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kerrygoddess Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 11:38 AM
Original message
Kerry: 3 New Bold Ideas for Energy Independence and Global Climate Change
Edited on Mon Jun-26-06 11:47 AM by kerrygoddess
John Kerry: Three New Bold Ideas for Energy Independence and Global Climate Change
June 26th, 2006 @ 9:31 am

John Kerry introduced a bold new plan to achieve energy independence and combat global climate change, today, in a speech at Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Kerry’s plan challenges America to accept three big ideas to win energy independence and meet the ten year challenge of combating global climate change.

A fact sheet on the Kerry Energy Plan is attached.

Below are Kerry’s remarks as prepared for delivery:

Our Energy Challenge
Senator John Kerry
June 26, 2006
Faneuil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts

Here in Faneuil Hall, America’s first great gathering ground of free speech and dissent, we came together two months ago and nearly two and a half centuries after the voices of patriots were first heard within these walls.

We came together to affirm that the patriotism of 2006, no less than the patriotism of 1776, demands that we speak truth to power – that for love of country, we must end a war in Iraq that kills too many of our sons and daughters, betraying both our national interests and our ideals.

Last week, in the Senate, we stood against appeals to politics and pride and demanded a date to bring our troops home. We did that because that’s the way you get Iraqis to stand up for Iraq and fight a more effective war on terror.

We defied the White House tactics of fear and smear. Presidents and Republican politicians may be concerned about losing votes or losing face or losing legacies. We told the truth because we are more concerned about young Americans and Iraqi civilians losing their lives. And I guarantee you, our success would bring less loss of life, less expenditure of dollars, and it would make America safer.

I say “we” because even though our resolution only won 13 votes this time, I know every minute of the debate you were there with us — there with Russ Feingold, there with Ted Kennedy and there with us as we voted our beliefs and yours – that a policy based on deception and filled with blunders is no excuse for its own perpetuation.

But while we lost that roll call, I guarantee we will win the judgment of history because Washington is wrong and Americans are right, and we must set a new course in Iraq.

Yet our challenge is not just to end this war, it is to prevent the next one. The arrogance of ideology and the willful ignorance of the intelligence led us into a war of choice in Iraq. Now we must act so that at some future date America will never have to fight for its economic security because we are permanently held hostage to foreign oil.

We must make the hard choices – about alternative energy and clean coal, conservation and fuel efficiency – that will free our future from the dominance of big oil and yesterday’s fossil fuels, a dominance that in the era of global warming threatens the future itself.


FULL SPEECH HERE - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=3433

FACT SHEET - http://www.thedemocraticdaily.com/Kerry_Energy_Plan_Fact_Sheet.doc
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autorank Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 12:10 PM
Response to Original message
1. K&R - Thanks you President Kerry...
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kerrygoddess Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 12:31 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. President Kerry
Has a great ring to it. He's proved over and over again the Resident is no President.
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MH1 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 05:28 PM
Response to Original message
3. Thanks for posting, KG - one more rec needed! nt
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NNadir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 05:40 PM
Response to Original message
4. Anyone who uses the term "clean coal" in a sentence is crazy.
Edited on Mon Jun-26-06 05:40 PM by NNadir
I voted for John Kerry in the general election, but "clean coal" is mindless pandering. It doesn't exist.
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 06:02 PM
Response to Reply #4
5. clean-er coal
I agree, clean coal doesn't exist. But there are processes for clean-er coal and it can be a piece of the puzzle, although I'd rather push wind and solar to the forefront.
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NNadir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 06:11 PM
Response to Reply #5
6. There is no such thing as "cleaner" coal.
Coal is coal. It is well understood by anyone who understands the issue of energy to be the most dangerous fuel there is, bar none.

The first democratic candidate who can use the word "nuclear" in a sentence, has my respect.

Kerry knows better. He was in India recently where he discussed nuclear issues.

We need to get this insane idea that we can avoid the issue of global climate change with cute sounding panaceas.

The wind/solar idea is 50 years old. Everybody loves to mouthe the words. There is one slight drawback: It doesn't work, at least not on scale. This is about real courage.
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 06:32 PM
Response to Reply #6
7. Nuclear, bull-shit
As far as I'm concerned, anybody who thinks piles of radioactive waste is a good idea is crazy.

There most certainy IS cleaner coal technologies than what are in wide use today or what we had years ago. Just like we have cleaner gasoline technologies than we used to have. It's so unbelievable that someone would deny it that it really isn't worth my time to have a debate over it.

There is also solar shingles, which work in the UK, and could easily make every home in the world self-sufficient. Warehouses are using them and cutting their energy use by 60-70%. They certainly are viable options, we just need the will and the economic incentives to use them.
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NNadir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 06:42 PM
Response to Reply #7
9. Anyone who thinks billions of tons of carbon dioxide isn't waste
is completely out of his or her mind.

All people who embrace this fantasy are favoring coal, which actually kills people, in huge numbers. It's about to get much, much, much worse.

I don't care whether it's worth your time or not, but a brief tour of my journal will demonstrate that I know what I'm talking about and you don't.

Here's my latest offering, not in my journal, about "clean coal:"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=58117&mesg_id=58117

If you ever find someone killed by the storage of so called "dangerous nuclear waste," please be sure to inform me. You'll be the first person ever to have met that challenge on this website.

The external cost of all forms of energy have been systematically explored. The lie that 75,000 metric tons of solid, immobile so called "nuclear waste," produced over 50 years is somehow more dangerous than 7 billion tons of a gas each year is too incredible even to contemplate. This is a form of mysticism, and given the scale of the planetary emergency, it is frankly too absurd to tolerate.

The Oklo natural nuclear reactors are over 2 billion years old. I'll bet you never heard of them.

Nuclear energy is the cleanest form of scalable energy there is. It is safer than solar energy, especially when one considers the toxicity of something called batteries.

www.externe.info
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 08:22 PM
Response to Reply #9
16. One word - Chernobyl
There is no way to know the affects on life two billion years ago. It isn't a question of whether someone has been killed by nuclear waste today, it's a question of endless nuclear waste in the future and that one accident or miscalculation can destroy the planet. It's a terrible risk.

Solar shingles don't need to use batteries. The power is used as its produced or put back into the grid. Wind can be done exactly the same way.

I already said I don't support moving to clean coal, only that there IS technology that makes it cleaner than what it has been in the past. On the other hand, if some method of directing CO2 into greenhouses or some other plant process, it might actually be beneficial at some point.

You'll never convince me nuclear is the way to go, it is just not a sensible risk.
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NNadir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 09:01 PM
Response to Reply #16
17. Two words: Air pollution. Chernobyl was trivial compared to one
Edited on Mon Jun-26-06 09:02 PM by NNadir
year of air pollution, and that's not counting famines from global climate change.

Of course, unlike air pollution, which is constant, the accident at Chernobyl, which has yet to kill even a fraction of the number of people killed in New York city this year by air pollution, has not been repeated.

If you'll look at my thread over in E&E, you'll see that last year over 300,000 people died from coal air pollution in one year in east asia alone.

The fact that you pretend to care about Chernobyl and are indifferent to the deaths from air pollution is not satisfying. As is always the case with these arguements, which I hear frequently, it is a matter of selective attention and moral indifference.

There is no such thing, actually, as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

I note that the worst option is doing nothing. Putting faith in coal is worse that doing nothing. It is actively doing wrong.
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 09:15 PM
Response to Reply #17
20. It is NOT a coal v. nuclear argument
Nobody here ever said it was, Kerry never said it was. Nobody is putting 100% faith in coal. You're just flat making stuff up to support your nuclear advocacy. There is not an equivalent risk between nuclear and coal, they're just different risks. Currently, we're in a much better position to help clean up coal pollution than we are nuclear.

The truth is, we don't really know how many people have died due to cancer related to nuclear energy, it's much harder to track. This is just on Hanford.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hanford+nuclear+deaths&btnG=Google+Search

And again, neither one is necessary. We really can install solar and become fairly self-sufficient, except for manufacturing.
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NNadir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 09:32 PM
Response to Reply #20
21. You are wrong.
The external cost of energy has been compared systematically. www.externE.info. My journal has the chart on the subject on the bottom. Many links can be found on this site, detailing external costs.

Googling a subject and offering it as support is not thinking or comprehending, nor should it pass as an effort at understanding the critical issue of our times. It is in fact, intellectually lazy. As global climate change and the risk of energy are serious matters, they are not so easily dismissed by typing "nuclear and cancer." I am not going to type "air pollution" and cancer, although I could do that. The reason is that I know that of which I speak.

You apparently have no idea how high the risk of solar energy is either. It's a day dream. I will bet that your assertion grows out of complete ignorance about the chemistry of solar cells. If the solar industry were any where near capable of producing what is needed - and it does not produce one exajoule of the 440 used on the planet right now - you would have an appreciation of its external cost. However since 50 years after the invention of the solar cell in 1954, the stuff is largely a pipe dream. The "solar will save us" advocacy of it is largely an appeal to doing nothing. Doing nothing especially based such advocacy on unrealistic faith obtained from Googling is morally unacceptable.

The subject of Hanford is irrelevant, since Hanford is a weapons plant, not a power plant. In any case, the number of cancers in the entire state of Washington does not compare to the number of deaths associated with coal use in Asia alone.

I note that people do not point to the danger of napalm when talking about petroleum. They should, but they don't.
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 10:32 PM
Response to Reply #21
23. Like I said, waste of time
You'll just keep ranting about nuclear and ignoring the obvious dangers, and then rant daydream daydream daydream to anything that proves there are better and viable alternatives.

Solar is currently doing exactly what you say it can't do, for people all around the world.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,44784,00.html
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_energy_solar_power_panels.htm

I googled up Hanford and cancer because the problems are decades long, old incidents and new incidents, tons of information, more than I care to sort through for your benefit. It was intended to point out specifically that nuclear power has killed people and it doesn't even take an accident like Chernobyl to do it. Hanford is now a nuclear waste dump and one of the worst ecological disasters in the northwest. All kinds of problems have been associated with it. It also stores nuclear waste from the Trojan plant, so it isn't all nuclear weapons either.
http://www.hanfordwatch.org/

Nuclear anything is just crazy making and it makes my head spin every time I read anything about it. I'd rather live in a cave than resort to nuclear power.
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NNadir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:57 AM
Response to Reply #23
24. And you will ignore the real dangers of fossil fuels.
You are a typical American in ignorance and denial.

You haven't even bothered to learn the basics about energy. You think your electricity comes from a switch.

