Five things are certain about solar panels going back on the White House roof:
X They won't generate nuclear waste;
X They won't be targets for terrorists hoping cause an atomic holocaust;
X They'll be working many years before any new atomic reactor could be built;
X They'll deliver usable heat and electricity far more cheaply than new nuclear plants;
X They'll make the US that much freer from the oil addiction that fuels our disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The great unknown: could these panels fuel Team Obama with the courage
to confront the nuclear power industry and military madness now
destroying our economy.
These new panels go far beyond what Jimmy Carter installed and then
Ronald Reagan tore down. Carter's $30,000 rig was installed in 1979 to
heat water, which it did.
Reagan's tear down was part of his assault on the green power industry on behalf of big oil and nuclear power.
We at Greenpeace marched with many others in 1991, at the launch of the
first Gulf War, demanding George H.W. Bush reinstall the panels. He
wouldn't.
We asked the same of Bill Clinton. He wouldn't either.
George W. Bush did quietly install some solar features on the White House.
After a first refusal, Obama says he'll now re-instate solar water
heating to the White House roof, AND will add photo-voltaic cells that
will generate electricity.
Team Obama is clearly responding to the anger of the Democratic base.
Those who worked to put them in the White House want it green.
This includes ferocious opposition to atomic energy. The administration
recently granted $8.33 billion in loan guarantees for a disastrous
double-reactor scam in Georgia. Barely underway, the project has
already resulted in $100 million in hikes for the state's ratepayers.
The builders are now asking for an extra $1 billion. Horrific delays
and cost overruns have already defined new reactor construction in
Finland, France and elsewhere.
But Steven Chu's Department of Energy may be poised to grant yet another
set of guarantees for yet another disastrous reactor project in
Maryland, Texas or South Carolina. And the administration has been
supporting moves in Congress to vote in still more money for a failed
technology which is efficient and reliable only in wasting billions of
taxpayer and rate payer dollars.
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