The Clean's List

Governors are of varying minds when it comes to clean energy

Posted at 3:50 PM on 25 Feb 2008

At the annual winter meeting of the National Governors Association, which concluded Monday, state leaders revisited a previously launched initiative called "Securing a Clean Energy Future" -- and struggled with the reality that "clean energy" has very different meanings to different states. "Clean coal," in particular, was boosted by coal states and eyed with skepticism by others. In trying to hammer out energy recommendations for a new president, "We're almost 50 different opinions," lamented Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (R). Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) agreed: "[Coal] has a CO2 problem, wind has a reliability problem, solar has a price problem, nukes have a price and radiation problem. So all of those technologies have opportunities, but they all have problems." Uh, but some obviously have more problems than others. Right? Right?

sources: Associated Press, Stateline.org, The Salt Lake Tribune

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Comments: (2 comments)

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Problems, problems

Montana's Governor Brian Schweitzer glibly outlines the "problems" with solar and wind in an effort to somehow equate them to the very real problem of using antiquated fossil fuels like coal, but that's bogus. Give us the same subsidies as the coal industry gets and suddenly, no problem with solar or wind. Our "problem" in many ways is that our governor won a tight election running as a "new day" candidate but then turned around, much to the surprise of many of his supporters, and spent almost his entire first term aggressively pushing coal development under the phony cover of "clean coal."

There is no clean coal, as Sen. Harry Reid said this week, and everyone knows it. Not only is there no clean way to use coal, there definitely is no clean way to mine it. Of Montana's existing coal stripmines, only 2 percent have been fully reclaimed after more than 30 years of operation.

Coal's got problems, alright, and far too many of them are the people and corporations that continue to push for its development, ignoring the global warming reality staring us in the face.

Fossil fuels are for fossil fools.

by Montana Green at 2:41 PM on 26 Feb 2008

Diversity

There is no ONE type of renewable energy that can support our current lifestyle,worldwide. We need to develope and use all of the renewable energy types that we possible can.There is also tidal flow energy production,which is being used in the Bay of Fundy,Canada as well as in the Netherlands.There is geo-thermal,fussion also needs to be developed.There are probably others that we are not familiar with or have not even beem thought of.We need to reduce the worlds population,push money into developing new sources and old of renewable energy and we need to learn to conserve,wether that be water,energy,or land.I oppose fission atomic energy and lean toward fussion energy.

Why not ask why!?

by usandthem at 6:03 PM on 26 Feb 2008

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