Joe Romm notes one of the many problems with John McCain's op-ed in the Financial Times last week on the role of the U.S. and Europe in world leadership. Namely, that the only energy source he mentions to address the "looming threats of climate change and the degradation of our planet" is nuclear energy:
New technologies hold great promise. We need to unleash the power and innovation of the marketplace in order to meet our environmental challenges. Right now safe, climate-friendly nuclear energy is a critical way both to improve the quality of our air and to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources.
That dependence, I am afraid, has become a vulnerability for both the US and Europe and a source of leverage for the oil and gas exporting autocracies. The US needs to wean itself off oil faster. Europe needs a comprehensive energy policy so that Russia's oil and gas monopolies cannot behave as agents of political influence.
But as Romm points out, nuclear energy can't really solve our dependence on oil, since less than 2 percent of our electricity comes from oil. Moreover, we import the majority of the uranium we use to create nuclear energy, and thanks to a recent deal the Bush administration made with Russia, a good share of that uranium comes from Russia -- one of the autocracies he wants to distance us from.
This just reaffirms the fact that John McCain is not serious about taking action on climate change or energy independence, and would do little to make the U.S. a "model country" in that regard.
--Kate Sheppard