Come back when you understand what an exajoule is.
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ProSense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 06:14 AM
Response to Reply #24
25. As the self-proclaimed expert on the subject,
have you written to Sen. Kerry to enlighten him?
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karynnj Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 07:52 AM
Response to Reply #7
30. I agree - The key is that Kerry is advocating
really investigating the alternatives to find what will work. As you allude to, the rest of the world is ahead of us on this.
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ProSense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 06:37 PM
Response to Reply #4
8. If everyone thought like that, there would never be progress!
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NNadir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 06:55 PM
Response to Reply #8
10. And the timeline for this "progress" is what?
Edited on Mon Jun-26-06 06:56 PM by NNadir
What is the timeline for putting back the mountains of West Virginia?

There is not one industrial scale "clean coal" plant on this planet. Not one. There's a lot of talk about "clean coal," as there has been for decades, but it's marketing.

Is it your contention that we have 30 or 40 years to develop one of these contemplated plants these diagrams?

The position that coal is acceptable on any terms is indefensible, even if one was only talking about mining and not CO2. But it happens that CO2 is an international emergency of international proportions. We need leaders who will educate us and who will act on what is already available to us. The real energy options are clear for anyone who looks at them soberly and without cant. We don't need leaders to tell us what we want to hear. We already have such a "leader," occupying our White House and it is a disaster.
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ProSense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 07:14 PM
Response to Reply #10
12. You said it doesn't exit! The major obstacle
is funding! Kerry is laying out a plan and vision to achieve it.
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NNadir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 07:35 PM
Response to Reply #12
13. I'm not saying I believe the diagrams. Clean coal doesn't exist.
Edited on Mon Jun-26-06 07:38 PM by NNadir
I know enough about the subject to know that it never will.

The point is that it is not time to make pie-in-sky promises about what might be or could be if we adopt a magical Apollo program or Manhattan Project. This is nonsense thinking. The scale of the emergency is such that we need to look at the options that now exist, and choose the best. This is not the time to rely on speculative inventions that we pretend will work if only we throw enough money at them.

Clean coal goes back to the Carter era. I don't fault Mr. Carter, because he didn't know then what we know now. We have had three decades of insight since Mr. Carter came to office. We have discovered, among other things, what global climate change will mean. The industrialization of coal liquification, the Fischer-Tropsch process is a century old. That people have forgotten this does not make it new, nor does it make it safe. It was dangerous and ugly then, and it is dangerous and ugly now.

Norway, a wealthy nation, has just started to look into carbon sequestration, and has concluded it really can't afford it. No one can. In any case, it is certain to fail eventually, given the nature of what gas is, and what mass balances are involved. I don't think there is one person who puts niave faith in these schemes who has a clue what 7 billion tons of gas means. That's every year. Now. Before we sink more dependency into coal.

It is not true that there is enough research dollars on the entire planet, in fact in the entire world GDP to make carbon dioxide sequestering work. More broadly, the other drawbacks to coal, all of them enormous, are equally intractable. No amount of money can make coal clean. Nothing makes mercury go away. Nothing stops acid from leaching from abandoned strip mines. Nothing can convert millions of tons of oxidized sulfur into something benign. The nitrogen cycle is being shifted on a planetary scale, and heat and pressure, the elements of gasification schemes, are involved. There is not enough precious metal catalysts in all the world to address this issue. There is no way to capture the other heavy metals, the cadmium, and yes indeed, uranium and thorium, associated with coal.

Sweeping this matter under an imaginary rug, trotting out 50 year old platitudes - the most laughable is the "gasification scheme" - is going to make the matter worse, not better. Where, for instance, is the water going to come from? Do you have any idea how little time we have to figure these issues out?

Kerry is pandering here. I suspect that he knows the truth, but is afraid to say it. In fact, I know he knows the truth. He imagines though, that the truth it is not politically viable. That is too bad. I think the American people would be thrilled to hear the truth now, absolutely thrilled. I know I would.
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TayTay Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 07:55 PM
Response to Reply #13
14. So you ignore 99.9% of the speech
to make one point about coal? Kerry talks about moving strongly toward renewables, about making mandatory improvements in things like CAFE standards and in creating incentives for the US automotive industry to invest in hybrid technology and you complain about one phrase in the speech?

This may be why people didn't take the comment seriously. It wasn't a speech about moving to coal, it was a speech about trying to move the American agenda forward on energy usage. You have picked out the one little item that upset you and ignored everything else.

BTW, what percentage of China's energy needs are met with coal?
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NNadir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 09:09 PM
Response to Reply #14
18. Um, the coal is a big one, 7 billion tons worth.
Edited on Mon Jun-26-06 09:12 PM by NNadir
China meets more than 70% of its energy demand with coal. However, on a per capita basis, they are not even close to us. In fact we burn more coal than they do, even though they have 4 or 5 times as many people as we do. Their life style in general is no where near as rapacious as ours.

Blaming China is completely hypocritcal. China plans to build 25 or 30 new nuclear reactors. At least half of the papers now published in Energy and Fuels the scientific journal on the development of new fuels, is by Chinese authors, including many strategies that are relatively carbon neutral. Practically every American paper, and there are less and less of them, is about coal or oil. The Chinese have been seriously facing the matter. We've been driving Hummers.

Of course Kerry is not being as bad as the Repukes, who also spout "clean coal" nonsense while denying global climate change, but on the other hand, he is not proposing any thing that will make a difference.

The matter is possibly the most dangerous issue humanity has ever faced. It's not kiddy stuff.

If Kerry is the 2008 nominee, I will put aside my objections and vote for him. But he is not the nominee. He is now the equivalent of every other Democrat. If he keeps talking like this, I will support someone else for the nomination.
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TayTay Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 07:05 AM
Response to Reply #18
26. I see. So you see his mandates to develop
other forms of renewable and clean-burning fuels as, what, wrong? Did you bother to read the part of the speech where he calls for renewed interest in developing newer fuels and technologies to solve this problem or did you just see coal and beg off the rest?

The comments are about a march toward getting better fuels. If you are an expert on this, then you know that coal is going to continue to be a fuel for years to come. We can't replace it until we find something to replace it with and that's what the bulk of Kerry's speech was aiming at, getting different and better kinds of fuels that won't be as dangerous to the planet as what we have now.

I would love to live in your world, honetly, but coal is not going away anytime soon. We all know that. We have to develop the programs that will allow for it to be replaced and that's what Kerry is trying to garner support for. I have no idea how you think we are just supposed to tell emerging nations like China and so forth to just shut down. That's unrealistic and not going to happen.
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NNadir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 02:29 PM
Response to Reply #26
33. Coal will not be a fuel for years to come.
Edited on Tue Jun-27-06 02:43 PM by NNadir
It will kill us before too long.

If we must do realism, you really need to consider that option. You may think I'm joking, but I'm not. It is increasingly possible that the climate models that predicted gradual climate change are wrong. People are increasingly surprised with the magnitude and rapidity of the change. It seems to be happening much faster than we expected, with much worse effects.

People support coal because of the very dangerous idea that there is no option to it. There are many possible things that can happen to prevent the further expansion of coal use. One of them is the complete collapse of the human population through massive tragedy. If you think that is not a risk associated with coal, think again.

People think I'm the bad guy because I'm willing to say "nuclear," and they have trained themselves to have a rote unthinking reaction, hysterical and irrational given that we now have tens of thousands of reactor-years of experience with the technology, to that word.

I'm not the only one on the planet to say that word, however. The International Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, is quite willing to say the word "nuclear" as well. The nuclear option exists in their scenarios, and it's a hell of a lot more attractive scenario than the alternatives.

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/emission/105.htm

We like to pretend that all of the responsibility for global climate change rests with denial on the right. Of course the right is famous for its denial of global climate change, and correctly maligned for it.

But if we posit business as usual on our side, we're not much better.

I repeat: Coal is very likely to kill us. All of us.

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globalvillage Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 08:16 PM
Response to Reply #13
15. Have you written to him?
Seriously. It sounds like you have a valid point.
Senator Kerry knows a hell of a lot, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't know everything. It certainly wouldn't hurt for you to tell him your views.
Maybe he knows more than you about this, and maybe your know more than him.
You both know more about it than I do.
One thing I do know for certain about the Senator is that he listens. You should write.
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karynnj Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 07:48 AM
Response to Reply #4
28. Supposedly there are ways to "clean" coal before
you burn it. The Cleaning process removes many elements, not needed for combustion, that contribute to pollution. I don't have the background to know whether this process does what it porports to do.
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satya Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 07:02 PM
Response to Original message
11. "fear and smear" -- good one. JK has been listening to Lakoff? nt
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kerrygoddess Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 09:11 PM
Response to Original message
19. More from Today
Audio Link and photos here - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=3438

Environmental Leaders Praise Kerry Plan on Climate Change, Energy Independence
http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=3434

And there's more coming...
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kerrygoddess Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-26-06 09:39 PM
Response to Original message
22. Here's more from DU'er Tay Tay who was there today...
John Kerry Connects the Dots with his Speech on Energy Independence
Posted by Tay Tay
June 26th, 2006 @ 7:33 pm

I was in the audience today, as Senator John Kerry delivered a powerful speech at Faneuil Hall in Boston on what America needs to do to free itself from foreign oil dependence, combat global warming and climate change and push for more efficient energy usage in the U.S.

Before the speech we were treated to a young man from Vermont who came to read a letter he sent to the Senator recently. Jesse Rogers, all of 8 years old, sent Kerry a copy of Dr Suess’ The Lorax, because it’s a good book about the environment. Young Jesse certainly charmed the crowd.



The Senator delivered his speech before a large and receptive crowd that cheered his suggestions for actions that can be taken by the US Congress now to get the nation to adopt more fuel-efficient CAFE standards, increase the use of ethanol and other renewable fuels and put America on a course that truly recognizes the importance of energy independence.

Last December, Sen. Kerry delivered remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City that basically called on the United States to change it’s policy in the Middle East and to stop enabling regimes that repress their people and stop progressive growth in those governments in that region.

In April at Faneuil Hall, earlier this month at the Take Back America Conference, and then most recently on the floor of the Senate last week, Kerry has repeatedly called for the US to re-evaluate its course in the Iraq War and to recognize that we need a political and not a military solution in order to begin to end this occupation.

MORE, MORE PICS & LINKS TO PREVIOUS SPEECHES - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=3439
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 07:37 AM
Response to Original message
27. The only REAL alternative
We're spending dozens of billions on Iraq... far more than we ever spent on the Apollo Program, even if translated into today's dollars.

You want to address energy concerns, Mr. Kerry? Push for a veritable "Apollo Energy Program" that will search for and develop a truly clean and renewable energy source (viable solar energy, for instance). Until we take the bull by the horns and take the problem seriously we're going to be stuck in the same Big Capital game of "let's find another commodity-based energy source so we can still get richer, environment be damned".

