Is KKR's decision to spend $5 billion to build 2 nukes in Texas following their takeover of TXU in Texas based on sound long term energy policy or short-sighted corporate greed?
http://www.fool.com/...
Lee Raymond former CHM of Exxon retired with a $400,000,000 nest egg. That was a pittance compared to the billions of profits he reaped for Exxon, one fill-up at a time, from our gas guzzlers.
During his reign, Exxon got tax legislation that favored Big Oil, foreign policy legislation that sent the men and women in our military and our tax dollars to protect oil pipelines and oil contracts and paid for pseudo scientific think tanks to distort data about global warming. Not bad, even for the CHM of a huge oligopoly.
The writing's on the wall for Big Oil, thanks to ice bergs collapsing into the sea and their boy George W. Bush waking everybody up with his catastrophic incompetence to the tunnel vision policies imposed on the country.
But Big Oil and Big Coal oligopolies don't melt away like the icebergs. Is Big Nuke the next opportunity for oligopolies to monopolize our energy dollars, one household at a time by controlling the rates we pay for energy?
The thing I loved best about Al Gore's testimony on Capital Hill was his reference to diffuse energy sources. He mentioned the alternative to centralized power....egalitarian style local power sources owned (perhaps cooperatively) by individual households, e.g. wind or solar, that would be connected to the grid so that any surplus could be sold back to the grid.
We'd cut the umbilical cord to a massive dirty oligopolies that have had us by the short hairs controlling our energy rates as well as domestic and foreign policy through massive campaign funding of malleable political candidates.
A decentralized clean power alternative like Al Gore suggests terrifies companies like Exxon or TXU and those in the Congress who carry their water. You could hear the anger in the voice of Senator Larry Craig, Rep. WY who yelled at Gore for being anti-nuclear, which Gore denied.
Here's a link to talking points for pro-nuclear advocates. The writer references the civil rights movement in his talking points on how to win the nuclear energy debate with anti-nuclear activists.
http://blog.niof.org/...
When we think of which candidates we want for president, we should be careful about those Senators who were snookered into signing Bush's Iraq War Resolution which gave Bush a blank check and enabled a corporate war for oil and oil contracts. Because these Senators could just as easily be snookered into falling for a nuclear solution to our energy problems when there are serious issues like waste and accidents and contamination that have not been publicly addressed.
That's just one more reason that I want a tough candidate who will stand up to the corporate pressures faced by the man or woman in the White House.
I was happy to hear what Al Gore had to say about diffusing our energy source.
It's one more reason I would trust Wes Clark as President should he run. Wes Clark says that he believes that renewable sustainable energy technology would be win/win/win by weaning us off foreign oil, providing an economic job base and cleaning our environment. And he's concerned about the unresolved toxic waste issue for nuclear. I'd simply like some non-biased scientific answers and for truth to be the basis of a public policy that would serve all of us and offer us a better future.
Wes Clark has been standing up to George W. Bush on Iraq since before the war when he testified before the Congress on the tragedy that was likely to unfold. He's standing up to Bush on IRAN, advocating for regional dialogue to diffuse Bush's Armageddon fever. Clark is competent and courageous with true populist progressive views.
Please run Wes. I want utility companies back in the box of regulation. And I want a sane energy policy for this country.