OPINION
Coming Monday, October 22...
White Reinstating the draft would benefit America.
10
Minster! A volunteer army serves the nation best.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN WWW.KANSAN.COM FRIDAY OCTOBER 19,2007 PAGE 74
PAGE 7A
DRAWING BOARD
NICE AND ACCURATE PROPHECIES
MAX RINKEI
Deciding between democrat and republican, still
Sharing a bathroom with presidential candidate makes case for staying independent
share a bathroom with Obama.
By this I mean that I work in a bakery that shares a bathroom with the newly established campaign headquarters for Barack Obama, right across the way from the Royal Crest Bowling Alley in the Hillcrest Shopping Center.
This is funny to me because my boss is a staunch Republican.
I'm not leaning in any particular direction yet. On the one hand, I am told that I may not have Social Security when I'm 70, and on the other hand I'm
warned that I'll end up waiting a considerably long while before I become eligible for my first knee replacement surgery.
It seems that over the last few weeks I've been having a lot of conversations about who I'm going to vote for in 2008.
Having such conversations reminds me why I checked the "independent" box on my registration card. Nothing seems like an entirely good idea in the long run, no matter which side of the barbed wire fence you stand on.
I give all credit to the candidates, however. No matter what tickets they are running on, they have the toughest job in the world: selling the future to the American people. Some want to fight to make the world free, others want to work to make the world like us again, most want to save us money in the long run ("us" being a loose and hazy term). There are promises about the environment and about education. One thing is certain, all of them are dead set to point out that they have never been affiliated with George W. Bush.
In all this bickering and politicking I'm still undecided, just as I was in 2004 when I ended up voting for Kerry because he wasn't the one sending guys and girls my age to die in some forsaken desert thousands of miles away. I viewed that as a deciding plus.
However, the one thing that will ultimately decide my vote in the future—the promise that a politician can make me that will make me proud to pull the lever in support of his or her administration—is a promise that will read something like this:
"I, ___, promise that it will be my highest sworn duty to do one good deed for an American citizen every day, whether that action is to defend his life, accelerate his pursuit of happiness, or recover his liberty. And I charge every American to take this oath along side me. We will
work together to help one person each day, and we will do this with the knowledge that we may not receive retribution or thanks."
In my mind, an American fights for the liberties of his countrymen and not for his government, he works for the betterment of tomorrow and not for his president. He takes care of himself as well as others to the best of his ability. He gladly sacrifices and never takes his rights for granted. To this model American, all are equal and none are denied voice. I would proudly elect any candidate who said these words and lived by them whole-heartedly. Stances on gun control, birth control, immigration control, and economics are secondary to this superlative oath.
Smith is a Rose Hill graduate student in English.
FREE FOR ALL: 864-0500 OR KANSAN.COM/FACEBOOK
all callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
To the girl who was reapplying her freaking make up at Mrs. E's: You should be very thankful that urge to punch you was only just barely resistible.
Look Free for All! It's the world's most beautiful rainbow! Do me on it!
To the guys that just stole the string lights from Mrs. E's: That was a really douchy thing to do.
I have a very serious question. Would you rather be attacked by vampires or zombies?
To the girl I grow by and splashed water all over. I did it on purpose.
(Sung) Raindrops keep fallin' on my head.
To all the older girls out there:
Please remember that age doesn't
mean maturity.
I think Lawrence roads are made of the same stuff as the Wicked Witch of the West. When water touches them, they just disintegrate.
I was just at Watkins library, and the guy next to me was watching porn, loudly. The librarian just asked him to turn the volume down.
Why am I so attracted to older women?
Mother Nature's a whore,
Just kidding about the staying up till 3 on my robot. I'm going to see the sunrise today.
SENTIMENTAL HYGIENE
To the person who lost the black camera outside of The Hawk: You can contact me at 785-I-don't actually-know-where-your-camera-is. Gotcha!
And so it was that I called the Free for All.
Mario Chalmers has more hops than a brewery!
middle of the road was a raccoon, or Lawrence now has a beaver problem.
Either that dead thing in the
I stopped and checked. It's a beaver. I'm really confused on what a dead beaver is doing in the middle of my road.
The honors students can enroll before everyone else? They don't need any more help or special treatment.