Nukes, coal, oil, gasahol, etc - are all stopgaps that keep the energy industry plutocracy in the case.

Enough is enough.
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TayTay Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 07:49 AM
Response to Reply #27
29. Ah, that is what he is pushing for.
Gawd, doesn't anyone read what they are commenting on?
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 12:18 PM
Response to Reply #29
31. Gawd
Doesn't anyone understand what they read?

Pardon me for the retort, but I -DID- read Kerry's speech. And no, he is not saying what I said.
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 01:21 PM
Response to Reply #31
32. Well he said it every friggin' day in 2004
He actually used to have the Apollo Project people at his events. Perhaps he is using different language today because so many people couldn't process his high-falutin' northeastern language in 2004, but he IS saying that we need an energy project - "to go to the moon right here on earth" - and he's been saying that since the days he led the acid rain investigations in the 80's.
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 02:33 PM
Response to Reply #32
34. Deleted message
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 03:00 PM
Response to Reply #34
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karynnj Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:10 PM
Response to Reply #37
41. Kerry is not a corp-financed DLCer - and never was.
Kerry is one of the few people who ran for Senate 4 times refusing PAC funding. Kerry authored the Clean Elections bill that he and Wellstone sponsored. The CSPAN archives have comments from an August 2002 NH appearance where he answered a young person concerned that politicians listened only to people and companies with money. His answer was very thoughtful - and among other things he mentioned that this was why he chose not to accept PAC money. From your comments here, you would agree with Kerry that the Fortune 500 was getting too great a say. Here are the comments on the introduction of the Clean Elections bill.

From the Senate record:
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I want to speak before you today about a critical challenge before this Senate--the challenge of reforming the way in which elections are conducted in the United States; the challenge of ending the ``moneyocracy'' that has turned our elections into auctions where public office is sold to the highest bidder. I want to implore the Congress to take meaningful steps this year to ban soft money, strengthen the Federal Election Commission, provide candidates the opportunity to pay for their campaigns with clean money, end the growing trend of dangerous sham issue ads, and meet the ultimate goal of restoring the rights of average Americans to have a stake in their democracy. Today I am proud to join with my colleague from Minnesota, PAUL WELLSTONE, to introduce the ``Clean Money'' bill which I believe will help all of us entrusted to shape public policy to arrive at a point where we can truly say we are rebuilding Americans' faith in our democracy.
For the last 10 years, I have stood before you to push for comprehensive campaign reform. We have made nips and tucks at the edges of the system, but we have always found excuses to hold us back from making the system work. It's long past time that we act--in a comprehensive way--to curtail the way in which soft money and the big special interest dollars are crowding ordinary citizens out of this political system.
Today the political system is being corrupted because there is too much unregulated, misused money circulating in an environment where candidates will do anything to get elected and where, too often, the special interests set the tone of debate more than the political leaders or the American people. Just consider the facts for a moment. The rising cost of seeking political office is outrageous. In 1996, House and Senate candidates spent more than $765 million, a 76% increase since 1990 and a six fold increase since 1976. Since 1976, the average cost for a winning Senate race went from $600,000 to $3.3 million, and in the arms race for campaign dollars in 1996 many of us were forced to spend significantly more than that. In constant dollars, we have seen an increase of over 100 percent in the money spent for Senatorial races from 1980 to 1994. Today Senators often spend more time on the phone ``dialing for dollars'' than on the Senate floor. The average Senator must raise $12,000 a week for six years to pay for his or her re-election campaign.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The use of soft money has exploded. In 1988, Democrats and Republicans raised a combined $45 million in soft money. In 1992 that number doubled to reach $90 million and in 1995-96 that number tripled to $262 million. This trend continues in this cycle. What's the impact of all that soft money? It means that the special interests are being heard. They're the ones with the influence. But ordinary citizens can't compete. Fewer than one third of one percent of eligible voters donated more than $250 in the electoral cycle of 1996. They're on the sidelines in what is becoming a coin-operated political system.
The American people want us to act today to forge a better system. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 77% of the public believes that campaign finance reform is needed ``because there is too much money being spent on political campaigns, which leads to excessive influence by special interests and wealthy individuals at the expense of average people.'' Last spring a New York Times found that an astonishing 91% of the public favor a fundamental transformation of this system.
Cynics say that the American people don't care about campaign finance. It's not true. Citizens just don't believe we'll have the courage to act--they're fed up with our defense of the status quo. They're disturbed by our fear of moving away from this status quo which is destroying our democracy. Soft money, political experts tell us, is good for incumbents, good for those of us within the system already. Well, nothing can be good for any elected official that hurts our democracy, that drives citizens out of the process, and which keeps politicians glued to the phone raising money when they ought to be doing the people's business. Let's put aside the status quo, and let's act today to restore our democracy, to make it once more all that the founders promised it could be.
Let us pass the Clean Mo ney Bill to restore faith in our government in this age when it has been so badly eroded.
Let us recognize that the faith in government and in our political process which leads Americans to go to town hall meetings, or to attend local caucuses, or even to vote--that faith which makes political expression worthwhile for ordinary working Americans--is being threatened by a political system that appears to reward the special interests that can play the game and the politicians who can game the system.
Each time we have debated campaign finance reform in this Senate, too many of our colleagues have safeguarded the status quo under the guise of protecting the political speech of the Fortune 500. But today we must pass campaign finance reform to protect the political voice of the 250 million ordinary, working Americans without a fortune. It is their dwindling faith in our political system that must be restored.

Twenty five years ago, I sat before the Foreign Relations Committee, a young veteran having returned from Vietnam. Behind me sat hundreds of veterans committed to ending the war the Vietnam War. Even then we questioned whether ordinary Americans, battle scarred veterans, could have a voice in a political system where the costs of campaigns, the price of elected office seemed prohibitive. Young men who had put their life on the front lines for their country were worried that the wall of special interests between the people and their government might have been too thick even then for our voices to be heard in the corridors of power in Washington, D.C.
But we had a reserve of faith left, some belief in the promise and the influence of political expression for all Americans. That sliver of faith saved lives. Ordinary citizens stopped a war that had taken 59,000 American lives.
GPO's PDF
Every time in the history of this republic when we have faced a moral challenge, there has been enough faith in our democracy to stir the passions of ordinary Americans to act--to write to their Members of Congress; to come to Washington and speak with us one on one; to walk door to door on behalf of issues and candidates; and to vote on election day for people they believe will fight for them in Washington.
It's the activism of citizens in our democracy that has made the American experiment a success. Ordinary citizens--at the most critical moments in our history--were filled with a sense of efficacy. They believed they had influence in their government.
Today those same citizens are turning away from our political system. They believe the only kind of influence left in American politics is the kind you wield with a checkbook. The senior citizen living on a social security check knows her influence is inconsequential compared to the interest group that can saturate a media market with a million dollars in ads that play fast and loose with the facts. The mother struggling to find decent health care for her children knows her influence is trivial compared to the special interests on K Street that can deliver contributions to incumbent politicians struggling to stay in office.
But I would remind you that whenever our country faces a challenge, it is not the special interests, but rather the average citizen, who holds the responsibility to protect our nation. The next time our nation faces a crisis and the people's voice needs to be heard to turn the tide of history, will the average American believe enough in the process to give words to the feelings beyond the beltway, the currents of public opinion that run beneath the surface of our political dialogue?
In times of real challenge for our country in the years to come, will the young people speak up once again? Not if we continue to hand over control of our political system to the special interests who can infuse the system with soft money and with phony television ads that make a mockery of the issues.
The children of the generation that fought to lower the voting age to 18 are abandoning the voting booth themselves. Polls reveal they believe it is more likely that they'll be abducted by aliens than it is that their vote will make a real difference. For America's young people the MTV Voter Participation Challenge ``Choose or Lose'' has become a cynical joke. In their minds, the choice has already been lost--lost to the special interests. That is a loss this Senate should take very seriously. That is tremendous damage done to our democracy, damage we have a responsibility in this Senate to repair. Mr. President, with this legislation we are introducing today, we can begin that effort--we can repair and revitalize our political process, and we can guarantee ``clean el ections'' fu nded by ``clean mo ney,'' elections wh ere our citizens are the ones who make the difference

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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:14 PM
Response to Reply #41
44. Kerry NEVER DLC?
Sure about that?
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karynnj Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:34 PM
Response to Reply #44
48. Not what I said- I was using your phrase in the deleted message
Kerry was never corporate funded DLCer
Did you read anything I wrote - that, rather than a label, is where Kerry is on the issue of corporations.
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blm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:41 PM
Response to Reply #44
50. Kerry's furthest left of the DLC, further than most nonDLC and he never
accepted corporate pac money for any of his senate races.

He has been a 21 year advocate for public financing of campaigns, and he and Wellstone crafted the Clean Money, Clean Elections bill in 1997 which some states have adapted for their own elections.

Why do I get the feeling that you base your attacks on a false characterization of Kerry that you have been fed, instead of knowing the concrete facts about him?

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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:52 PM
Response to Reply #50
56. Perhaps because I don't look at the packaging
but at the product itself.
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blm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:54 PM
Response to Reply #56
58. That PRODUCT wrote the Clean Money, Clean Elections bill.
The same bill that 3 states have so far adapted for their own elections, and more will be following. No other lawmaker can make that claim, yet Kerry is the corporate whore to you?
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 02:53 PM
Response to Reply #32
36. Good.
He shouldn't have given up and he CERTAINY shouldn't be talkiung nukes and "clean" coal.
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blm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 02:48 PM
Response to Reply #27
35. Apollo Project energy plan was Kerry's plan, he's talked of it for YEARS,
and I am surprised that you weren't aware of that if you are an activist.
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 03:01 PM
Response to Reply #35
38. Then why did he stop?
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blm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 03:04 PM
Response to Reply #38
39. Why did he stop what? He's never stopped pushing his proposals.
Edited on Tue Jun-27-06 03:06 PM by blm
And during the campaign he brought it up at every rally and speech throughout the primaries and the general. I'm surprised you didn't know that.
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 03:45 PM
Response to Reply #39
40. Look - there's a BIG difference between rhetoric
and reality.

Here: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showplatforms.php?platindex=D2004

I see virtually the same that Kerry has always said. I have seen nothing about a major R&D project on the scale of Apollo.

You might want to see one in the rhetoric but it isn't there. Just some platitudes and wishes- nothing concrete.
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ProSense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:11 PM
Response to Reply #40
42. Or this:
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blm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:13 PM
Response to Reply #40
43. That's absurd - I heard it almost every time he spoke on Cspan throughout
the entire campaign.

