December 10, 2009

Kerry, Lieberman, Graham: Climate Bill Will Include Nuclear Incentives

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Senators John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham are holding a press call right now to discuss their tri-partisan effort to build support for a Senate climate bill. During the call, which AP_ClimatePool is live tweeting, the senators said that the bill will include incentives for building nuclear power plants. As Mariah Blake reports for the upcoming issue of Mother Jones, what the nuclear industry really wants is for the federal government to underwrite new construction of new reactors that Wall Street has deemed too financially risky. (And when Wall Street thinks an investment is too risky, that should make you very nervous.) Now, it looks like the industry may just get its wish: According to AP’s feed, one of the senators just said that a bill must include generous government loan guarantees for nuclear plants in order to secure GOP backing. In other words: the price of getting 60 votes for a climate bill could be a major taxpayer bailout of the nuclear industry. Follow the call here and stay tuned for more updates on Senate climate bill. 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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