Presidential Candidates Views on Energy Policy (and Emissions)

Candidates this election have laid out their strategies to attack the hot issue of energy policy. Candidates tell us what we want to hear so they can win, “[b]ut those quick hits don't get the nation any closer to long-term solutions,” says Joseph Stanislaw, of the energy advisory firm JA Stanislaw Group, LLC.

Hillary Clinton wants to implement a greenhouse emissions cap-and-trade system, which caps greenhouse emissions nationally, and emission reducers can sell (trade) emissions to lesser-reducing companies. Clinton claims she is so eager to pursue alternative energy, that the OPEC nations will have no choice but to lower their prices on crude oil. "I predict to you, the oil-producing countries will drop the price of oil," says Clinton. So she supports alternative energy sources to reduce oil prices, so we can buy more oil.

Presidential “hopeful” Mike Huckabee says, "None of us would write a check to Osama bin Laden, slip it in a Hallmark card and send it off to him. But that's what we're doing every time we pull into a gas station." [If] ''we put an incentive out there that's just truly something dramatic — a $1 billion bonus for the first person who can produce a car than gets 100 miles to the gallon," he propose, then within a decade will “eliminate” our dependency on foreign oil. Necessity is the mother of invention. However, "[w]e know that cannot be obtained," says J. Robinson West of PFC Energy.

Mitt Romney says let’s go drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, expand offshore drilling and nuclear power and create fuel from our abundant coal.

Barrack Obama supports Clinton’s cap-and-trade system, which by 2050 will reduce emissions to one-fifth of 1990 emissions. Kevin Book, an oil and energy policy analyst supports their claim saying he will “eat any shoe you give me,” if their proposal succeeds.

Ron Paul approaches the energy problem from an economical point of view and the falling value of the dollar. I would go into more detail, but he has no chance of winning.