Here was his speech Feb 2003, and he echoed it at every opportunity or added to it.

Sen. John Kerry
Speech on the Environment
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Boston, MA
February 9, 2003
Remarks as Prepared
We meet in a place that testifies both to the soaring aspirations of America - and the capacity of events to break our hearts and our hope.

We saw that again a week ago in the fiery tragedy of the Space Shuttle Columbia falling from the sky - the new ocean we explore that President Kennedy launched us on more than forty years before. No one can doubt that we will return. Even as we mourn and even now as we investigate and debate, we have reaffirmed our resolve.

Yet in the past week, other events that test our spirit and strength passed almost unnoticed. We lost four sons of America in Afghanistan and it hardly caused a ripple. Indeed, every day we lose Americans in our streets and we lose important public values and assets without much notice; more and more we seem resigned to accepting this as a matter of course.

But it is not acceptable. Too often today our national capacity to translate principle into political action appears dulled or dumbed down beyond the comprehensible - as false rhetoric becomes a substitute for meeting the reality of our challenges. We will not got to the stars on the cheap - and here on earth we will not accomplish our work by short-changing it.

We need to renew our national resolve - not just in the face of fatal tragedy or fateful attack, but across the board. We need to push back against complacency and the political caution that tempts us just to go along.

We need to push back on tax cuts that make no economic sense - on stimulus packages that don't stimulate - on health care treated more and more as a privilege and not as the right it should be. We need to push back on focus grouped slogans of compassion that show little or no compassion at all - We need to push back on a foreign policy that puts America unnecessarily at risk - on rhetoric about draining the swamp of terrorists while our policies too often ignore the poisonous flow that fills the swamp.

So it is appropriate that we gather here at a memorial to John F. Kennedy. His vision can help us focus in our difficult times. One of his great gifts was the way in which he challenged us to dream of the future as only Americans can. He inspired us to set our sights high in the pursuit of progress and to find ways to reach our goals -- to send a man to the moon, to confront the ignorance and injustice of bigotry, and to send Americans all over the world to bring about a better life and strengthen the bond among nations. He asked us to do these things not because they were easy but because they were hard - and above all else, because they were right.

That is what we need to do today - tell the truth, talk common sense, and find a common vision equal to the best of our history and our hopes.

This begins by acknowledging that nowhere is there a more determined, more dangerous, more concerted frontal and stealth assault on our values and our future than the Bush Administration's disregard for the environment. Nowhere is there a greater need for a new vision - a better vision - than in the decisions we make that affect the health of the environment we share with the other 95% of humanity.

We know intuitively that America is only as healthy as the water our children drink, the air they breathe, the yards and parks in which they play and laugh, and the communities in which they live. The question is whether armed with that knowledge our generation will leave our children and grandchildren an earth that is cleaner not more degraded, more beautiful not more polluted, healthier and safer for children and other living things than the world we inherited from our parents and grandparents.

I remember reading Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' and feeling we had a responsibility to do something about lakes full of toxins and rivers that caught on fire. Thirty years ago, I was part of that peaceful Army of conscience that launched the first Earth Day here in the Commonwealth to demand the most basic safeguards for our air, water and land.

The first calls for environmental stewardship were instantly and insistently opposed by some in industry, who threatened that even modest reform was technologically impossible and economically ruinous. But across the nation people gathered and they organized - just as we did here in New England - and mounted a great democratic march toward pioneering laws like the Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act - fundamental protections that Americans take for granted today.

We removed lead from gasoline, set out to clean up polluted waterways, cut back air pollution, took back land that had been lost to toxic waste - and we even saved the bald eagle from extinction. And with this progress, we disproved the rallying cry of the polluters and their apologists. We proved that a good environment and a sound economy go hand in hand.

This was a bi-partisan cause, as it should be. Republicans and Democrats breathe the same air, and our children drink the same water. But now, after a generation when we sometimes differed on specific issues but always moved in the same direction, this administration has broken the bond of shared commitment. When have we heard the President propose anything other that tokenism on the environment? Where is the strategy for energy efficiency to reduce pollution and reduce the energy dependence which can hold our entire economy hostage to hostile powers?

The environmental challenge is more pressing and more profound than ever. It involves our national resources, our national security, and the ways in which human beings will live together on this planet.

More must be done, not less. Far more - yet we don't have to look far to see the challenge; it is all around us.

Too many of American lakes and rivers remain polluted; today nearly half of Massachusetts' waterways are too polluted to fish or swim in and 44% across the nation. Hundreds of toxic sites - dangerous to the millions who live near them - blight places all across the country. The soot, smog and other pollution in our air still sickens our fellow citizens and contributes to 30,000 deaths each year. Thanks to dirty power plants that we refuse to modernize, mercury emissions are expected to climb to 60 tons in 2010, a 33% increase over 1990 levels. Each summer, smog triggers over 6 million asthma attacks and results in nearly 70,000 hospital admissions. We're rapidly encroaching upon our forests, wetlands and farmlands and all the natural ecosystems that sustain us. And ever more awesome challenges have emerged as we now understand the mortal threat of pollution to our oceans and our climate.


Special Interests Before National Interests

We had our earth day. Now, if necessary, if this administration will not change course, the next election year must be an earth year, where we plainly and unequivocally fight for the environment against those now at the center of power who are dismantling that commitment piece by piece.

Perhaps that charge takes some by surprise. After all, in his State of the Union address President Bush promised the nation that, "We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations."

And to match that soaring rhetoric the Administration has launched a series of environmental policies so duplicitous they would make George Orwell blush at this President's mastery of doublespeak. They have mastered the tactic of slapping slick slogans on their policies that make them sound like something they're not. The President's 'Healthy Forests' initiative sounds great, except that's where you kill the trees to save the forest. He has a 'Clear Skies' program based on the premise that our air will be cleaner when you let companies decide how much they can pollute. And while I applaud the President for finally acknowledging the potential of hydrogen cars, I'm convinced his 'Freedom Car' was really dreamed up to maintain the political freedom of this White House to open up the Rocky Mountains and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. It's the new Dick Cheney playbook - 'drill today, drill tomorrow, hydrogen sometime,' and hope we don't see through the media smokescreen.

The truth is, President Bush provides the right rhetoric, but then pursues all the wrong policies.

He says he wants to clean up toxic waste sites, but he's reversed the polluter pays principle in the Superfund, and that means the fund will soon run dry and cleanups will stop. We're already feeling the effect. The Atlas Tack site in Fairhaven contains cyanide, heavy metals, pesticides and PCBs. Some 7,000 people live within a one mile of the site. And this year, the Bush Administration provided exactly zero dollars for cleanup. Across the country, seven toxic sites and the communities that must live with them got nothing.

The President's Clear Skies initiative for power plants is anything but clear. It is, in fact, slower and weaker than current law. It is a step backwards that will spew more pollution into air - pollution that causes asthma, heart disease, neurological damage and even death - and contributes to acid rain, smog, soot and mercury in our rivers and lakes. And we will bear the brunt of the President's plan, because, although New England has done its part, weather will carry pollution from distant heavily-polluting power plants to our communities. And never forget, it is not just broken environmental policy, it is a broken promise from a President who pledged on the campaign trail to cut carbon emissions from power plants - and now won't.

The President calls his energy plan "balanced." And I suppose it is, if balanced means what it did for the books at Enron and WorldCom. Quite simply, if we enacted the Bush plan today, we would find ourselves more polluting and more dependent on foreign oil in 20 years than we are today. His Freedom Car initiative throws a bone to those of us who have called for intense research into hydrogen fuel, but it's no substitute for making the more than 300 million cars that will be built before fuel cell cars hit the road more efficient - and that is exactly what John McCain and I fought for last year and it's exactly what President Bush fought against.

The litany of environmental neglect and rollback could go on, to wetlands, to toxics, to clean water, to roadless forests, to our public lands. Corporate polluters have found in the Bush Administration that the doors of government are wide open. In fact, the Administration invited in the chief lobbyists to rewrite the very laws that were intended to protect us from them. This Administration has heeded the special interests rather than America's interest and the result has been the most wide-ranging retreat on environmental protections in a century.

Americans want to make sure the water we drink is clean. But this Administration tried to increase the limits of arsenic in our water.

Americans want the toxic sites in our neighborhoods cleaned up. But this Administration has cut the number of sites we're cleaning up nearly in half.

Americans believe in simple justice: that what you mess up you should clean up. But this Administration has found a new principle: when today's polluters pollute and profit, taxpayers should foot the bill.

Americans believe in cleaning up pollution, not subsidizing it. But this Administration protects government subsidies that ignore or undermine our commitment to a clean environment. The Fossil Energy Research and Development program spends more than $400 million on R&D for oil companies who can afford their own R&D-- and even duplicates research they're already engaged in. Meanwhile clean alternative energies compete for the scraps of a mere $24 million in federal venture capital.

Americans believe we can build an international consensus to address the threat of global warming. But this Administration ignored it - sending a message that reverberated around the globe - and will reverberate upon future generations.

Their meetings are behind closed doors, but their agenda is plain to see.

What is particularly plain to me is that we need a new agenda and America needs a healthier environment - with cleaner air, water, and land. We need and we must have a future that is no longer dependent on oil from unstable regions.

So let's take the President at his word. We will not deny; we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations. But, unlike this president, our actions must be as bold as our rhetoric.

Instead of weakening the Clean Air Act, let's strengthen it to reduce mercury, sulfur, nitrogen and carbon emissions.

Instead of letting the Superfund go broke, sticking taxpayers with the tab, and forcing communities to live with toxic sites, let's restore the polluter pays principle and get the poisons out of our neighborhoods.

And let's deal with new threats, not deny them, turning away and pretending not to see as more and more Americans are exposed to more and more toxics in combinations we've never imagined. There are some 80,000 chemicals registered for use in the United States, and each day we are exposed to hundreds, even thousands, of them. They are released into our environment, into our air, water and land and they find their way into the food chain. We bring them into our homes in the food and products we buy, from cleaners to cosmetics to our children's toys. We assume the chemicals are safe, but that's a mistake. Fewer than 10 percent have been tested, and some of have been linked to cancer, birth defects and infertility. It's long since time we give the EPA and FDA the authority and capacity to investigate, monitor and test the long-term risks of these compounds. Our environment and our bodies are no place to experiment with chemicals.

We must also help cities across the nation, like the old manufacturing towns all across New England, build the infrastructure that will keep sewage and polluted runoff out of our rivers, lakes and harbors, and beyond this, we must leverage a new urban strategy in America to plan spaces - build community - avoid the endless sprawl that robs us of our public spaces - and ultimately revive the urban center as one of the best places to live and raise a family.

