Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially became the presidential nominee of the Democratic party last week, so The Daily Caller News Foundation decided to examine her energy platform.
Clinton’s platform for the 2016 election, which is listed on the official website of the Democratic National Convention, totally overturns the Democratic party’s previous platform, doesn’t mention energy sources that provide more than half of America’s electricity and calls for green energy to grow at an unrealistic rate.
Without further ado, here are the top five problems with Clinton’s energy platform.
1: The Platform Trashes Obama’s “All Of The Above” Energy Policy.
The Democratic Party’s 2016 platform does away with President Barack Obama’s calls for an “all of the above” energy policy.
The phrase “all of the above” does not appear once in the 2016 platform, but the phrase “clean energy,” referring to wind and solar power, appears 27 times and references positive phrases such as “jobs,” “economy,” “superpower,” and “leadership.” The document dedicates an entire section of its table of contents to “Creating Good-Paying Clean Energy Jobs.”
The 2012 Democratic platform embraced an energy policy that sought to develop all of America’s energy resources, including wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, nuclear, oil, clean coal, and natural gas. Obama’s campaign even ran political ads attacking former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for saying that “coal kills people” in 2003, and the campaign highlighted Obama’s commitment to coal power.
The party’s “all of the above” policy was struck from a draft of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) platform shortly before the convention under pressure from anti-fracking activists and environmental groups.
2: Clinton Forgot About Nuclear Power Entirely
The Democratic 2016 platform doesn’t mention nuclear power in its wide-ranging discussion of global warming, even though nuclear doesn’t emit carbon dioxide (CO2).
The draft platform includes 24 mentions of the word “nuclear,” but only follows that with phrases like “annihilation,” “weapon,” and “warhead.” The phrases “nuclear energy” or “nuclear power” never appear in the platform.
Nuclear power provides 20 percent of all the electricity used in America, while wind and solar only provide a mere 4.7 and 0.6 percent respectively. Nuclear also accounts for 63 percent of non-carbon dioxide (CO2) emitting power sources. The average single nuclear reactor prevents 3.1 million tons of CO2 emissions annually. It would take more than 100 years for solar to replace the electricity we currently obtain from existing nuclear plants, according to calculations performed by the National Review.
Most scientists and engineers agree that nuclear power is actually extremely beneficial to the environment.
Clinton previously claimed to be “agnostic about nuclear power” in the 2007 YouTube Democratic Primary debate, but chasitized her own supporters as “science deniers” during this election for opposing nuclear power.
