in transportation."
Fuel efficiency
As a condition of bailing out the auto industry, the Obama administration pushed to improve fuel efficiency standards on new cars starting in 2015, to reach 54.5 mpg by the year 2025. The Department of Transportation announced the new fuel standards August 28. Richard Read points out that European car makers will have to work harder to meet the standards and “some foreign companies felt completely left out of the discussion. Volkswagen and others have complained that the new regulations set different standards for different types of vehicles -- specifically, lowering the fuel-economy bar for trucks and SUVs, which are made mostly by Detroit automakers. Moreover, the regs don't recognize diesel as a clean alternative fuel, whihc is a huge blow to Euro companies, who like a good diesel engine.”
Fossil fuel production and regulation
Obama calls for an all-of-the-above energy strategy, urging operators of electric plants to replace coal with natural gas to lower greenhouse gas emissions. He cites figures from the Energy Information Agency that oil and gas production has increased since he took office.
Source text here President Obama visited the Heil family's wind farm in Haverhill, Iowa, in August. Obama advocates extending tax credits for wind energy projects.
Obama calls for cutting U.S. oil imports by a third by 2020. Obama rejected an earlier Keystone XL proposal for the northern portion of the pipeline, saying that Congress had not provided enough time for environmental review, but he reserved the option to approve a revised plan. Obama backed the building of the pipeline's southern section. The president slowed new offshore drilling for oil and gas exploration after the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. His plan includes preliminary work off the coast of Virginia and the south Atlantic states. He has supported Shell’s efforts to drill in Alaska despite protests by environmental groups. Obama has not slowed the use of fracking despite the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed restrictions.
Obama supports EPA regulations setting tougher CO2 emissions thresholds for fossil fuel-fired power plants and for limiting emissions of mercury and other toxins from power plants. He refused to implement regulations proposed under the Clean Air Act to reduce ozone and weakened soot regulations.
Jae C. Hong/AP Mitt Romney campaigned in Ft. Lupton, Colorado, last May, at the KP Kauffman Company's drilling operation. romney advocates expanding oil and gas drilling both offshore and on.
Romney says that if elected he would swiftly approve the Keystone XL pipeline. He supports expanded drilling and tax incentives for the same. He would also press to repeal, or dismantle provisions of, the Affordable Care Act. Repealing the Obamam health care legislation would, among its many other effects, remove a new provision of black lung law that has made it easier for disabled miners or their widows to get federal benefits.
Romney's announced energy policy opposes the EPA's regulation of carbon dioxide emissions limitations on emissions of mercury and other toxic substances from coal-fired power plants. Romney argues that the regulations would place an onerous financial burden on operators and “would prevent another coal plant from ever being built.”
Nuclear Energy
Both candidates support nuclear energy. They have both been criticized as failing to outline a long-term plan for safely storing waste from these plants. In addition, Romney has criticized current regulation, telling the Scientific American, " I believe the federal government must significantly streamline the regulatory framework for the deployment of new energy technologies, including a new wave of investment in nuclear power."
For more...
Energy issues continue to be contentious. For the latest comparison of the candidates, see this piece in USA Today by Wendy Koch, consider the source documents cited by Climate Silence and by Yale's Environment 360 Project. NPR also has an interesting compilation of fact checks comparing the candidates claims on energy and the environment.
Beth Wellington, a poet and journalist who writes for The Guardian, lives is Southwest Virginia. Her blog is The Writing Corner.
http://www.dailyyonder.com/
.
Warner, Kaine rally support for Douglass in Danville
“Whenever you add more heat to the oceans, you’ve got more energy for destruction,” Masters explained. “There’s been ample evidence over the last decade or so that hurricane season is getting longer—starts earlier, ends later.” And with a prolonged hurricane season, Masters said, “you’re more likely to have this sort of situation where a late October storm meets up with a regular winter low-pressure system and gives us this ridiculous combination of a nor’easter and a hurricane that comes ashore, bringing all kinds of destructive effects.”
Coal:
Residents of Southern Appalachia face the destruction of the mountains and continuing illnesses from mountaintop removal (mtr) coal mining in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Coal is also at issue in Montana and Wyoming where the Bureau of Land Management auctions off mining rights, it is argued, at below-market prices and on Navaho lands, where the Office of Surface Mining allows the expansion of strip mining. Cases of black lung, a result of both mtr and deep mining, are increasing, not declining.
Gas and oil:
Fracking methods continue to raise questions about effects on groundwater, and the Keystone pipeline proposed to carry oil from Canada’s tar sands across the Great Plains to the Texas Gulf Coast has prompted citizens to ask whether the potential impacts on farming, ranching and the water supply have been adequately evaluated.