We must manage our land knowing we will someday pass it on to tomorrow's generations. We must work it, reap its harvest, and care for it. This is not just an ideal or a possibility; it is a deeply practical imperative.


Economy

And the good news is our progress in technology and the lessons of the past three decades, have taught us that cleaning up the environment will strengthen not weaken our economy. We need to push back on the scaremongering which falsely portrays pollution as the price of prosperity. We don't have to choose between jobs and the environment. Protecting the environment is jobs - the high value added jobs of the future.

This is not pie-in-the-sky, tree hugging, do-gooder environmental day dreaming. This is real. It's happening in pioneering efforts across the country and across the globe. It awaits our leadership. When I hear the polluters and their favored politicians invoke the issue of jobs and growth, my response is: It is not us who should be on the defensive - it's them and it's time we put them there.

In doing so, we cannot talk vague generalities. We must show real jobs, real costs, real transition numbers. We must show that our next generation of environmental solutions represent the least intrusive, most cost effective ways of doing the job. We must show the growth in demand in America and precisely how we will meet it, not just without loss but with gain in the quality of our lives.

We know if we invest in new technologies we can build cars and SUVs that are twice and three times as efficient as today - and one day a car that relies on no oil at all. And a company that may help build that car can be found right there in Cambridge; it's called Nuvera Fuel Cells and it's putting fuel cell components in prototype cars today. We know if we support promising research, we can get cleaner coal, renewable sources of energy like wind and solar energy, light our homes and businesses with fuel cells, and run power plants that don't turn the jet stream into a river of pollution. And today the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 103 is taking the lead by training technicians in the maintenance and installation of solar.

Minnesota now requires that a percentage of its electricity be generated from the wind, and family farmers have gone into the power business. In Woodstock, Minnesota, Richard and Roger Kas have built 17 wind turbines on their land, creating enough electricity to power more than 2,000 homes. Other farmers are literally growing renewable fuels in their fields which will bring warmth and light to our homes.

For Americans who work in engineering, design, and industry, the growth of wind, solar and geothermal can spark an unprecedented surge in production. And since developing new energy technologies is a research-driven, pathbreaking activity, a commitment to it will yield thousands and ultimately hundreds of thousands of well-paying new jobs. The machines of renewable energy will be made of steel, aluminum and glass. They will be machined, manufactured, distributed and maintained. And in that historic effort, I do not want and we cannot afford to see this country take a backseat to the Germans or the Japanese. This new direction for America can create new jobs for Americans, and it's up to us to make our economy second to none on this technological frontier.

Building more efficient cars and SUVs will not only save millions of barrels of oil a day; in the end, it will create or sustain millions jobs. So will building high-speed rail and 21st century transit.

The possibilities are limitless. But it will take a commitment as broad and bold as sending a man to the moon. And we can't fulfill that commitment by sending the environment to the back of the budget - and putting the polluters in charge, in secret, behind closed doors.

Energy Security Is National Security

In the end, though, our concerns about the environment are not just about the economy and quality of life here at home. Make no mistake: our environment and energy policies are critical to national our security.

The Bush-Cheney energy policies leave us at the mercy of a region racked with violence and instability, now more than ever.

We can no longer tolerate a dependence on foreign oil, that could be cut-off amid global chaos at the whim of unstable tyrants like Saddam Hussein.

The Bush Administration thinks we can drill our way out of our energy problems.

And their solution is to drill in one of our precious national treasures - the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That's not an energy policy, that's simply the needless pursuit of profit.

They brought this plan to the United States Senate -- and we stopped them. Now they say they will try again - and I pledge to you that we will stop them again.

This Administration likes fuzzy math but any child can do the math on oil. The fact is when 65% of the world's oil supply is in the Gulf and only 3% in America. There is no way we can drill our way to energy independence. We have to invent our way there.

A founding member of the OPEC oil cartel said years ago that the Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones, and the oil age won't end because we run out of oil. At the start of the 21st century, we have new possibilities to develop technologies that advance both our economy and our environment -- and at the same time become a nation and a world less and less dependent on oil.

We can create a market for clean, domestic, reliable energy with a national standard for renewable power in the electricity sector. I believe we should set a national goal of having 20% of our electricity come from domestic alternative and renewable sources by the year 2020. Twenty-twenty - I think it's a vision worthy of America; a goal I believe our citizens are ready to embrace. We can reform the tax code to end the federal largess given to polluting fuels and invest instead in the technologies that will make our homes and businesses and transportation more efficient and bring renewable energy to market. We can cut our dependence on foreign oil by building more efficient cars and SUVs and creating a national market for the biofuels grown on farms across the nation.

Domestic, renewable sources are urgently needed now because they are entirely under our control. No foreign government can embargo them. No terrorist can seize control of them. No cartel can play games with them. No American soldier will have to risk his or her life to protect them. For all those reasons -- to create a better, more secure and cleaner environment -- and to move to real energy security -- I believe even the most rock-ribbed conservative would agree we must take steps that go beyond what market forces will do on their own.

We should be the world's environmental leader. Our global environmental policy should be driven by our convictions, not our constraints. America has not led but fled on the issue of global warming. The first President Bush was willing to lead on this issue. But the second President Bush's declaration that the Kyoto Protocol was simply Dead on Arrival spoke for itself - and it spoke in dozens of languages as his words whipped instantly around the globe. What the Administration failed to see was that Kyoto was not just an agreement; it represented the resolve of 160 nations working together over 10 years. It was a good faith effort - and the United States just dismissed it. We didn't aim to mend it. We didn't aim to sit down with our allies and find a compromise. We didn't aim for a new dialogue. The Administration was simply ready to aim and fire, and the target they hit was our international reputation. This country can and should aim higher than preserving its place as the world's largest unfettered polluter. We should assert, not abandon our leadership in addressing global economic degradation and the warming of the atmosphere that if left unchecked, will do untold damage to our coastline and our Great Plains, our cities and our economy.

We should be the world's leader in sustainable developmental. We should be the world's leader in technology transfer and technical assistance to meet a host of environmental and health challenges. Several years ago I worked with the World Bank to organize the first sustainable development conference in Southeast Asia to help Vietnam consider the balance of development and sustainability so Hanoi doesn't become Beijing, a city where people have to wear surgical masks just to take a breath of air. avoid breathing the dirty air. We brought corporations and scientists and engineers to the table to find cleaner ways for Vietnam to develop. The question is why we're not doing that everywhere around the globe; the question is why we don't have a President who recognizes that friends we rely on to clean up on the environment are friends we can call on help clean out the stables of terrorism.

If we are going to be true stewards for the air, water and land, for our nation and the earth itself, we must remember that we are all in this together. This is about our values. It is about who we are as a people.

So those of us who are Democrats must stand as a party for the preservation and protection of the environment. We can all wish it did not have to be so - that this Administration shared the bi-partisan commitment of other republicans before them.

After all, some of the greatest progress on the environment has come across party lines - the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. It was Richard Nixon who looked at the burning rivers and smog filled cities and decided to support an Environmental Protection Agency.

Americans don't think about whether they are a Democrat or a Republican when they worry about a child's asthma or polluted tap water.

They think about their local towns and playgrounds, their everyday lives and their future.

My mother was a committed citizen. She started a local recycling program in Manchester by the Sea. She worked in her community to build a nature trail. I still remember her waking me up in the early hours of the morning to walk with her in the woods listening to the sound of wild birds. I didn't understand it at the time, but that's what the environmental moment is about - leaving your little piece of this planet better for your children than you found it.

Citizens like my mother across the nation work every day to preserve that legacy.

And so should our national leaders. They should not be guided by big polluters or Washington lobbyists. They should be guided by a profound commitment to the protection of the earth, a greater and more healthy prosperity, a more genuine and stronger national security.

If we want to be a nation that honors our responsibilities, values our families, and safeguards our society, then we must change our direction.

We must forge a new path to an America that looks beyond the next election to the next generation. An America where the use of military might is not clouded by our need for oil. Where the stability of our economy is not rattled by the instability of a dictator or an authoritarian regime. Where no child grows up near toxic cites and poisonous chemicals. Where citizens concerned about the environment have the same access to the White House that big oil companies do today. Where our children can treasure the calm and clear water of the Great Lakes, and the majesty of the Rocky Mountains.

In the summer of 1963, in the months after he signed the nuclear test ban treaty, what he called that first step to "make the world safe for human survival," President Kennedy traveled across the western United States, to the Rockies and beyond, and spoke of that other fundamental cause that would shape the future and fate of America - the conservation of our land, our air, and our water. That call summons us with renewed urgency today. Like his call to end the nuclear nightmare and the evil of racism, the outcome now is up to all of us to believe as he did "Here on earth God's work must truly be our own." In that spirit let us embark on our own journey toward that timeless vision of "America the beautiful." And long after that journey, let our grandchildren look back on it and say that we were the generation that used our time to protect the Earth for all time.
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:17 PM
Response to Reply #43
45. Where is it?
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LittleClarkie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:22 PM
Response to Reply #45
46. You mean the link?
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:39 PM
Response to Reply #46
49. No, I meant the meat behind the platitudes
Hey - I know that it isn't too popular around here to not support Kerry. Well, sorry - I'm a progressive, a lib - and I don't take kindly to the New Democrat/DLC types that have embraced neo-liberal economics.

I don't trust them. They follow the same basic socioeconomic ideology as the GOP, albeit with a few token (and unimportant from the corporate perspective) progressive stances.

I've had many discussions about Kerry, the DLC and the rest on public boards. It seems to me that it is quite common amongst Kerry supporters to see things that just aren't there - such as a real plan for alternative energy R&D projects. What you provided is the usual rhetoric - lots of ideals, no concrete proposals, no idea or expression of costs or mechanisms, nothing that couldn't be written off at the first opportunity.

Given the democratic (not the party but the system) propensity to rely on rhetoric and demagoguery in order to attain power - and a similar propensity to forget the promises once power is attained - Kerry's messages are indeed noteworthy. They are noteworthy in that they promise very few concrete proposals and plenty of pablum. If he were indeed serious about his stance(s) he could have done well to actually express the campaign promises with SOME detail. He never did - which failed to convince either progressives, swing voters or moderates.

If Kerry did well it was because of ABB and because the other candidates didn't have the support of the DLC-driven machine.

BTW, someone posted something about Kerry and "corporate campaign financing". Yet: http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/indus.asp?id=N00000245&cycle=2004 and http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/leadpac_sect.asp?id=N00000245&cycle=2004

If Dubya hadn't been such a pliabe corporate whore for oil, do you doubt that Kerry wouldn't have elicited oil corp support- or that his rhetoric would be significantly less "aggressive" (which isn't saying much)?

