Who would have thought that McCain's platform included a reasonable position on global warming.

He'd better quit talking about that and focus on 9/11.

I don't understand why everyone is so paranoid about nuclear power. A normal coal-burning plant actually produces more radiation over its lifetime than a fission reactor, and it spreads that radiation into the atmosphere. Right now, we have the worst of both worlds where we're too scared to build newer, safer nuclear plants, but if nuclear is really that dangerous, why aren't we shutting down our older plants?

The fact of the matter is that things like wind and solar power are never going to provide enough power to replace oil. The whole green movement needs to start getting more realistic and start making hard choices. There are always tradeoffs, and the negatives of nuclear power aren't nearly as great as some people make them out to be.

WOW! who would of thought that in one day I'd read about a republican that wants to do something about greenhouse gases and a Salon poster that realizes that our coal fired plants MUST be replaced with nuclear ones. This is one Sunday I definitely believe in God.

By the way Stevo23 the problem with solar and wind is they can't provide base load power like coal does, that is power which is available 24/7 year round. They are great sources (and increasingly becoming cost effective) for providing peak load energy or if they are provided in tandem with natural gas generated power. Some day we will overcome the problem with their intermittent nature (using the energy to generate hydrogen which can be used to generate electricity when the sun goes down etc.) However for right now the technology is still in its infancy and we really need to eliminate coal fired power plants globally in the next 30 years. Triple the number of nuclear plants in the world in the next 30 years and we should be able to eliminate coal fired power plants

Spot on. I don't understand it either.

Notice how the green movement, and some environmental groups, can be their own worst enemy.

Its like "We want pristine utopia. Otherwise forget it".

Its enough to make me want to cancel my Sierra club membership.

You have to be willing to build them in neighborhoods near people willing to accept them. I'm sure lots of people in Iowa don't really care about nuke plants in South Carolina but the people in South Carolina probably feel differently.

The plants have to be sited with this in mind. Building one on Long island (which was tried several years ago) is absurd. Would you build a Hoover dam in New York City? Of course not. Improving the power grid should enable us to build them in remote locations and to concentrate the risk in these locations. Two of the interesting things about the Chernobyl incident is that despite the horrific worst case scenario of this accident, the reactor right next store to it was able to remain running after the accident with no measurable risk to the workers and the main cost of the accident was economic not human - even though a large swath of land had to be abandoned because of radioactive fallout there were only a few deaths that could be tied to the reactor meltdown.

I would maintain that with more careful siting of nuclear power plants that even though we quadruple the number in the next 30 years, the potential economic and environmental costs of a meltdown can be greatly reduced.

Because if we don't, something baaad might happen! Sheesh, don't you people remember the 100 or so other things that were going to kill us all if we didn't spend some money on them?

Senator McCain's position is a common-sense response to great hazard. In contrast, the Bush Administration’s steady refusal even to study global climate change exposes a yawning contradiction in its approach to risk management.

A federal judge in California ruled in August (as reported in the Washington Post) that the Bush Administration had violated the Global Change Research Act of 1990 by failing to issue a mandated study on the impact of climate change. The study in question is already two years overdue, and – despite a legal requirement that such a study be issued every four years – the Bush Administration has never produced one.

In the face of the more-limited destruction that might be caused by terrorists armed with WMDs, the Administration adopted the so-called “one percent doctrine,” whereby it would take early, vigorous, preventive action if there were even a one percent likelihood that information describing such a threat was reliable. In contrast, when facing the far greater potential damage from global warming, the Administration effectively has applied a “100 percent doctrine” that conditions action upon unanimity among scientists. Then, the Administration declines even to study the matter. (An analogous policy in the war on terror would be to require a “smoking gun” prior to preventive action – then to eliminate intelligence gathering!)

For terrorists, preventive action is to be taken despite substantial doubts; for global warming, any shred of doubt has been paralyzing. Evidently, the Bush Administration wanted to invade Iraq and to please the energy industry, regardless of potential damage or amount of proof. The energy industry’s disinformation campaign didn’t need to sow honest doubts. It only needed to supply a fig leaf for the Administration to do what it wanted to do anyway.

Mr. Bush often has said that the success or failure of his Iraq initiative will only be clear several decades from now. By then, another thing that may also be clear – to the great regret of future generations – is that Mr. Bush wasted eight crucial years obsessing over a lesser hazard while willfully, steadfastly, perversely ignoring a greater one.

but on this he is clearly speaking well and to the issue. good for him.