Chris Dodd for President

Devilstower at Daily Kos has been covering the public comment period for Bush administration rule changes on mountain top removal. He asked the Dodd campaign for Senator Dodd's position. Here's Senator Dodd's response:

I oppose Bush's proposal to relax environmental rules on mountaintop removal. This rule change is an example of special interests, in this case coal companies, running the government. When big coal companies make the rules, worker safety and the environment suffer.

Instead of expanding coal companies' right to destroy the environment while mining for coal, the government should be working to develop truly clean and safe coal technologies. This means protecting our climate with new technologies, protecting mine workers by enforcing safety rules and standing up to the big companies, and protecting communities and our natural landscapes by using only safe and clean extraction methods. This can only be accomplished by opposing mountaintop removal.

Environmental news blog Grist has a detailed look at how green the energy plans for Senator Dodd and John Edwards are in comparison. The specific area of concern is coal plants and how they deal with their emissions, which Grist author David Roberts say is crucial to the success of any environmental plan aiming to stop global warming.

One of the most meaningful steps the U.S. can take to fight climate change is to forbid construction of new coal plants unless they capture and sequester their carbon emissions. If we allow more dirty coal plants, all our other efforts will be in vain....Dem presidential candidate Chris Dodd has called for such a policy in blunt language: "The Dodd Plan requires all new plants to capture and sequester CO2. No exceptions."

Roberts puts Dodd's bold plan up side by side with John Edwards' and finds the former Senator from North Carolina's lacking.

Edwards would require that all new coal plants be compatible with sequestration -- that they be IGCC plants, which make CO2 easier to separate and bury -- but he would not require them to actually sequester their emissions.
...
So if President Edwards requires energy companies to build IGCC plants, he will have done very little to slow global warming. What he will have done is lock us into a policy path we've never rationally assessed or chosen.

If we do what Dodd advocates, we'll have at the very least an interlude of 5-10 years in which we can assess our options moving forward. We can compare the net costs of IGCC plants + sequestration with the cost of nuclear, renewables, efficiency, etc. We can choose the most rational allocation of our limited public capital, investing in the options that are cleanest and cheapest.

Again, if we immediately start building a bunch of IGCC plants, we will have irrevocably committed to CCS. We will have to make it work, no matter how much public money it costs. We'll be committing to a massive, nationwide, taxpayer-funded infrastructure project without ever deciding through open debate that it's the best use of our resources. We'll have done it because the coal industry and coal politicians told us that there's so much coal we "have to" use it -- even if it turns out to cost more than cleaner options.

If Edwards is serious about climate change, he will follow Dodd and support a ban on coal plants that don't have operating sequestration facilities. [Emphasis added]

Dodd's energy plan is the boldest plan that addresses all of the challenges facing America. That's why Al Gore has called the Dodd plan "Very creative" and Bill Bradley said "Chris Dodd gets it."

Learn more about the Dodd energy plan here.