I voted for Kerry, but I voted ABB. I will never again vote AGAINST someone by supporting someone that doesn't share my values in the two most important aspects of governance - socioeconomic policies and foreign policy.
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LittleClarkie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:49 PM
Response to Reply #49
53. Actually I've found it not too popular to support Kerry around here
Edited on Tue Jun-27-06 04:50 PM by LittleClarkie
But I've not berated you, have I. Just disagreed. Hope that's not a problem.

Anyway, from Project Vote Smart, Kerry's ratings from various environmental groups regarding his votes on their issues. They seem to think there is meat behind the rhetoric, at least in some years. I admit that in other years, they don't appear to have been too happy. But still, he's gotten 100 percent a good amount of the time. I wonder what was going on in the years where he got semi crummy ratings.



2005 Senator Kerry supported the interests of the American Wilderness Coalition 100 percent in 2005.

2005 Senator Kerry supported the interests of the League of Conservation Voters 95 percent in 2005.

2003-2004 Senator Kerry supported the interests of the League of Conservation Voters 44 percent in 2003-2004.

2003-2004 Senator Kerry supported the interests of the National Parks Conservation Association 60 percent in 2003-2004.

2003-2004 Senator Kerry supported the interests of the American Wilderness Coalition 75 percent in 2003-2004.

2003 Senator Kerry supported the interests of the League of Conservation Voters 53 percent in 2003.

2003 On the votes that the Comprehensive US Sustainable Population considered to be the most important in 2003, Senator Kerry voted their preferred position 38 percent of the time.

2002 Senator Kerry supported the interests of the California Park & Recreation Society 100 percent in 2002.

2001-2002 On the votes that the National Parks Conservation Association considered to be the most important in 2001-2002, Senator Kerry voted their preferred position 100 percent of the time.

2001-2002 Senator Kerry supported the interests of the League of Conservation Voters 92 percent in 2001-2002.

2001-2002 On the votes that the Comprehensive US Sustainable Population considered to be the most important in 2001-2002, Senator Kerry voted their preferred position 73 percent of the time.

1999-2000 Senator Kerry supported the interests of the League of Conservation Voters 94 percent in 1999-2000.

1999-2000 Senator Kerry supported the interests of the National Parks Conservation Association 100 percent in 1999-2000.

1999-2000 On the votes that the Comprehensive US Sustainable Population considered to be the most important in 1999-2000, Senator Kerry voted their preferred position 84 percent of the time.
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:01 PM
Response to Reply #53
60. Yet...
... he is a believer in neo-liberal economics. That's trickle-down, that's NAFTA, that's globalization, that's poison.

BTW, a progressive stance on environmental issues does not a progressive make. In this case it makes a green conservative.
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:38 PM
Response to Reply #60
75. He is not a socialist, that's true
Most Americans aren't, most westerners aren't. Luckily the economic choices aren't black/white socialism or neocon. Even most NGO's agree that it's going to take local entrepreneurship and capitalism to lift third world countries out of poverty, and that means a regulated fair trade that includes labor and environmental regulations which is actually what Kerry and most Democrats support.
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 01:38 PM
Response to Reply #75
90. Regulated?
I have yet to see anything on regulated free trade as such. Gotta link?
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 03:04 PM
Response to Reply #90
97. rotflmao - again
Edited on Wed Jun-28-06 03:04 PM by sandnsea
You've never seen anything on trade regulations? That is just laugh out loud funny.

No. I'm not going to provide you years of links on various trade negotiations, law suits, amendments, tariffs, treaties, etc.

Seriously, are you a teen-ager? I can forgive that, otherwise, :rofl:
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 04:50 PM
Response to Reply #97
99. Funny?
"You've never seen anything on trade regulations? That is just laugh out loud funny."

FYI, one thing is domestic trade regulations and the other the concept of international regulation. This is supposedly anathema for our gubmint - at least as far as anything that might damage our corporations' profit margin.

Anyone else's? Sure. Especially the 3rd World. But not OURS.

"No. I'm not going to provide you years of links on various trade negotiations, law suits, amendments, tariffs, treaties, etc. "

I can patronize you even worse if you want to go down THAT road.

"Seriously, are you a teen-ager? I can forgive that, otherwise..."

Udderly brilliant.
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 05:11 PM
Response to Reply #99
102. You believe there's NO international trade regulations?
Seriously, you believe that to be the bottom line truth??
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blm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:50 PM
Response to Reply #49
54. sorry, but that reporting isn't exactly accurate picture - My donations
would show up as corporate media, and there isn't anyone who rags on corpmedia more than I do.

Kerry never took CORPORATE PAC MONEY. Individual donations get categorized and lumped in under the industry or occupation you are involved with.

You also didn't KNOW that Kerry WROTE the Clean Elections bill that he submitted with Wellstone in 1997.
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:56 PM
Response to Reply #49
59. Oh for the love of god
You don't even know his values. I suppose you adore Al Gore, the actual founder of the DLC.

In any event, John Kerry floor statements on Energy 1999-2006

http://kerry.senate.gov/v3/cfm/specifictopic.cfm?code=Energy

Kerry on Dirty Power Plants and the Introduction of the Clean Energy Act of 1999
http://kerry.senate.gov/v3/cfm/record.cfm?id=180105&

The guy who brought the issue of acid rain into Congress, the leader in the fight for improved CAFE standards, leader in the fight against drilling in the Arctic Refuge - doesn't share your values. :eyes:
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:04 PM
Response to Reply #59
61. Don't I?
"I suppose you adore Al Gore, the actual founder of the DLC."

No, I despise that fellow too. Yet he's gone as green as Kerry - and, like Kerry, hasn't forgotten his conservative economic roots.

I don't doubt that Kerry is ecologically sound.
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LittleClarkie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:30 PM
Response to Reply #59
71. So "An Inconvenient Truth" doesn't do a thing for you?
Al was one of the founders, is true. But not THE founder.

And I reckon he's pretty far away from them politically nowadays. He's closer to the likes of Moveon.org.

It seems absurd that you just took a swipe at Al Gore as well. I should think you'd be grateful to the man for educating the public.
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:33 PM
Response to Reply #71
72. Oh please
The point was that people are still bashing Kerry as DLC while heaping praise on Al Gore who actually was A founder, which is the same thing as THE founder. I'm not attacking Al Gore, I'm attacking Kerry bashing hypocrites. I suspect you knew that so I don't know why you felt the need to take a swipe at me.
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LittleClarkie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:37 PM
Response to Reply #72
74. Because I forgot to look at the name
and I thought I was still arguing with alvarezadams. It certainly would be absurd for him to be having a cow about the environment then take a swipe at Al. Which is what I thought I was seeing. Sorry about that dear.

D'OH!
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:39 PM
Response to Reply #74
76. Not a problem n/t
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karynnj Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:07 PM
Response to Reply #49
64. No legislation EVER contains a detailed research and development
plan. What Kerry, as a legislator, would do is get the funding and set the goals. Various universities and tech companies would compete for funding.

Open secrets aggregates contribution by employer.

Who is the purer than driven snow candidate you would support, and agree on socioeconomic and foreign policy? (Using SEARCH, it looks like you don't like a lot of people - what I couldn't find is who you like.)
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:10 PM
Response to Reply #64
67. I am against
economic neo-liberalism, neocon foreign policy and the corporate-driven political machine. I am a social libertarian - which means that although I share my core beliefs with the majority of the country's progressives, I (and the rest of us) are singularly unrepresented.
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blm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:25 PM
Response to Reply #45
47. and more.....
The Kyoto Treaty was flawed but could be fixed

BUSH: Had we joined the Kyoto Treaty it would have cost America a lot of jobs. It's one of these deals where in order to be popular in the halls of Europe you sign a treaty. There's a better way to do it. The quality of air is cleaner since I've been the president of the US. And we'll continue to spend money on research and development, because I truly believe that's the way to get from how we live today to being able to live a standard of living that we're accustomed to and being able to protect our environment better, the use of technologies.
KERRY: The Kyoto Treaty was flawed. I was in Kyoto and I was part of that; I know what happened. But Bush didn't try to fix it, he just declared it dead, ladies and gentlemen. And we walked away from the work of 160 nations over 10 years. You wonder why it is that people don't like us in some parts of the world. You just say, Hey, we don't agree with you, good-bye. Bush's done nothing to try to fix it. I will.
Source: Second Bush-Kerry Debate, in St. Louis MO Oct 8, 2004
No American should be held hostage to our oil dependence

We value an America forever independent of Mideast oil. What does it mean for our economy and national security when we only have 3% of the world's oil reserves, yet we rely on foreign countries for 53 percent of what we consume? We will rely on our own ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family. We will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East. Source: Acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention Jul 29, 2004
Encourage fuel efficient cars & use reserves in short-term

Kerry says he would spend $10 billion over 10 years on new plants to manufacture more fuel efficient vehicles. He also would offer up to a $4,000 tax credit for people who buy advanced technology vehicles that get better mileage. Kerry wants to divert oil being used to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the short term and bring it to market to bring down prices. And his administration would demand that oil-producing nations increase supply. Source: CNN.com May 25, 2004
No nuclear waste dump in Nevada's Yucca Mountain

Nevadans understand better than anyone why so many Americans don't trust Bush. In 2000, candidate Bush promised not to ship nuclear waste to your state unless scientifically deemed safe. But after the election, President Bush caved to special interests and broke his promise to Nevada, and he has been doing his best to turn this state into a nuclear waste dump ever since.
That's a pattern Bush has repeated time after time: on issue after issue, George W. Bush keeps saying one thing to the people, and then doing another big favor for the special interests. As my friends in Nevada can tell you, I have stood time and time again with Nevada families to stop George W. Bush from turning this state into a nuclear waste dump. As your President, I'll continue that fight for Nevada - and you'll have the White House working for your top priority, instead of selling you out to the special interests.
Source: Press release, "Nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain" Feb 13, 2004
Raise CAFE standard to 36 mpg by 2015

Q: Would you increase the required automobile fleet average of 27.5 mpg; and SUVs and pickups averaging 20.7 mpg?
A: I support updating CAFE standards to 36 miles per gallon by 2015. This proposal will reduce America's dependence on oil by saving 2 million barrels of oil per day -- almost as much as we currently import from the Persian Gulf. It will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, smog and ozone pollution.
Source: Associated Press policy Q&A, "Fuel Efficiency" Jan 25, 2004
Ban MBTE and sue companies who make it

