Energy & Environment

“We cannot continue to allow the exploitation of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land that feeds us as if they were unlimited resources. These are public resources and must be protected for the public. Polluting and abusing these resources is neither sensible nor sustainable from an economic, human health, or environmental standpoint. People have a right to water fit to drink.  People have a right to air fit to breathe.  People have a right to land which is unspoiled." - Dennis

Clean air, water, and safe food, as well as an intact ozone layer, are not luxuries, but necessities for our children's future.

The U.S. must toughen environmental enforcement, support the Kyoto Treaty on global climate change, reduce oil dependence, and spur investment in alternative energy sources, including hydrogen, solar, wind, and ocean. Clean energy technologies will produce new jobs. Tax and other incentives will favor sustainable businesses that conserve energy, reduce or eliminate pollution from their stacks and drainpipes, and reverse decades of wasteful operations by providing products and services that clean our air, water and land while making a healthy profit.

The right to know (for example, when food is genetically engineered) must trump corporate secrecy. Globally, the U.S. should become a leader in sustainable energy production and a partner with developing nations in providing inexpensive, local, renewable energy technologies.

Working towards a greener world also provides a path towards creating quality jobs and restoring our crumbling infrastructure.

We need to create a Works Green Administration [WGA] to employ people performing environmental and clean energy efficiency projects around the country. The creation of the WGA will allow government to become an engine for sustainability and environmental restoration. This approach will create millions of new jobs and incentivize the designing, engineering, manufacturing, installation and maintenance of millions of wind and solar micro-technologies and installation in tens of millions of American homes, businesses and industries. It will reduce our utility bills, our environmental impact and our reliance on carbon and nuclear-based energy.

The Great Lakes region, in particular, already has much of the physical and intellectual manufacturing infrastructure to be a world leader in clean energy and energy efficiency.  We have NASA Glenn, top universities, a blooming clean energy sector, and federal laboratories that should work together to help cement the regions status as a centerpiece of tomorrow’s economy.  We should sell these technologies to the Chinese, not buy from them.

Additionally, one of the best ways to keep our air and water clean and reduce our carbon footprint while improving Americans health and quality of life is to make it easier for people to make personal sustainable choices. Movements are already working to control urban sprawl, promote livable communities and smart growth; lower costs of healthy, fresh, lower-impact food; and label products and services that are produced responsibly.  The government must empower these community-based efforts.

“It is time for a sustainable energy policy which puts consumers, the environment, human health, and peace first.” - Dennis

Energy powers our society. Energy producers in our country know this and use our consumption patterns to enrich themselves, take advantage of our citizens, and spoil our air, water, and land. We can and must do better to create sustainable energy in America.

We need to work to incentivize sustainable energy – focusing on energy efficient technologies, developing renewable energy resources, and reduce our dependence on other nations for our energy supply. We need to revoke subsidies for oil, coal and nuclear power industries and enact new incentives for renewable, clean energy. We must change electricity markets so companies have incentive to invest in conservation and to decentralize power production with solar panels and wind turbines on individual homes and properties.

Building a society that uses energy more efficiently is a key part of reducing our dependency. We must invest in public transit and raise fuel efficiency standards.

“Nuclear has to be eventually phased out. The hidden costs of nuclear are enormous -- of building these plants, maintaining their safety and storing the waste forever. It's not financially or environmentally sustainable” - Dennis

New nuclear reactors are not cost-effective. When stripped of its hefty subsidies, nuclear power does not compare well to renewable energy, which is almost always more economical. Indeed, they are so expensive that even Wall Street won’t invest in them anymore, which means the only way nuclear power can continue to exist is through massive preemptive bailouts.

New nuclear reactors are also a riskier way to meet our needs for electricity.  The risks involved in nuclear power are more than monetary.  Are reactors accident-proof? Will they survive an earthquake? Will they survive terrorist attacks? Can we expect more errors and more cover-ups like the near-failure of the reactor lid at the Davis-Besse reactor in northern Ohio in 2001? Can we transport nuclear waste safely? Can we store it safely? Can ratepayers and taxpayers afford the long-term cost of storage? And, since the Price-Anderson Act limits the exposure of the nuclear industry for the cost of accidents and their impact on the public, will we someday be looking at a looming outsized environmental catastrophe as in Fukushima, Japan where radioactive contamination is rampant in the soil, water and food supply?

To raise these questions is to invoke the precautionary principle when it comes to public health, to life, to property and homes, to jobs, to our water supply and our way of life.  It is the responsibility of every public official to ask hard questions about nuclear power.