What do you call a fully-loaded Toyota Prius?
Coal power given unnecessary attention
Other alternatives to growing energy needs prove more plausible
You may have seen it on fliers on Wescoe Beach, you may have seen it hovering in thick clouds of smoke above the otherwise pristine prairie or you may have seen it in your working-class father's face after an economic downturn. No matter how you encounter it, the issue—coal power—is very likely to garner a strong and emotional response. It does not deserve one.
In 2005, Sunflower Electric Power Corp. proposed a vast expansion of the coal-fired power plant in Holcomb, Kan. Since then, there has been a whirlwind of controversy in Topeka, Holcomb and across Kansas surrounding this proposed project. Liberal activists and lawmakers are crying foul (air) while conservatives are saying that the environmental concerns of a dirty power source should be secondary to Kansas' economy. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has voiced her opposition to the project, but is letting the courts and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment decide whether it is environmentally responsible to build the plants. But no matter how partisan politicians want to make the issue, it is possible to take a rational, fact-based approach to the situation.
The proposed Holcomb expansion would be a state-of-the-art coal-fired power source, generating 1,400 megawatts of electricity, although only about 15 percent of that would stay in Kansas (most of it would go to Colorado's front range megalopolis, which understandably has higher power consumption than the sparsely-populated plains of Kansas). If approved, it would go online in 2013.
The main problem with a coal power plant are emissions of carbon dioxide, which has been implicated as the largest contributing factor to global warming, and lower, but still toxic, emissions of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and mercury. The latter argument is a red herring—because of new technology and regulations, there would actually be lower mercury emissions at the new expanded plant than there are currently at the smaller plant. But carbon dioxide is a real issue. While the actual emissions of the proposed plant would be fairly low and well within federal regulations (they have to be or else face huge fines from the government), any new carbon dioxide emissions are inherently a bad thing, even in western Kansas, where there are no urban smog traps. Even small
coal stations have a negative cumulative effect on global climate change. So how do we move forward with energy production while still keeping the economy and the environment afloat?
What hasn't been mentioned much in this debate are the alternatives to antiquated coal power. Westar Energy, a company based in Topeka, recently announced a $500 million plan to build three wind farms in Kansas that would produce 500 megawatts of power by 2010. Endorsed by Gov. Sebelius, raising the capital for the project would require a small $2 monthly charge for Westar customers, which includes Lawrence. It is well worth $2 a month to provide clean energy for Kansas. But 500 megawatts is not 1,400. How, then, to provide the other necessary energy needed for a growing national population?
There are two main ways. The first is old fashioned: save energy. Turn your air conditioner down, turn off lights when not using them and ride your bike around town. It's very simple, and yet few people actually make a concerted effort to reduce their energy consumption. The second way is a taboo term for many people: nuclear power. But this isn't the 1970s. Nuclear power is getting cheaper and more efficient every day, and the technological advances since Three Mile Island have made nuclear reactors extremely safe and fail-proof. The chances of a nuclear accident are much smaller than the very real possibility that continued unmitigated fossil fuel use will leave disastrous problems for future generations. There is a growing number of entrepreneurial companies buying up unused nuclear plants and getting them back online cheaply. This is an option that has not been widely discussed in America, but should be, as the rest of the world is already on board with nuclear power. For example, 78 percent of France's energy comes from nuclear reactors, sharply reducing its dependence on that sinister petroleum product-oil. It is only America that has an irrational fixation against nuclear energy. Unless your grandmother died at Chernobyl, there is very little reason to oppose building new nuclear power plants.
NOW THAT YOU'VE READ THE OPINION PAGE, HAVE AN OPINION?
The proposed coal plant in Holcomb is not as bad as the environmental doomsday theorists make it out to be, but still, it is 2007. Building the plant would be a step, albeit a small one, in the wrong direction. And we should be working, at every opportunity we have, to make the world greener, and less black. Let us start with this. Contact your representative and let them know that you support alternative energy sources for Kansas.
Petterson is a Prairie Village junior in English.
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The Editorial Board
Erick R. Schmidt, Eric Jorgensen,
Daria Slipe, Kelsey Haysen, Bryan
Dykman, Brandon T. Minister, Angelique
MnCaughton and Benjamin R. Smith
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