Q: MTBE in gasoline is linked to water pollution, but adding ethanol is costly. How would you balance between the environment and the economy, as it pertains to MTBE?
KERRY: It needs to be banned, taken out. And the companies that have put it in need to be held responsible for it. One- sixth of the lakes of New Hampshire are polluted with MBTE. Now, Tom DeLay and his friends in Congress have been busy protecting those companies from their responsibility, trying to give them liability immunity for what they've done. This is the worst environmental administration that I've ever seen in all my time in public life. They're going backward on clean air, backward on clean water, backward on forest policy.
As president, I will balance between jobs and the economy, but I'm not going to give people a phony choice that says, "It's either the jobs or the economy." Cleaning up the environment is jobs. And we're going to create 500,000 of them for Americans in the first years.
Source: Democratic 2004 Primary Debate at St. Anselm College Jan 22, 2004
20% renewable energy by 2020

Q: How would you get the US to become more self-reliant for our energy needs?
A: We have to encourage the use of hybrid vehicles and invest in research and development. We have to set a goal by 2020 that 20 percent of our energy will come from renewable fuels. I am going to create an energy efficient trust fund to look for news sources of energy and we are going to create tens of thousands of jobs doing that. We can't drill our way out of this.
Source: Concord Monitor / WashingtonPost.com on-line Q&A Nov 7, 2003
Drilling for oil doesn't gain energy independence

To some extent, Apollo Project would involve redeploying resources from the failed energy policies of the past and present. At present we spend $1.8 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas industries while investing only $24 million in federal venture capital for alternative energy sources. And the Bush administration seeks to accelerate this trend by moving heaven and most of all earth to expand oil drilling in some of our most sensitive environments. All this drilling won't produce significant quantities of oil for many years, so we will remain dependent on a global oil market whose prices are controlled-and often manipulated-by a handful of countries, lending permanent instability to our economy. Source: A Call to Service, by John Kerry, p. 85-86 Oct 1, 2003
Apollo project approach to energy independence

A smart energy policy can reflect a smart economic policy. We can work toward energy independence not only from foreign energy sources but from environmentally damaging sources as well-in a way that calls on the best of our creative and entrepreneurial spirit and improves both our quality of life and our national security.
In the 1960's President Kennedy challenged America to conquer space and land on the moon within a decade. It's time for comparable Apollo Project approach to energy independence, with a focused effort that relies on public-private partnerships and creates millions of new jobs. For Americans who work in engineering, design, and industry, the growth of wind, solar, and geothermal energy would spark a surge in production and jobs. And since developing new energy technology requires research and path-breaking applications, we can create thousands of high-paying jobs in those areas as well. Americans can take the lead, or we can let Germans and Japanese dominate this new industry.
Source: A Call to Service, by John Kerry, p. 85-86 Oct 1, 2003
Dismissal of Kyoto indicative of Bush's unilateralism

There have been periods in our history when it didn't much matter if we had a president who was inclined toward fostering international relations or commanded a lot of personal respect in other countries. This is emphatically not one of those times. It is hard to think of a modern presidency so reflexively and systematically marked by rejection of diplomacy, international cooperation, and other building blocks for collective security as that of George W. Bush.
The first sign of indifference was the summary rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on Global Climate Change. the handiwork of dozens of countries acting under U.S. leadership for a decade. Kyoto could and should have been improved; instead, it was dismissed by the Bush government out of hand. This was followed by the United States' refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, another product of long years of American leadership. Both rejections came in the president's first year in office.
Source: A Call to Service, by John Kerry, p. 48-9 Oct 1, 2003
ANWR won't provide any oil for 20 years

Q: On one hand you say there is a national security need to reduce dependence imported oil, while on the other hand you oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska?
KERRY: The Arctic Wildlife Refuge won't provide a drop of oil for 20 years. And the total amount of oil, if it were to come through at the level that some people in the oil industry predict, will amount to about a 1% to 2% reduction in the total dependency of the United States on oil.
Source: Debate at Pace University in Lower Manhattan Sep 25, 2003
Invent our way out of oil dependency-don't drill our way out

We only have 3% of the world's oil reserves. There is no physical way for the US to drill its way out of this problem. We have to invent our way out of this problem. The sooner that we commit America to the science & discovery of renewable alternatives, the better off America will be, the better our health will be, the more effective our economy would be, the better our national security will be, and the better world citizen we will be. We need to commit ourselves to energy independence now. Source: Debate at Pace University in Lower Manhattan Sep 25, 2003
Invest in advancing secure forms of energy instead of oil

Q: What is your view on our dependence on fossil fuels?
A: Today we have an energy policy of big oil, by big oil, and for big oil. With common-sense investments in advancing and speeding breakthroughs, we can harness the natural world around us to light and power the world we live in with secure forms of energy at reasonable costs for a modern economy. I recently unveiled a plan to increase America's security and improve the environment, by ending our dependence on foreign oil within 10 years.
Source: MoveOn.org interview Jun 17, 2003
Create new energy sources to end Mideast dependency

We must invest again in America and put our ingenuity to work to unclog our highways, to build a modern transportation network we can be proud of. We must harness the creative genius of our entrepreneurs, laboratories and universities to create the energy sources of the future, to liberate us from dependence on Middle East oil and do all of this while protecting our precious resources like the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Source: Speech at Massachusetts Democratic Convention May 31, 2002
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:48 PM
Response to Reply #47
52. Mentioning Apollo
while talking about around $2 billion between R&D and incentives for hybrid cars is just what I mean by "rhetoric".

The Apollo Program cost ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS (1994 dollars, if you will) if one counts the initial prep programs. That would be 248.83 billion @ 2005 terms, or approximately, or rather less than what our little Iraqi adventure has cost us so far... an adventure fought for oil fwiw.

So you see the rhetoric now?
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blm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:52 PM
Response to Reply #52
57. And Kerry has said he'll redirect the taxes from oil and oil-related
industries to those programs.

Odd that he's your target when no other lawmaker ever even presents such detailed plans as Kerry has offered throughout.
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:07 PM
Response to Reply #57
63. Exxon paid
27 billion in taxes. So it will take at least 10 Exxons to pay for the Apollo Project.
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karynnj Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:11 PM
Response to Reply #63
69. So - is he proposing too much or too little?
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 05:23 AM
Response to Reply #69
79. Too much AND too little
Too much in the sense of ineffective, unrealistic and counterproductive stopgaps such as "clean coal" and nukes.

But mostly it is too little. As I've noted, an Apollo-type program could run into the hundreds of billions and not a couple of billion. If he was serious he should mention the scale, if not the plan, that he has in mind. Iraq has cost more...

I believe in science and our capacity to get things done - as we did with Apollo, WWII, etc. But this kind of thing doesn't happen with private initiative or with rhetorical flourishes. The problem is certainly big enough to justify a "crusade", an "Apollo Program" - so come out and say it:

"I mark as an objective our complete energy independence for the foreseeable future. This means cutting with the past, with fossile fuels, with nuclear energy and any other commodity-based energy that both pollutes and leaves consumers in the hands of those who control said commodities.

Ultimately all our energy in any form has one origin - the sun. Solar energy is there for all of us - yet we have not moved far enough technologically to harness it. There may be other sources that can be tapped without endangering our planet ecologically or militarily. Therefore I propose a massive R&D project on the lines and scale of the Apollo Program - to find a way to exploit, within the decade, a clean, cheap and readily available source of energy.

We are currently at war. This war is inarguably about the strategic concerns regarding oil. It has already cost us more than the Apollo Program did, and will foreseeably cost us far more over the next years. Is it too much to ask... no, to DEMAND, that such wars become unnecessary? We are actually paying subsidies to oil companies as they make record profits.

It's time to say - here is the line. We will go no further."
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karynnj Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:15 PM
Response to Reply #52
70. I sense there is a language problem
The Apollo program you are talking about - going to the moon differs from the "apollo" project for energy. (Apollo is being used generically like "a Manhattan project for..)
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 05:25 AM
Response to Reply #70
80. No problem
"The Apollo program you are talking about - going to the moon differs from the "apollo" project for energy. (Apollo is being used generically like "a Manhattan project for..)"

Of course. And that's the point - you can't talk about $2 billion and call it an "Apollo Program" - that's akin to running down the stairs and calling it a marathon.
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TayTay Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 06:56 AM
Response to Reply #52
83. Good luck finding a candidate you can support
It is obvious that your standards are so strick and so suffused with purity that anyone who meets them will never get elected by normal voters.

I hope the strategy of attacking people who have excellent voting records on issues that you claim are the very ones that motivate you as a voter and a citizen works for you.

Let us know who meets the exacting purity standards that you subscribe to. Perhaps we'll be able to read some day about how voting for them was a 'moral victory' and we can all feel good about it as another Republican takes office and pursues their goals.
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 11:34 AM
Response to Reply #83
87. Horseshit
"It is obvious that your standards are so strick and so suffused with purity that anyone who meets them will never get elected by normal voters."

What purity? All I ask is for a non neo-liberal, non neo-con. Not too much to ask - it used to be mainstream.

"I hope the strategy of attacking people who have excellent voting records on issues that you claim are the very ones that motivate you as a voter and a citizen works for you."

And I hope that the strategy of electing people on the basis of token progressive votes while supporting neo-liberal economics and nearly supporting neoconservatism works for YOU.

"Let us know who meets the exacting purity standards that you subscribe to. Perhaps we'll be able to read some day about how voting for them was a 'moral victory' and we can all feel good about it as another Republican takes office and pursues their goals."

Between a GOPer and a DLCer I'd rather have a GOPer - at least they're marginally sincere.
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TayTay Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 01:46 PM
Response to Reply #87
91. I see. Now, who have you supported that has actually won
Anywhere? Please show us the candidate who meets your critieria who has actually gotten elected? Tell us how it is done, so that we may learn how to elect the pur and noble in this base old world.
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 02:27 PM
Response to Reply #91
93. Let it go
You're not being rational about this.
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karynnj Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 02:54 PM
Response to Reply #93
94. It is a rational question
and you did give me an answer to it in #67 - (you)" are singularly unrepresented." It seems you may need a metric to see how far away from your beliefs various candidates are. I realize that it is easier to understand the world if you convert a huge mass of data to a small number of categories. But the labels, or categories, which simplify the task of deciding who is ok and who isn't, an never really capture the person.

With Senators, their floor speechs tell more than their votes. They have to make a yes/no decision on each bill - when they almost always (if it's not there bill) will think there were better choices. On, the energy proposal, Kerry will doom any chance for success if he immediately demands that the Senate commit to a huge long term cost. If he manages to get them to accept a long term conceptual view and allocate first year money, it will be both a miracle and a major accomplishment - that will almost certainly pass under a neme that is not Kerry.
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 04:59 PM
Response to Reply #94
100. The why ask?
"and you did give me an answer to it in #67 - (you)" are singularly unrepresented." "

There's your answer. Why ask again?

