Political Quotes

“I am going to be speaking this afternoon at some length on Senate bill 104. This is a bill that provides a comprehensive plan for the Federal Government to meet its obligations to provide a safe place to store spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. Mr. President, I think it is important to reflect on some of the background associated with nuclear waste and the status of our continued dependence on nuclear energy. First of all, let me refer to an article by Bertram Wolfe. Mr. Wolfe is a consultant at Monte Sereno, CA, and a former president of the American Nuclear Society. He suggests that by midcentury, the Third World population on this Earth will double from 4 billion to 8 billion people while the population of the industrial world will grow by about 20 percent, to 1.2 billion. He further suggests that unless we expect to see the majority of the world's people living indefinitely in dire poverty, we should be prepared for per capita energy use to rise rapidly with economic progress. Even if the Third World per capita energy use rises to only one-third of the United States level, that increase, in combination with the expected population growth, will result in a threefold increase in world energy use by the year 2050. He further suggests that if fossil fuels are used to supply these increased energy needs, we can expect serious deterioration of air quality and possibly environmental disaster from global climate change due to the greenhouse effect.”