Uranium:
After a moratorium in Virginia since 1982, a company formed by landowners continues to lobby heavily to start uranium mining operations in Virginia, despite threats outlined in a report by the National Academy of Science. In the West, the Navaho Nation has contended with the aftermath of mining. In 2009, the EPA estimated that 30% of the Navaho Nation had no access to drinking water uncontaminated by uranium.
As unemployment remains high and the income gap widens, energy industries downplay the environmental and health risks their companies create and tout the jobs new production will provide. As West Virginia photographer Paul Corbit Brown this week told European bankers who finance coal:
I see all you've given me every day. I watch my father gasping for his next breath, just like my grandfathers did, all of them victims of Black Lung disease. I see children dying of brain cancer and my own mother suffering through two fights with cancer. I see the communities left in ravages after you make your profit and leave. I see the five counties in my state that produce the most coal are among the poorest counties in my entire country. And I see you pointing to the food you have laid upon our tables, for a time, as being merely a distraction to the fact that you have poisoned the vessel from which we drink.
Global Warming a.k.a Climate Change a.k.a Climate Disruption
Global warming was a lead topic in the last presidential race, with both Barack Obama and John McCain supporting versions of "cap and trade" to control carbon emissions. The failure of Congress to pass such legislation seemed to take the topic off the table. Betsy Taylor of Breakthrough Strategies and Solutions has argued, however, that Americans, having faced wildfire and drought, even before the hurricane, want "action to address the threat of climate change, and they strongly support clean energy."
Those who listened to the presidential debate on domestic policy in Denver October 3 (transcript here) may have hoped for something of substance on energy policy.
In fact, prior to the debate, writers such as Daniel J. Weiss and Mark Hertsgaard laid out questions which should be asked. Instead moderator Jim Lehrer, concentrated on tax and health insurance policy.
In October, climate activists launched a website, ClimateSilence.org, which tracks the candidates' public statements on global warming over the years. Obama fares better than Romney, who has morphed from an early supporter of clean energy, fuel efficiency and emissions caps to a climate change agnostic who has ridiculed the issue, saying, "I'm not in this race to slow the rise of the oceans or to heal the planet. I'm in this race to help the American people." The Climate Silence site indicts Obama, also, for relegating climate change to an afterthought and exacerbating the problem through his support of drilling and "clean coal.”
Both candidates lack substantial energy plans
As Dan Balz wrote for the Washington Post,
In Mitt Romney’s telling, Obama has slighted domestic production of oil, gas and coal while shoveling billions to alternative-energy companies, some of which have gone bankrupt and some of which are run by his contributors. To hear the president, Romney is a tool of big oil and other energy producers, defending tax breaks for the industry at a time of record profits and not willing to stand up to them on behalf of consumers.
To the extent that we can discern the candidates’ real positions on energy, here’s how they compare.
Renewable energy
Pablo Martinez Monsivais Pres. Barack Obama speaking at a Nevada solar plant in August, announced seven new wind and solor projects in Western states. Obama supports continued use of ethanol by refiners of gasoline, despite criticisms that it raises prices for corn and is inefficient. He has vowed to double the use of renewable energy sources, primarily wind and solar power. The wind industry has doubled its capacity to 49.8 gigawatts, accounting for a third of new electricity generation but faces an end to tax credits. The economic stimulus bill in 2009 included a three-year extension of the “production tax credit” for wind energy, which the president favors extending; he told an audience in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Aug. 13 that “without these wind energy tax credits, a whole lot of these jobs would be at risk.” Solar power is also increasing.
Michael Grunwald writes that the stimulus has changed the direction of energy with very little fraud, despite both the attacks by Republicans and the Democrats’ failure to defend their own energy policies. In addition to the tax credits, Grunwald writes that the Obama administration’s record on energy has included --
*$5 billion for low-income weatherization programs, over $6 billion in grants for state and local governments; and several billion to modernize federal buildings, with a particular emphasis on energy efficiency * $11 billion for “smart grid” investments.
* $3.4 billion for "clean coal" carbon capture and sequestration demonstration projects
* $2 billion for battery research for electric cars, with additional money for loan guarantees
* $500 million to help workers train for “green jobs.”
* a tax credit extension for biomass, geothermal, landfill gas and some hydropower projects * an option for many developers to turn their tax credits into cash, with the government underwriting
Romney has criticized the energy lending and grant programs in the 2009 economic stimulus bill and has said he would eliminate tax credits and subsidies for renewable energy. He favors ethanol use by refiners of motor fuel. In general his plan concentrates on fossil fuels, proposing "reforms" to "strengthen environmental protection without destroying jobs or paralyzing industries." His policy statement on energy, which can be found here, says his administration would strengthen and streamline regulation, permitting and lawsuits, concentrate on research and development and "encourage the use of a diverse range of fuels in transportation."
