The Political Climate: an ongoing commentary on the NH Primary and Climate Change

FOTPC’s and climate voters were out in full force last night holding up signs, wearing t-shirts and passing out stickers at the John Edwards town hall in Manchester.  With only 42 days left until the NH Primary, you can expect to see a lot more global warming visibility around the Granite State.  Let us know if you would like to join in the fun!

After noting global warming briefly in his stump speech, Edwards took a question from an FOTPC who asked if he would put money into R&D for coal and nuclear.  Edwards took the opportunity to emphasize that he “does not support the building of new nuclear power” because we don’t have a safe way to dispose of the waste, we cannot protect them adequately given the terrorist environment we live in and it is very expensive and timely to get them online.

Concerning coal, Edwards said that he is against building new coal-fired power plants “unless and until we have the capacity to capture the carbon and sequester it; we do not have it today.”  Edwards stated that “I think that it does make sense for America to be investing in the development of that technology, because in the forseeable future, coal is still part of our power source, part of our energy needs … but I think we should not be building anymore coal-fired power plants and making the problem worse until we have that technology.”