Lindsey Graham: Coal and Nuclear are “Clean” Energy

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You’ve heard of greenwashing, but maybe you should also be on the lookout for “cleanwashing.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the lead proponents of a climate bill, wants the Senate to include coal and nuclear power in a so-called “clean energy” mandate.

Graham is circulating draft legislation that would replace a provision in the current Senate climate bill requiring utilities to produce a certain amount of electricity from renewable sources—known as a renewable electricity standard, or RES. Graham’s proposed mandate instead involves ramping up the amount of electricity from “clean” sources over time—13 percent by 2012, 25 percent by 2025 and 50 percent by 2050. But the big question is what “clean” means. According to Graham’s draft language, new nuclear power and coal with carbon-capture technology would qualify, in addition to renewable sources like wind, solar, biomass and hydropower. This would be a boon to the nuclear industry, which has pushed hard to be included as part of any clean energy mandate.

Environmentalists have already slammed the RES in both the House and proposed Senate text as too weak. Including technologies that aren’t actually renewable would only undermine the RES further.

Graham has made it clear that he wants major incentives for nuclear power and offshore drilling in a climate and energy bill as part of the deal to cut carbon dioxide pollution. Graham’s clean energy mandate also calls for more government-backed loans for nuclear power, with place-holder language calling for funds “sufficient to build 60 additional nuclear reactors.” This would require an even greater expansion of a program that the Obama administration has already advocated tripling.

It’s not known whether Graham’s proposal will be included in the final legislation that Sens. John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Graham are working on in the hopes of gaining bipartisan support for a climate bill. But they’ve made it clear that there will be a lot of compromises on energy in order to bring reluctant senators on board. 

 

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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