I’m sitting here listening to President Obama’s state of the union address. I’m still amazed by his charm, his authentic smile and his ability to make his points clearly. But one thing made me jump out of my seat with not only surprise, but dissapointment. It was his bit on “clean energy.”
“But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. And yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.”
Where are the windmills, the electric cars, the solar panels? I know there’s been a lot of discussion on this blog and elsewhere about whether a climate bill or simple energy investment is the best track to tackle climate change. But if more nuclear, coal and oil is what we get either way, then what’s going on?
I agree! I thought I was listening to Bush 1 or 2 for a second!?!? And Clean Coal? Shouldn’t we be moving beyond dirty energy. I was very disapointed.
While he didn’t talk much about clean energy, he did talk a fair amount about innovation, investment in science and engineering education.
* We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities, and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy efficient, which supports clean energy jobs.
* Next, we need to encourage American innovation. Last year, we made the largest investment in basic research funding in history – an investment that could lead to the world’s cheapest solar cells or treatment that kills cancer cells but leaves healthy ones untouched. And no area is more ripe for such innovation than energy. You can see the results of last year’s investment in clean energy – in the North Carolina company that will create 1200 jobs nationwide helping to make advanced batteries; or in the California business that will put 1,000 people to work making solar panels.
* But even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future – because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.
While it’s not ideal coverage in the State of the Union speech, it’s not as bleak an outlook as it may seem. He tapped into the competitive spirit of Americans, which will help as we expand clean energy.
And where are the mentions of advanced geothermal? We leave that out so often when we talk about wind a solar, and then folks come back with this ‘baseload generation’ and ‘battery power’ stuff.
It was harder to stomach that bit that I expected.
What about building it back stronger and cleaner.
Change, the motto that dominated the campaign has overtaken our President.
Yes, it was really bad. And totally predictable for anyone who has even half-way been paying attention without the most rosy colored of glasses on.
My question is whether people will keep hanging onto “we can pass a comprehensive climate bill!” nonsense which I keep seeing on IGHIH and elsewhere — it’s a huge waste of our energy, at absolute “best” the only way to pass it will be if it’s an absolute joke on targets and an abomination to all environmental and social values (TONS of nuclear power, clean coal, etc.) – passing such an awful bill would divide, demoralize, and demobilize our movement for years – precious time we do not have.
My hope is, as always, that more people will put their foots down and say, enough is enough, I’m done with the D.C. b*llsh*t and go all out to win more real victories in communities and through solidarity across communities fighting dirty energy development elsewhere and throughout the world.
modern nuclear power is indeed clean, and should not be compared with coal or confused with older nuclear technology. Please take a look at http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power/ for a good starting point. You’ll find that technology like the IFR and LFTR can consume nuclear waste from previous generations of reactors, producing only small amounts of short-lived waste themselves.
As far as wind and solar go, the same site has a very good series of articles on the true lifetime costs of such technologies. When you consider the steel and concrete you need to build them, the cables you need to connect them, and the fact that they simply don’t work most of the time, you soon realise that they do so much damage for essentially no reduction in CO2.
I fully agree about the ‘clean coal’, that’s always going to be a myth. Unless we can produce power cheaper than coal today, it won’t take off. Clean coal, even if it existed, will never be cheaper than dirty coal, so it will never be built on a large scale.
I disagree Obama’s opinions too.
He didn’t realize that we need produce clean energy by any ways which won’t do harm on nature.
I’d echo Cascadia Brian’s comment. It is time we stop asking for state-driven innovative change and start working in our own communities for sustainable transitions.
There is no reason to expect that innovation in our current political and economic framework will yield results conducive to a sustainable or just future. There is plenty of reason to predict that capitalist (or state-socialist) innovation will produce more efficient methods of perpetuating the status quo.
It is important that we recognize that at the community level, we can develop powerful leverage through a mix of modeling sustainable communities, taking over and reshaping local governments, and mobilizing against entities and infrastructure that degrade our communities. At the national level our movement is decorative – we are seen, heard, and we marginally influence perception, but we can’t reach our stated goals. Our greatest impact might be that we reinforce the myth that we have a democracy in which what we say matters. We can say what we want on the national stage, because it does not matter.
