From MoveOn: A representative public response to Obama’s energy options:

Last night over 10,000 MoveOn members participated in the group’s first real-time dial test of the President’s State of the Union Speech. By a considerable margin, the portion of the speech that got the worst response was … the reference to more nuclear power and oil drilling.

Check out the chart hyperlinked above. The left end of Democratic Party doesn’t like the proposed spending freeze or the Afghan surge, either.

This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

President Obama’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly last Wednesday was commonly received as a repudiation of the go-it-alone foreign policy associated with George W. Bush.

But there was a scolding embedded in Obama’s remarks that bears directly on Iran’s outlaw nuclear program:

“Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone. We have sought – in word and deed – a new era of engagement with the world. And now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”

In other words, the alternative to unilateral American action against potential nuclear terrorism cannot be no action at all. Given that choice, Obama – or his successor – will ultimately act in America’s interests. Bank on it: That’s what presidents do.

In this case, the United States and humanity in general share a compelling interest in keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of a radical regime committed to intimidating Arab governments and destroying Israel.
Israel’s own nuclear arsenal is one of the harrowing realities at the core of this dispute. Iran’s ostentatious test-firing this week of missiles capable of hitting Israel is a reminder of how scary this could get.
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This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

Washington doesn’t have the geology to store high-level nuclear wastes. Too much groundwater; too much risk of radioactivity spreading into aquifers and the Columbia River.

Such was the verdict of the scientists and policymakers who rejected Hanford as a nuclear waste dump more than 20 years ago. But President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are fast reversing that verdict.

Their goal is to kill a planned permanent nuclear waste repository in Nevada, not create one in Washington. But it’s the same difference.

Hanford, the nuclear reservation in Eastern Washington, is already saddled with thousands of tons of intensely radioactive reactor-core byproducts. All of it was supposed to be buried in bone-dry caves under Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. Terminate the Yucca Mountain project, and you eliminate what was supposed to be the destination of Washington’s reactor wastes as well as wastes from more than 100 other reactor complexes across the United States.

As McClatchy Newspapers’ Les Blumenthal reported Monday, the Obama administration has no Plan B for Yucca Mountain.
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Hanford was rejected as a permanent high-level nuclear waste storage site in the 1980s. Now Harry Reid and Barack Obama look like they plan to make it one anyway.

The FAA’s long-promised GPS-based air traffic control system, which recently got a test run at Sea-Tac, is good for the environment, good for travelers and good for airport neighbors.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune’s editorial board.

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