GRIST: Kudos to Edwards

From GRIST - Environmental News & Commentary

Coal is the enemy of the human race: Edwards in the debate edition
Edwards puts the coal issue into the Dem debate
Posted by David Roberts at 3:29 PM on 16 Jan 2008

Below the fold, I've put the entire portion of the transcript from last night's Dem debate that deals with climate and energy. It is to the candidates' credit that they took a narrow, stupid question about Yucca Mountain and managed to expand it into a discussion of energy.

JMG scolded me for not giving kudos to John Edwards for bringing up the fact that coal is the enemy of the human race. And rightly so: he deserves kudos. This is what he said:

I believe we need a moratorium on the building of any more coal-fired power plants unless and until we have the ability to capture and sequester the carbon in the ground. Because every time we build a new coal-fired power plant in America when we don't have that technology attached to it, what happens is, we're making a terrible situation worse.

To his great credit, he pushed this onto the table, and to their shame, both Clinton and Obama dodged. Now, from the pure text, it looks like Edwards' position has gotten considerably stronger -- remember, as we've discussed at length, he used to call for a moratorium on coal plants that aren't compatible with sequestration, which is quite different from banning coal plants without actually existing sequestration. I suspect that he just isn't being careful with his language, and his position is the same. Either way, good on him for bringing it up.

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