McCain and Obama Spar on Energy, Environment During 2nd Presidential Debate

During the second Presidential debate of 2008, candidates Barack Obama and John McCain answered questions relating to the environment and how they believe we should move forward on energy concerns.  McCain, while pointing out that he disagreed with Bush’s record on the environment, offered nuclear power as a solution – never mentioning renewables like solar and wind.  Obama stated that we can help the American economy grow with alternative energy innovation, pointing out that McCain has voted against alternative energy 23 times.

Check out the video:

“Senator McCain talks a lot about drilling, and that’s important. But we have three percent of the world’s oil reserves and we use twenty-five percent of the world’s oil.  So what that means is that we can’t simply drill our way out of the problem.  And we’re not going to be able to deal with the climate crisis if our only solution is to use more fossil fuels that create global warming.  We’re going to have to come up with alternatives and that means that the United States government is working with the private sector to fund the kind of innovation that we can then export to countries like China that also need energy and are setting up one coal-fired power plant a week.”

Once again, while McCain’s solution is to look back to the 20th century for help with solving a 21st century problem, Obama is looking forward toward green tech as a way to solve our energy crisis, boost the economy, battle climate change and help ensure that countries like China don’t undo our efforts with their ever-increasing reliance on dirty fossil fuels.  Whose plan sounds better to you?

Link [YouTube]

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