Fuel efficiency
As a condition of bailing out the auto industry, the Obama administration pushed to improve fuel efficiency standards on new cars starting in 2015, to reach 54.5 mpg by the year 2025. The Department of Transportation announced the new fuel standards August 28. Richard Read points out that European car makers will have to work harder to meet the standards and “some foreign companies felt completely left out of the discussion. Volkswagen and others have complained that the new regulations set different standards for different types of vehicles -- specifically, lowering the fuel-economy bar for trucks and SUVs, which are made mostly by Detroit automakers. Moreover, the regs don't recognize diesel as a clean alternative fuel, whihc is a huge blow to Euro companies, who like a good diesel engine.”
Fossil fuel production and regulation
Obama calls for an all-of-the-above energy strategy, urging operators of electric plants to replace coal with natural gas to lower greenhouse gas emissions. He cites figures from the Energy Information Agency that oil and gas production has increased since he took office.
Source text here President Obama visited the Heil family's wind farm in Haverhill, Iowa, in August. Obama advocates extending tax credits for wind energy projects. Obama calls for cutting U.S. oil imports by a third by 2020. Obama rejected an earlier Keystone XL proposal for the northern portion of the pipeline, saying that Congress had not provided enough time for environmental review, but he reserved the option to approve a revised plan. Obama backed the building of the pipeline's southern section. The president slowed new offshore drilling for oil and gas exploration after the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. His plan includes preliminary work off the coast of Virginia and the south Atlantic states. He has supported Shell’s efforts to drill in Alaska despite protests by environmental groups. Obama has not slowed the use of fracking despite the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed restrictions.
Obama supports EPA regulations setting tougher CO2 emissions thresholds for fossil fuel-fired power plants and for limiting emissions of mercury and other toxins from power plants. He refused to implement regulations proposed under the Clean Air Act to reduce ozone and weakened soot regulations.
Jae C. Hong/AP Mitt Romney campaigned in Ft. Lupton, Colorado, last May, at the KP Kauffman Company's drilling operation. romney advocates expanding oil and gas drilling both offshore and on. Romney says that if elected he would swiftly approve the Keystone XL pipeline. He supports expanded drilling and tax incentives for the same. He would also press to repeal, or dismantle provisions of, the Affordable Care Act. Repealing the Obamam health care legislation would, among its many other effects, remove a new provision of black lung law that has made it easier for disabled miners or their widows to get federal benefits.
Romney's announced energy policy opposes the EPA's regulation of carbon dioxide emissions limitations on emissions of mercury and other toxic substances from coal-fired power plants. Romney argues that the regulations would place an onerous financial burden on operators and “would prevent another coal plant from ever being built.”
Nuclear Energy
Both candidates support nuclear energy. They have both been criticized as failing to outline a long-term plan for safely storing waste from these plants. In addition, Romney has criticized current regulation, telling the Scientific American, " I believe the federal government must significantly streamline the regulatory framework for the deployment of new energy technologies, including a new wave of investment in nuclear power."
For more...
Energy issues continue to be contentious. For the latest comparison of the candidates, see this piece in USA Today by Wendy Koch, consider the source documents cited by Climate Silence and by Yale's Environment 360 Project. NPR also has an interesting compilation of fact checks comparing the candidates claims on energy and the environment.
Beth Wellington, a poet and journalist who writes for The Guardian, lives is Southwest Virginia. Her blog is The Writing Corner.
http://www.dailyyonder.com/
.
Warner, Kaine rally support for Douglass in Danville
Both Kaine and Douglass reached out to voters for more support.
Justin Ward WDBJ7 ReporterWDBJ72:18 p.m. EDT, November 2, 2012
DANVILLE, Va.—
There's less than four days left until the election.
Friday democratic candidates are on the home stretch, campaigning across the state.
Douglass believes his stance against uranium mining and this visit could be a good push in the polls.
"We've fought a good fight so far and I think it's going to lead us to victory. This is a tough time when the whole county is watching Virginia and Virginia is all watching the 5th district. We're not going to get the country or Virginia down. We're going to win this thing," said General John Douglass, candidate for the 5th district.
Both Warner and Kaine started campaigning Friday morning in western Virginia and ended in the eastern part of the state.
http://www.wdbj7.com/news/
How a Romney Presidency Would Devastate National Parks and Public Lands
Friday democratic candidates are on the home stretch, campaigning across the state.
