Wes Clark Position on the environment:
The Environment and the Constitutional Legacy
“If you look at a vision for America…you have to ask yourself this: A hundred years from now, most of us won’t be here. But the environment will be here, and the constitution—our legal architecture—will be here. And we have to start working now if we are going to produce the kind of environment—physical and legal/institutional—that we want to leave to our grandchildren. That requires work now. So I think we have to look after the environment.”
Is any other candidate looking at our environment as a consitutional legacy? What do other candidates say about the environment? Please quote.
Here's how I stand...
straight from the horse's mouth...
I’m an environmentalist, but moderate. I care for, and respect nature. But we also can’t save every little species of insect that pops up. Species come and go all the time. There will always be alarmists and nut-cases. The trick is understanding the science and statistics well enough, understanding how nature works, so that you can make decisions on the real issues and weed out the bullshit. If you really want to do something about the environment, then we need to pressure China and India. They’re pumping more crud into the envronment right now than we ever did. The world is like an aquarium, and whatever they dump in, eventually affects us too.
Mercury: Outright ban on this toxic element. There is absolutely no reason for it to be in anything anymore. Not even fluorescent lights. There are now viable alternatives for everything. The EU has already imposed a ban on this substance. Why are we so far behind? You can thank the “greenies” for putting mercury back into your house! Yes indeed. In a package that can, and does, leak and break. That compact flourescent light bulb you bought to save energy... is a toxic time bomb. Expect to spend roughly $10,000 on a hazmat cleanup of your home if you drop it... or it leaks.
Natural Foods: Glad to see this movement thriving. I will help by banning antibiotics from animal feed. Where do you think MRSA came from? We are exposed to antibiotics every day, especially in red meat and milk, our staples. There is no reason for this any more. There are probiotic alternatives. Have you compared natural milk to regular lately? It’s like comparing ice cream to water. I will ban bovine growth hormone as well.
Food packaging: You know what irks me? I go to the grocery store, and buy a box of something to eat, and it’s less than half full. I mean really a lot less! We’re talking huge box, damn near empty. What a waste of packaging! And how much is all that extra packaging costing me in terms of product I could have had anyway? It’s absurd. It’s a waste. I will impose a maximum 10% ratio of packaging weight to product weight for food items. And it must all be recyclable, or biodegradable, and non-toxic. Less packaging = less junk in our landfills.
Wind Power: Hey guys, get a clue. Imagine a big circle defined by the rotation of the tip of the propeller. Your goal is not maximum efficiency per square inch of propeller surface, or even maximum efficiency per square inch of circle. Your goal is extracting the maximum possible power out of the wind moving through that circle, efficient or not. I can tell you right now that the skinny little propellers you’re using now are just not doing it. I bet you can almost triple the output. Why do you think the old-style windmills had big huge fat fins? I think you got into the science too far, and missed the point. Call me if you need help.
Hydrogen Power: This would be nice, but just where are you going to get all that hydrogen, eh? By burning fossil fuels to create electricity to power the hydrogen generators, that’s where. Didn’t think it through that far, did you?
Ethanol: Again, nice try. But some of us did the math and figured out that it takes almost as much energy to create, as it produces. This process still needs a lot of work.
Solar Energy: Now we’re talking. This is good science. There is more to be done, but it’s a good direction to go. If we can get this functional, then we can create hydrogen fuel, and everyone will be happy.
Alternative Energy in General: We have to be careful here. If you run the numbers, you would find that to use wind power to meet our energy needs, we would have to literally cover the planet with windmills. Every square inch, and then some. Ethanol is even worse, in that every square inch of arable land, every last rain forest, every last protected reserve, would have to be tilled under and converted to corn. And then some. Solar? Again, we would literally have to block out the sun. Alterative renewable energy can only meet some small fraction of our needs, not all of it.
Nuclear Energy: Hands down winner. No contest. Nuclear energy provides pollution-free energy with no disruption to the environment. No CO2. No emmissions. Zero. And no rain forests cut down. No birds chopped in half. The sun can remain warm over our heads. We have enough nuclear fuel for hundreds, if not thousands of years. This will provide us with sufficient time to switch to fusion energy, which is very likely the energy of the future. My only three concerns with Nuclear energy: safety, safety, and safety. I will do my best to make sure that radiation leaks, even small ones, cannot ever happen.
I’m an outside person: There is nowhere I would rather be, than outside. I live for spring, worship summer, revel in fall, but hate winter. The Playstation is reserved for rainy days and below 50. Personally, I think we should incorporate the “Golf Index” forecasts into the NWS so we can have “absolutely-perfect-day” warnings like we do for severe thunderstorms and such. Then we can all know when to play hooky... :)
Richard H. Clark
Independent Presidential Candidate
www.MiddleClass2008.com
I like it. Especially the nuclear part! Its all about the balance.
I just don't like the shots so you don't have babies kind of thing that you mentions in the other thread...
Makes sense until you look closer at the platitudes. Plenty of time to switch to fusion energy. First question, since when did we know how to create energy using fusion?
The second question: safety, safety, safety? Fine, avoid leaks---that should be the original intent anyway. The problem is, how do we dispose of the nuclear waste? The material remains radioactive for thousands of years and quantity that requires disposal keeps growing. It is not like we can simply put in a landfill. This part of the nuclear solution doesn't completely jibe with the stated position about concern for future generations and what we dump in the environment.
Common sense is a good approach until it is applied to complex scientific problems. It is even nice and folksy to add a comment about playing hooky. Where does that fit into his educational plan? Platitudes are not solutions.
Phil
Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
There are methods of destroying nuclear waste that are being investigated as we type. Many have even worked on small scale tests. Some change the isotope to lower the half life from thousands of years to just days!
Fusion is a reality. We can do it - it has been done! The problem is getting it to where we need to put in less energy than we get out. Physicists say it is possible, and are confident that we will eventually figure out exactly how, though that may be decades away.
It would be helpful if you could provide sources for your statements. It seems that the first test fusion generator is more or less 30 years away. I stand corrected on that point. That is good news to me.
However, your second statement is not so promising. The source I found http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/25446 claims half-life can be reduced to decades (which is better) but, other scientists doubt the validity of the claim to change half-life at all.
Phil
Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.
can a moderator delete this post?
Here is one that says 1 to 100 years.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/25446
I can't find the original one I saw, but this one is better!
http://www.springerlink.com/content/89c45n12bxkn075l/
"We report the first successful laser-induced transmutation of 129I, one of the key radionuclides in the nuclear fuel cycle. 129I with a half-life of 15.7 million years is transmuted into 128I with a half-life of 25 min through a (gamma, n) reaction using laser-generated Bremsstrahlung. The integral cross-section value for the (gamma, n) reaction is determined. These experiments offer a new approach to studying transmutation reactions with neutral and charged particles without resource to nuclear reactors or particle accelerators."
This one says teh same thing: 25 minutes.
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0022-3727/36/18/L01/d3_18_l01.html
Sorry for not including them the first time, I was tight on time.