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Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney talks to Grist
We’ve taken nuclear off the table. When you start talking about sustainable energy, nuclear isn’t it. We need to take offshore drilling off the table, we need to take ANWR off the table. We should also make sure that investment in solar and other types of heating and energy supply are made attractive to people, [through] tax schemes that decrease the price to the end user. [We need] also an incentive so that when people are in the process of buying houses, a score is given for the energy consumption that that house represents. Those are just a few things that could be done very easily.
Energy is a hot topic on the political scene right now. Republicans are really driving home the drilling mantra. What do you think should be done to counter that? My message is to “leave the oil in the soil.” Right now we’ve got two energy policies in this country. One is war, the other is drilling. And neither one of them works. We’ve got to do something different. Another talking point on the Hill right now is that regulating greenhouse-gas emissions and shifting away from fossil fuels will be catastrophic for the economy and working families. These scare tactics seem to work, especially in a period of economic downturn. What’s the message you’re taking to voters on this? How do you talk about these issues when people are already upset about rising gas prices? I’ve seen communities over in Europe that have no energy bills at all, and so if we’re talking about hardship, the hardship occurs when the elected leadership is stuck in old ways and reticent to invest in new ways that make more sense. And certainly sustainable living makes more sense. Sustainable energy makes more sense. And doing the same thing and getting a worse result is not something that makes more sense. If we continue to do what we’ve done in the past, on the horizon is nothing more than an extension of war, an extension of the military machine, and reliance on a resource that is not infinite.
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