Hypocrisy of the Highest Order

CONGRESSIONAL STONEWALLING ON DOMESTIC ENERGY IS BEYOND ABSURD.  WHO DO THESE POLITICIANS WORK FOR?

Fossil Fool

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, July 01, 2008 4:20 PM PT

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=299804021452063

Energy: As pressure builds to develop America’s domestic energy resources, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now says it’s a health issue. Coal and oil, he says, make us sick. So why does he oppose nuclear power?

The Dr. No of the drill-nothing Congress tried to deflect the issue of rising gas prices Monday by telling Fox Business News that there are costs we should worry about besides those stemming from Democratic inaction. Our guilt is supposed to replace our anger. “Coal makes us sick,” Reid said, “oil makes us sick, it’s global warming, it’s ruining our country, it’s ruining our world, we’ve got to stop using fossil fuel . . . .”

Reid et al. say they want us to use alternative energy such as wind and solar. But if it’s going to take another 10 years, as they claim, to bring ANWR, offshore oil and shale into the mix, wind and solar are going to take even longer. Even if we tripled our current output from wind, solar and geothermal, they’d produce just 2.2% of our current energy needs.

The irony here is that it’s environmentalists and Democrats who often stand in the way of alternative energy. Reid needs to talk to Ted Kennedy and John Kerry about their opposition to a wind farm off Cape Cod because it might spoil their view.

A 500-megawatt, 20,000-acre wind farm scheduled for Valley County, Mont., was stopped by environmentalists who complained that 400-foot turbines would disturb a nearby wilderness area.

The Sunrise Powerlink solar-energy project in Southern California is being fought because of a 150-mile, $1.5 billion high-voltage line connecting desert-based solar panels with the urban customers of San Diego Gas & Electric.

The problem with wind and solar, other than getting the power from where it is generated to where it is needed, is its intermittency. The electricity generated must be used immediately. It cannot be saved for that proverbial rainy day.

Nuclear power is exactly the kind of nonpolluting energy source that can handle both our growing energy needs and unexpected demand. It has its own issues with waste, but such waste can be safely stored and even reprocessed to make new fuel. It’s a renewable resource that doesn’t pollute the earth or our lungs.

Yet Sen. Reid opposes the opening of the Yucca Mountain spent-fuel repository in his home state of Nevada. On his Web site, he states that Yucca Mountain is “never going to open” because “it threatens the health and safety of Nevadans and people across the United States” through its existence and from the transportation of spent fuel from nuclear power plants to the facility.

Agreeing with Reid is his party’s presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama. In a primary debate in Nevada, Obama pledged: “I will end the notion of Yucca Mountain because it has not been based on the sort of sound science that can assure the people of Nevada that they’re going to be safe.”

Yucca Mountain is quite possibly the safest, most geologically stable and most studied place on the planet. It abuts Nellis Air Force Base and the Nevada Test Site. The Heritage Foundation says that the road to nuclear power goes through Yucca Mountain and that, by his opposition, Reid’s “anti-Yucca stance virtually assures that more fossil-fuel plants will be built.”

Let’s face it: Harry Reid and the Democrats want no new domestic coal, oil, natural gas or nuclear power. It’s their energy policy that makes us sick.