Hopefully, Obama’s speech will produce more disillusionment. Our movement, if we are to succeed, needs to be disillusioned with the status quo and the institutions that maintain it. Disillusionment is freedom from illusions – when we are free from the illusions like democracy or sustainability through socially responsible capitalism, then we can pursue strategies that actually create resilient, sustainable communities on our own terms.
A note on nuclear:
I am not an engineer and I do not of technical knowledge about nuclear plants or nuclear waste disposal. So when I think of nuclear my main concern is not meltdowns, but the observation that even the longest lasting complex societies have not lasted as long as the life cycle of nuclear waste. My greatest fear is that looking at almost any trend, you can see that the coming century(s) will be one of great geopolitical instability with unforeseeable consequences, and what if we lose our capacity to responsibly manage nuclear plants and nuclear waste? And of course, uranium is not renewable and has a pretty nasty life cycle when you include mining, processing, etc.
@Andrew, I agree we face a lot of uncertainty in the future.
Fourth-generation nuclear power (IFR and LFTR) produce waste that is radioactive for only 300 years. If we can’t manage it on that timescale we’re in bigger trouble than we realise, heck, the pyramids are ten times older and still standing! Nor is the waste useful for making weapons, so it won’t be plundered for that, there’s simply no point. If civilisation collapses, nothing bad will happen to it.
Uranium isn’t renewable, true, but with 4th-generation reactors using uranium and thorium completely (instead of only burning 1% of it as happens today in older reactors) there is more than enough to power the planet for centuries, if not millennia.
Uranium mining is small beer when compared to the damage done by mining gas, oil, or coal. For that matter, uranium mining for future widespread deployment of nuclear power would do less environmental damage than deploying wind or solar over the vast areas that would be needed.
And the toxic elements from coal (arsenic, mercury, etc.) have infinite half-lives (i.e. they last forever).
Geothermal certainly will have a piece of the pie. Most likely in the western US. Nuclear will likely be used in areas where you need baseload and do not have geothermal or hydro. Not a silver bullet, but certainly part of the solution.
I also cannot resist pointing out that the UAE is building nuclear units and they have LOTS of sunshine. Another examle of nuclear for a specific baseload application (i.e., UAE has a lot of oil, but not much natural gas).
I agree with Juliana. The glass is half full. Nothing worth having ever comes easily or quickly. We are in this for the long haul. It’s amazing how many people are turning their solidarity into criticism so quickly.
We are the third most populated country in the world. We are going to have to get over our NIMBY philospohy. We need MORE drilling and MORE nuclear power plants if people are ever going to realize that we ACTUALLY ARE USING ELECTRICITY RIGHT NOW (I drove my car today, how about you?). Having two difficult choices with REAL CONSEQUENCES is the only way to get people to actually CHOOSE to CHANGE. We must coerce and cajole for change. Obama understands this. It is the “art of what is possible”. We are talking about generations here. Obama is only one man with a heaping pile of to-do on his desk. Juliana is very perceptive in recognizing that you have to appeal to people’s core motivation, which in this country is very dog-eat-dog me first my way. If you think you can affect 320 million people’s outlook on life in ONE YEAR, be my guest.
Jason, I think all of us recognize that we are using electricity right now and that a lot of it comes from fossil fuels. But I more drilling isn’t to change this situation.
The big question is whether the federal government sinks even more public money into expanding our fossil fuel consumption or if we invest in cleaner, safer forms of energy. We can make this choice and if our country can shift its sources of electricity, it will have a larger impact than trying to convince everyone to buy a new car or go out of their way to make lifestyle changes. Most people I know aren’t thrilled about where their energy comes from but don’t feel like they have much of a choice. So if we make it easier to choose more sustainable forms of energy then we all win.
Andrew and Brian, I have to say I’m with you on the disillusionment factor. It is a powerful driver for change. But we need to make sure we complement disillusionment with inspiration so that people don’t become jaded and disengaged. The local work is absolutely important to transforming that disillusionment into positive action, and it needs to be accompanied with a narrative that connects the local work to broader change. I think part of the draw towards passing federal legislation is that it appears to have swifter and more uniform potential for change than all the local work, but in reality, even if something passes, we still need to do all the local work to shift our communities anyway.