The Patriot Post® · Sanders' Climate Policies Are Anything but Green

On Bernie Sanders’ campaign website, he erroneously claims, “While fossil fuel companies are raking in record profits, climate change ravages our planet and our people — all because the wealthiest industry in the history of our planet has bribed politicians into ignoring science.” Yet ignoring science is exactly what he’s doing when he claims to have a magic formula for reversing global warming.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Keith Johnson and Molly O'Toole observe, “Fracking for natural gas has helped utilities mothball dirty coal plants. And nuclear power provides 20 percent of U.S. electricity — and all of it is emissions free. Both energy sources would be targeted by Sanders, yet very hard to replace.” Citing a study by the think tank Third Way, Johnson and O'Toole say “getting rid of nuclear power means U.S. carbon emissions would ‘go up dramatically,’ and in the worst-case scenario, could ‘wipe out a decade’s worth of progress’ and return U.S. carbon emissions to levels last seen in 2005. That’s because retired nuclear plants would almost always be replaced by natural gas or coal.”

Germany is a good example. While slowly weaning itself off of nuclear power, emissions are on the increase. As Rick Moran at PJMedia points out, “Today, solar power accounts for only one percent of the electric grid. Wind power is responsible for 5%. Despite tens of billions of dollars in grants and loans given to these ‘renewable’ energy companies over the last 8 years, nuclear power still generates more than twice the electricity as solar and wind put together. And Sanders wants to destroy the nuclear industry.” He adds that Sanders’ ideals “are not designed to deal with energy as much as they’re supposed to impoverish us by reducing output for reasons having nothing to do with generating electricity or fueling our cars.” This is Socialism in a nutshell.