If you want to know what the far right is up to, you should check in with the Heritage Foundation periodically. A post this week offers a preview of what they'll be pushing for on the energy front in coming years: rules and laws to fast track energy projects, or to put it another way, to ram offshore drilling and nuclear projects through with minimal public involvement.
Here's the kind of code language to watch for:
The [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] must have the freedom to pursue a transparent, fact-based process in a non-adversarial environment. While inputs from local stakeholders must be accommodated, the NRC must be allowed to make decisions based on good science and engineering in a timely manner. This requires an efficient process that allows legitimate concerns to be heard and resolved without being hijacked by outside, agenda-driven interests.
For a flavor of the mindset at work in the right's base on this issue, check out the first comment under the article:
Affordable electricity would be in the best interest of the majority of the people, but it does not seem to be a concern of the environmental activist and they are the ones in power and making the decisions concerning what we use as resources in the U.S.A. to make electricity.
Yes, environmental activists are running the U.S. electricity system. Can't you tell from the results?
Two senators push to ramp up nuclear energy
Nuclear companies face reactor design problems, ethics questions
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josullivan58 Posted 7:39 am
20 Oct 2008
When enviros worked to get the current laws passed they made sure substantive involvement for the public was included. In the history of regulation this was a major innovation and the US system of environmental protection is globally recognized for how democratic it is.
To shed some light on some insider baseball meaningful public participation allows enviros to step in and require the regulated groups and the agencies to prove their claims by producing evidence. If they don't produce it or if they do and environmental laws are violated enviros can sue to stop it.
Its these provisions that let the states and enviros sue to force the EPA to obey the law and reduce greenhouse pollution.
I'll summarize the heritage foundation's post: we want to do whatever we want, whenever we want and in any way we want but the enviros are stopping us, so we will change the game. We will kick the enviros out and pretend we are not.
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