Both of the main presidential candidates have a desire to
maintain a healthy environment, but each have different plans with
which to achieve this goal.
While securing more energy resources for the United States is an
issue both candidates have been discussing, they don’t agree
on how to accomplish it.
President Bush supports an Alaska natural-gas pipeline whereas
Sen. John Kerry would like to implement renewable energy sources
like wind- and solar-powered automobiles.
Bush also supports renewable energy sources by planning on
extending tax incentives and developing hydrogen technology to fuel
cars among other things.
The issue of the pipeline’s environmental effects are
often balanced with economic considerations and voters will have to
decide how serious they view the environmental effects to be.
“I am not an expert on the political sides of the issues
you mention. … There are ways of reducing the environmental
impacts associated with drilling, but drilling with no
environmental impacts at all is hard to imagine,” said
Charles Corbett, professor and associate dean of the MBA program at
the UCLA Anderson School of Management, in an e-mail.
“Whether one feels that arctic drilling is appropriate
depends on how one makes the trade-off between environmental
concerns and energy needs,” he wrote.
In addition to Alaska, Bush would also like to generate natural
gas from along the Gulf of Mexico.
“America can’t drill its way out of this
predicament. We have to invent our way out of it,” Kerry said
in a statement released by the American International Automobile
Dealership, a lobbying group on behalf of car dealerships.
Kerry advocates the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge and does not support a natural-gas pipeline in Alaska.
The environmental divide which stretches between Kerry and Bush
has also divided students on campus.
CALPIRG was one of the groups that fought against drilling in
Alaska, so we are more in stance with Kerry on this issue,”
said Greg Walnnier, UCLA chapter chair of CALPIRG.
“The reason is that it is a huge wilderness preserve and
it’s home to hundreds of types of animals. The pipeline would
expose those areas to contamination. … It will provide enough oil
in the U.S. for only half a year and won’t diminish our
dependence on foreign oil,” he said.
Bush plans on exposing 1 percent of the reserve to production of
oil which will last for almost 20 years, according to information
provided by the Bush-Cheney campaign.
“Our air is clearer and our water is cleaner than before
the president took office,” said Steve Schmidt, a Bush-Cheney
campaign spokesman.
The majority of the Bruin Republicans support Bush’s plan
to produce oil in the reserve.
“The area they want to drill is the size of an airport in
a barren part of land,” said Matthew Knee, chairman of Bruin
Republicans.
In addition to the arctic pipeline, Kerry believes President
Bush’s Clean Air Act, implemented to curb pollution, has not
been sufficiently effective in aiding the environment.
“Kerry will reverse the Bush-Cheney rollbacks to our Clean
Air Act, plug loopholes in the law, take aggressive action to stop
acid rain, and use innovative, job-creating programs to reduce
mercury emissions and other emissions that contribute to global
warming,” according to the Kerry campaign Web site. A
spokesman for the Kerry campaign location in California was too
busy to comment Thursday.
But, both candidates support alternative energy sources to oil
such as the use of electric or hydrogen cars.
“Electric cars and alternative-fuel cars do have
substantial benefits with respect to clean air. Electric cars have
no local impact on air quality,” Corbett wrote.
“Alternative-fuel cars, such as hydrogen-fueled cars, will
have a similar effect in the short and medium term,” he
additionally wrote.
Arctic drilling can adversely affect wildlife, Kerry said, or it
can help the United States produce more oil domestically with
minimal intrusion into the Reserve, Bush said.