Obama Backers Boost Energy
By Ken Newton
Tom Carnahan struggled to understand a perspective that failed to embrace the possibilities of renewable energy.
President of Wind Capital Group, a company whose wind turbines changed the physical and energy landscape in Northwest Missouri, Mr. Carnahan cited an interview in which Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin called Democrat Barack Obama "naive" in his support for energy projects she considered unproven in their economics and reliability.
"Not proven to be economical or reliable, so we shouldn’t do it. That’s the mind-set," he told a St. Joseph group Wednesday. "Back in the 1960s, we couldn’t prove we could send a man on the moon, could we? But American ingenuity came together …"
Mr. Carnahan made the remarks as the Obama campaign’s Missouri Energy Independence Tour stopped at Missouri Western State University. With stops planned across the upper half of the state, the tour aims to promote the Democratic candidate’s vision for greater research and market incentives for a green economy.
The Obama plan points to an investment of $150 billion over 10 years to prod private business to create 5 million "green" jobs. The candidate also wants to set a standard that 25 percent of electricity comes from renewable sources by 2025 and put 1 million hybrid cars on the road by 2015.
Daniel Kammen, a California scientist and one of the architects of the Obama energy plan, told about three dozen people at the Wednesday event that the $700 billion financial bailout now under consideration in Washington roughly matches the amount of money the United States spends on imported energy each year.
"This is a bill we pay every single year," he said of the energy imports. "You can’t change something at this scale without a plan. You can’t hope that a couple of individual good programs will somehow add up to something much greater than the whole."
Ken Newton can be reached at kenn@npgco.com.
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