"t seems you may need a metric to see how far away from your beliefs various candidates are. I realize that it is easier to understand the world if you convert a huge mass of data to a small number of categories."

I have an easy metric. Two policies are anathema to me. They are egregious to anyone with liberal ideals and a knowledge of history. And I won't cross those lines ever again after having voted ABB last time around.

"I realize that it is easier to understand the world if you convert a huge mass of data to a small number of categories. But the labels, or categories, which simplify the task of deciding who is ok and who isn't, an never really capture the person. "

They're not labels, they're political philosophies or policies.

"On, the energy proposal, Kerry will doom any chance for success if he immediately demands that the Senate commit to a huge long term cost."

Let's be realistic. The only way something like this is going to happen is through demagoguery and populism. It will have to be driven from the bottom up and not from the top downwards. Kerry had and, perhaps, HAS - an opportunity to begin to drive the concept from and to the grass roots.

"If he manages to get them to accept a long term conceptual view and allocate first year money, it will be both a miracle and a major accomplishment - that will almost certainly pass under a neme that is not Kerry."

Without the grass roots movement pushing the legislators, it will be the usual bill chock full of extraneous pork, directed towards funding private initiatives and ending up dead in the medium term... with nothing to show for it. And the electorate will point to Congress in particular and government in general and say... ho hum, there they go again.

As for the name... if the objective is the common good, what difference does it make?
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karynnj Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 05:59 PM
Response to Reply #100
103. I didn't ask - just added that you had answered it.
She likely didn't see the answer up-thread, so I pointed it out which I think you should have done.

Kerry, more than anyone, has been speaking of the need for people to make things like this voting issues. He gave the example of all the environmental law passed in the 70s, partially due to grass roots agitation for fixing the problem. He is in a pretty unique position, as his party's last standard bearer and a sitting Senator with 22 years of senority.

I think the energy and the push may need to come from the grassroots, but the plan needs to be developed jointly by scientists and engineers working with economists and legislators. It can't be done ad hoc by grass roots. (grass roots will fill a bill with pork - which to them is their pet project.)
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LittleClarkie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 03:01 PM
Response to Reply #93
96. On the contrary, she's one of the more rational people I know
Also something of a wonk, hence given a chance she will start quoting legislation at you.

But she is not a purist, more a pragmatist, and gets annoyed at those who insist on purity tests for politicians.
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LittleClarkie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:42 PM
Response to Reply #40
51. Why would you expect more than rhetoric from someone
who has no power to implement his plans unless he becomes president. What exactly are you looking for him to have done as Senator?



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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 04:50 PM
Response to Reply #51
55. Aw come on
If you're happy voting for someone based on nice words as opposed to at least semi-detailed plans, be my guest.

I take my voting responsibility a tad more seriously than that.

As for being a senator, surely the group of democratic congressmen could PROPOSE actions in the form of laws, even if they aren't passed. That's one of the roles of the opposition - and a way to show the electorate that you have more than hot air to offer.
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:05 PM
Response to Reply #55
62. No you really don't
If you really took your voting responsibility seriously, then you'd know Kerry has always been considered the environmental leader in the Senate.

http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/presidential_endorsement/profile_kerry.asp
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:08 PM
Response to Reply #62
65. Kinda monothematic, no?
You insist on ecology. That's not my beef with Kerry.
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:41 PM
Response to Reply #65
77. "let's get richer, environment be damned"
That was, in fact, your beef with Kerry in your OP in this thread.
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 05:33 AM
Response to Reply #77
81. Not quite
"That was, in fact, your beef with Kerry in your OP in this thread. "

Please - some intellectual honesty.

I have many beefs with Kerry. With regards to this particular thread my beef is that he has not really proposed anything beyond rhetoric, and pretty shallow rhetoric at best. The fact that he would actually point out some un-ecological alternatives is a sticking point (clean coal forchrissakes), but mostly because it highlights his lack of a real plan.

What does a plan have?
1. Analysis - Where are we?
2. Objectives - Where do we want to go?
3. Strategies - How do we get there?
4. Tactics - The plan itself.
5. Budget - How much is it going to cost?
6. Control - Self-explanatory.

He is weak on most of these points. His objectives are at once too specific and too nebulous: spit it out! Where do you want to be, and by when? A turnover towards hybrid cars isn't an objective in itself and if it is it shows his lack of vision.

The more I read of his "plans" the more I see some marketing experts saying "this will go down well" and some political experts saying "if you say this you'll lose the support of this industry but will gain the support of others".
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ProSense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 06:05 AM
Response to Reply #81
82. Intellectual honesty? How about showing some?
Did you expect Senator Kerry to stand up there and read the policy? This was an introduction and the fact sheet is just that.

What do you think the environmental experts are going to say?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2698964&mesg_id=2698964
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 08:44 AM
Response to Reply #82
84. I've never stopped
"Did you expect Senator Kerry to stand up there and read the policy?"

Frankly, in a democracy.... YES.

"This was an introduction and the fact sheet is just that."

OK - the introduction is so-so. Where's the meat?

"What do you think the environmental experts are going to say?"

In the US where Greenpeace is painted as some sort of radical org? I'm sure that they'll jump all over ANYTHING that remotely seems green. On a sinking lifeboat anyone will grasp at straws.
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ProSense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 02:21 PM
Response to Reply #84
92. Democracy has nothing to do with not wanting to listen to
an 80-page plus fleshed out policy on anything. The speech was an introduction.

By your final comment, Kerry's statement is a lifeboat. It's not just anyone grasping, it's a group of experts.

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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 01:04 PM
Response to Reply #81
88. Minimize, rationalize, dismiss
Now you want to pretend the entire plan is hybrid cars. Talk about intellectual dishonesty.

Your OP did focus on Kerry's lack of commitment to the environment. Once that line of tripe was thoroughly eviscerated by the fact that leading environmental groups consistently praise him as the best Senator on the environment, bar none, you thought you could morph your beef into an economic one. Now that that's been eviscerated as well, you want to distort his proposals as if we're too stupid to see right through that ploy.

You just can't admit that the reporting about John Kerry is horrendous, no matter where it comes from. It's tragic that someone who is consistently right on every issue that faces us has to fight tooth and nail to get his ideas into the public arena. People have to believe there are solutions to problems before they demand the money be spent. The people who supposedly care so much about these issues are usually standing in the way of progress by insisting on perfection before anybody even gets a chance to hear that there's a different way.

When you figure out how to get a government to spend $100 billion on your pet project, you be sure and let us know.
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 01:35 PM
Response to Reply #88
89. ???
Now you want to pretend the entire plan is hybrid cars. Talk about intellectual dishonesty."

Pot, kettle, black.

"Your OP did focus on Kerry's lack of commitment to the environment."

Perhaps, but threads develop - and I expanded on my POV.

"Once that line of tripe was thoroughly eviscerated by the fact that leading environmental groups consistently praise him as the best Senator on the environment, bar none, you thought you could morph your beef into an economic one."

"You just can't admit that the reporting about John Kerry is horrendous, no matter where it comes from."

I've already admitted that he has good sides to him. Unfortunately his adherence to neo-liberal economics makes him as bad as the other corp whores in my book. Sorry - he's a trickledown free-marketer, albeit green. Better than a non-green trickledown free-marketer, but a trickledown free-marketer nonetheless.



Eviscerated? Come on - the fact that environmental groups support someone with a modicum of ecological values amongst an immense majority of others with NO such values whatsoever is hardly reassuring. "Clean coal" :rofl:

"It's tragic that someone who is consistently right on every issue that faces us has to fight tooth and nail to get his ideas into the public arena. "

I have no problem getting my ideas across :evilgrin:

"The people who supposedly care so much about these issues are usually standing in the way of progress by insisting on perfection before anybody even gets a chance to hear that there's a different way."

You see that the environment is the top issue - I think that it's important, but not the top issue.

"When you figure out how to get a government to spend $100 billion on your pet project, you be sure and let us know."

It spent far more on Iraq, so certainly there must be a way to wake up the braindead.
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 02:58 PM
Response to Reply #89
95. "expanded on my POV" rotflmao
Sure, okay, whatever.

I've already responded to economic issues, but I'll do it again. No, socialism is never going to equalize the economy and he knows it and most people who actually work in third world countries know it which is why they don't support it. International trade with labor and environmental regulations has the best chance for ending poverty, which is what Kerry supports and IS NOT free market. The Mariana Islands was free market, which Democrats fought to regulate.

I didn't say Kerry had a problem getting his ideas across, I said idiots on the left and right prevent the best ideas from getting into the public arena. BTW, if you have no problem getting your ideas across, then why haven't YOU woken up the braindead???
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LittleClarkie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 03:13 PM
Response to Reply #95
98. Have you guys see this thread?
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 05:00 PM
Response to Reply #95
101. I'm not always successful
"BTW, if you have no problem getting your ideas across, then why haven't YOU woken up the braindead???"

This thread is an example.
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karynnj Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:10 PM
Response to Reply #55
66. That is what Kerry/Feingold did, and what Levin et al didn't do
Kerry says he will submit legislation on this energy alternative this week - maybe you should stay your criticism until then.
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alvarezadams Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:11 PM
Response to Reply #66
68. Will do
I'd love to see it. I hope I'm not disappointed.
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karynnj Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 05:35 PM
Response to Reply #68
73. I hope you're not either
Realizing that with research funding the language HAS to be somewhat vague because it's research. Remember that Kerry has been active on this issue for years and Teresa is VERY involved with many organizations private funding some relevant projects.
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Unbowed Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-27-06 08:24 PM
Response to Original message
78. Good for Kerry but is anyone listening?
Keith Olbermann was just talking about Bush and global warming and he had some woman on. When he asked her which democrats were trying to do anything about it, she didn't even mention Kerry but she is from Mass. WTF?

If I heard about this why didn't the news people? What gives?
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blm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 09:16 AM
Response to Reply #78
85. It's a shame but alot of news networks talk about what OTHER news sources
are talking about. Detailed energy and environmental plans do NOT get coverage - even Gore's movie was only spoken of in GENERAL TERMS.

Keith's producer makes the same mistake of negligence that other producers make on purpose.
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PerfectSage Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-28-06 11:21 AM
Response to Original message
86. What about fusion power?
I think fusion power is the best bet to enable us to maintain a technologically advanced civiliztion. Every thing else is just a stopgap to get us there.

http://www.iter.org/
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