Energy Independent?

By: Ana Linares

https://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2016/07/grading-presidential-candidates-education-policy/

Background

Determining where each candidate stands on scientific issues has been difficult in this election. For this reason, scientific authorities are coming together to discuss and analyze responses made by the candidates in the second presidential debate. The candidates involved include Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. After being overlooked and left out in the first presidential debate, the second to last question in the second presidential debate was on the topic of energy and was brought up by one of the audience members. Presented through a media clip, in response to the question, “What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs, while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers?” (NBC News) Trump promises that he will “help bring energy companies back into business.” while Clinton did not give an answer, but simply stated and emphasized that the U.S was finally energy independent.

Purpose

The purpose of this blog is to determine each candidate's views on the topic of energy, their plan or strategy to improve the situation, and also fact check their statements. In this blog, we will also view and see if the candidate answered the question and determine if their answer is it well informed, and includes workable details. The main focus is on whether the U.S is actually energy independent.

http://smartgrowth.org/cities-leap/Evidence For and Against Claim

Authorities in science such as Scientific American Magazine and also ScienceDebate.org partnered together to develope and offer questions to these four candidates. Christine Gorman, a senior editor at Scientific American, oversaw the entire process, from aiding in developing the questions, asking the questions and receiving the answers. The question on energy that they asked the candidates was, “Strategic management of the U.S energy portfolio can have powerful economic, environmental, and foreign policy impacts. How do you see the energy landscape evolving over the next 4 to 8 years, and, as president, what will your energy strategy be?” (Gorman)

When it comes to energy, Clinton believes that she will be able to generate half of our energy from clean sources and also install a half billion solar panels by the end of her first term. Her plan seems to be very detailed specific and well thought out. Clinton is also planning on cutting American oil consumption down and cut energy waste in anyway possible in homes, schools and hospitals. She has named this plan, the clean energy challenge and has specifically detailed how much funds will be required to complete this enormous task, which would be around $60 billion dollars.

Trump claimed that he would aid in achieving energy independence by creating a thriving market system where consumers pick their sources of energy for future consumption. Other than this statement, Gorman says that, “ Trump fails to provide any details for his energy policy.”

When Gary Johnson responded to this question, this topic did not seem to be a top priority. He simply stated that, “no source of energy is right or wrong” and that we should regulate the amount of usage of nuclear, solar and wind power.

Jill Stein, representing the green party is very enthusiastic and passionate about quickly changing to clean renewable energy. She has developed a plan titled, the Green New Deal. In the Green New Deal, Stein plans on getting rid of nuclear power, and creating an electricity grid that send and store power nationwide.

In the second presidential election, when both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were asked, “What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs, while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers” Trump claimed that we are currently putting our miners and energy companies out of business but fails to give a plan or strategy on how to change this . What he does promise is that these energy companies will pay off the United State’s debt. Hillary started her side stating that the U.S was finally energy independent and that we would stay this way for a while.

 This contradicts Trump’s claims of the United States still trying to achieve the goal of being energy independent. So is America energy independent? The answer is no, we are not. Then why did Clinton say we were energy independent? Clinton was giving false information, whether she knew it or not or just assumed that we were energy independent. We are slowly improving and making our way to the goal, but our success won’t be here very soon.