Power Line Blog "The Washington Post editorial page yesterday took after Bernie Sanders for his childish views on energy, noting that if he had his way it would set back the cause of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Worth a sampling:
CAN THE country do without nuclear power and natural gas? Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) thinks so. But his position would set back the fight against global warming. . . he had already promised to phase out nuclear power nationwide by steadily retiring existing reactors. Mr. Sanders has also attacked fracking, the process of fracturing shale formations deep underground in order to extract natural gas. . .In fact, if we are serious about global warming, we will ignore Mr. Sanders’s sloganeering.
"Actually, if we are serious about any subject, it would be best to ignore Mr. Sanders."
The original Washington Post article: Mr. Sanders’s war on clean energy
. . . Mr. Sanders’s rhetoric on nuclear power is even more concerning. Nuclear accounts for about a fifth of the country’s electricity, and it is practically emissions-free. Shutting down that much clean electricity generation would put the country into a deep emissions hole. Mr. Sanders argues that he will invest heavily in renewables. Yet every dollar spent to replace one carbon-free source with another is a dollar that could have been spent replacing dangerous and dirty coal plants. Under Mr. Sanders’s vision, either the country would fail to maximize emissions cuts, or it would waste huge amounts of money unnecessarily replacing nuclear plants. Unsurprisingly, the Clean Power Plan relies on nuclear, too, assuming that the country will get about the same amount of electricity from nuclear in 2030.
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