Dennis Kucinich on energy policy

Kucinich for President: There has to be a renewable energy portfolio of at least 20% by 2010. And that means introducing wind, solar, hydrogen, geothermal, biomass, and all of the options that must be available and need incentivizing. That also means withdrawing incentives for the production of nonrenewable energy.

Dennis attended the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, advocating a plan with Mikhail Gorbachev for a Global Green Deal that would enable the introduction of $50 billion of new solar projects around the world. It will be a major initiative to use our country’s leadership in sustainable energy production to provide jobs to Americans, to reduce energy use here at home, and to partner with developing nations to provide their people with inexpensive, local renewable-energy technologies.

This is at the heart of his proposed Works Green Administration (WGA) which would couple a new WPA program to the EPA and NASA in restoring America’s infrastructure and providing sustainable energy at the same time.

Kucinich also challenges the nuclear industry’s attempts to develop a waste site at Yucca Mountain in Utah due to the risks in transporting high-level nuclear waste, calling the nuclear industry “the greatest nuclear threat most Americans face”

The fact that we offer nuclear plants and radioactive shipments as a productive target for those who wish us ill should not be ignored in planning America’s energy needs nor the inherent dangers of the plants and waste produced.”