Lamar Alexander

If we make 20 percent of our electricity from wind turbines, that would be 1.4 million birds per year.

To equal the production of one nuclear reactor, you would have to continuously forest an area the size of the Great Smoky Mountains.

They warned that over the next 20 years new energy production, especially biofuels, will consume a land mass larger than the State of Nebraska.

The recommendations of the Nature Conservancy paper, I hope, are something this committee would take seriously.

The subsidies for wind are about 10 times that for nuclear.

I would like us to have a carbon-free electricity standard.

I think nuclear is going to be part of the mix.

I would do that if you would join me in repealing in the $170 billion subsidy for wind power.

The cost to the rate payer for nuclear, according to the National Academy, is 6 cents to 13 cents over the lifetime per kilowatt hour and 4 cents to 10 cents for wind over its lifetime.

I accept the National Academy's conclusions that climate change is real and that humans have probably caused most of it recently.

I have suggested a different way for the next 20 years, which I believe is simpler and will work.

It deliberately raises the price of energy when our goal for ourselves and for the world... ought to be cheap energy.

I agree with him that climate change is real, that humans are causing it. My problem is with the solution.

Senator Cardin mentioned that, he has been a consistent supporter of nuclear power.

My view is that if we built 100 nuclear plants, if we electrify half the cars and trucks, and if we had mini-Manhattan Projects in energy R&D, we could reach the Kyoto goals in 2030.

Seventy percent of our carbon-free electricity is nuclear.

According to the Department of Energy, the direct jobs produced by 100 new nuclear reactors would be 250,000.

So basically, all we have done with this bill is raise the price of gasoline and fuel.

An economy-wide cap and trade is a poor way to reduce carbon because it has the effect of raising the price.

A 30 percent increase.

If I drive to work in a car, I do not pay anything under this cap and trade bill.

But it could be more than that over time?

If we build 100 nuclear plants, the President led us to do that, if you led us to electrify half our cars and trucks, if we had mini-Manhattan Projects on alternative energy, we could reach our carbon goals by 2030 without a national…

My objection to this bill is--I see the problem. I agree with the problem. But I see no need for us to send manufacturing jobs overseas by deliberately raising prices of electricity by putting a cap and trade on fuel which raises the price…

If it is like Waxman-Markey, which EPA says it mostly is, then according to President Obama's budget director, it is the largest corporate welfare program in history.