Douglass believes his stance against uranium mining and this visit could be a good push in the polls.
"We've fought a good fight so far and I think it's going to lead us to victory. This is a tough time when the whole county is watching Virginia and Virginia is all watching the 5th district. We're not going to get the country or Virginia down. We're going to win this thing," said General John Douglass, candidate for the 5th district.
Both Warner and Kaine started campaigning Friday morning in western Virginia and ended in the eastern part of the state.
http://www.wdbj7.com/news/
How a Romney Presidency Would Devastate National Parks and Public Lands
November 2, 2012
In March 2009, just two months after taking office, Barack Obama signed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, a monumental compilation of 160 separate bills protecting two million acres of wilderness and adding dozens of new parks, rivers, trails and heritage areas to existing conservation systems across the country. Two years later, invoking Theodore Roosevelt’s conservationist legacy, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asked members of Congress to submit their ideas for additional wilderness areas—“crown jewels”—that have strong local support for increased protection. Obama also banned uranium mining on public lands surrounding the Grand Canyon, a move described by Arizona Senator John McCain as a “blow to job creation”—pun, presumably, unintended. Whatever the limitations of Obama’s environmental record, his stewardship of public lands has been a bright spot.
At a time when many larger, arguably more pressing issues demand attention, little thought has been given to the fact that Teddy Roosevelt’s own party is running on a platform that could harm America’s National Parks and even sell off our public lands.
In fact, the central plank of Romney’s proposed energy policy would transfer control of energy production on federal lands to the states—a long-sought goal of the 1970s Sagebrush Rebellion (a concerted Western campaign for more "local"—i.e. industry—control of public lands), most recently expressed in bills and ballot initiatives pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council and its right-wing puppets in several Western states. The sole stated purpose of such a transfer is to expedite oil and gas extraction on those lands by essentially monopolizing them for industrial use. As Romney knows, the states are far friendlier to fossil fuel extraction than the federal government, and their regulatory mechanisms are woefully ill-equipped to deal with complicated health and safety concerns, according to Christy Goldfuss, director of the public lands project for the Center for American Progress.
Transferring lands to the states, Goldfuss says, would mean that “the number one use for our public lands will be to drill for oil and gas.”
The Republican Party’s ultimate goal, however, is not state stewardship of public land but privatized ownership.
The GOP platform this year explicitly questions whether public lands “could be better used for ranching, mining, or forestry through private ownership.” After deriding Theodore Roosevelt’s “big ideas of big forests and big national parks,” Republican Representative Steve Pearce of New Mexico told a conservative group in Colorado this month that Romney understands the need to “reverse this trend of public ownership of lands.” Romney himself famously told the Reno Gazette-Journal that he didn’t even know “what the purpose is” of public lands.
Paul Ryan has demonstrated that he would like to do exactly that. Despite the fact that he lives in a house overseen by the parks service, Ryan’s 2013 budget would likely eviscerate the agency and force the partial closure of hundreds of national parks, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Ryan, an avid hunter, also proposed to directly sell millions of acres of those federal lands on which hunters rely, leading one outdoorsman to ask the brave question, “Is the Republican Party anti-hunting?”
But the Republican ticket’s hostility to the conservationist ethos isn’t fiscal; it’s ideological.
Last year, Ryan voted for an unsuccessful amendment that would have repealed the president’s power to name new national monuments, as enshrined in Theodore Roosevelt’s Antiquities Act of 1906 and utilized by 16 of the 19 presidents since then. And when Romney ridiculed Obama in their second debate for taking action against North Dakota companies accused of allowing oil to spill into neighboring wetlands, he tossed the words “migratory bird act” out like a punch line.
Romney did not mention that the chairman and CEO of one of those companies,
Continental Resources, is multi-billionaire Harold Hamm, recently described by the Wall Street Journal as the “discoverer” of North Dakota’s oil. He is also Romney’s chief energy advisor and a major fundraiser. By early September, Hamm had already far exceeded the legal limits for donations to candidates in addition to the nearly $1 million he gave to the pro-Romney SuperPAC, Restore Our Future.
Not only is it literally true that Romney’s “plan is to let the oil companies write the energy policies,” as Obama claimed during the second debate, but he is also willing to go before the American people as a paid lobbyist for the industry. “This has not been Mr. Oil or Mr. Gas or Mr. Coal,” Romney said of President Obama in the debate—proudly implying that he would be all three.
The Romney campaign represents their most brazen attack on our public lands in over a century.
For those interested in preserving what the writer Timothy Egan calls “one of the greatest perks of this democracy”—our massive, though nonrenewable, reserves of publicly-owned land—the stakes could not possibly be higher.
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