On September 17, 2008 at a campaign stop in Ohio, Joe Biden said:
We’re not supporting clean coal. Guess what. China’s building two every week. Two dirty coal plants. And it’s polluting the United States. It’s causing people to die.
…
China is burning three hundred years of bad coal unless we figure out how to clean their coal up. Because it’s going to ruin your lungs and there’s nothing we can do about it. No coal plants here in America. Build them, if they’re going to build them, over there. Make ‘em clean, because they’re killing us.
According to the Obama/Biden energy plan:
Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology. Carbon capture and storage technologies hold enormous potential to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as we power our economy with domestically produced and secure energy. As a U.S. Senator, Obama has worked tirelessly to ensure that clean coal technology becomes commercialized. An Obama administration will provide incentives to accelerate private sector investment in commercial scale zero-carbon coal facilities. In order to maximize the speed with which we advance this critical technology, Barack Obama and Joe Biden will instruct DOE to enter into public private partnerships to develop 5 “first-of-a-kind” commercial scale coal-fired plants with carbon capture and sequestration.
The Obama/Biden plan supports clean coal; In fact, it explicity calls for 5 “clean coal” plants developed in the US with the aid of their administration. When Joe Biden says otherwise, he’s lying.
Tags: Biden
October 7th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
This is not a lie in any way. Biden was not talking about his campaign’s support of clean coal. He was trying to make a point about the way parts of the world used coal uncleanly.
Saying this is a lie makes no sense to me. Biden has lied about plenty of things, this is a non-issue that doesn’t deserve notice either positively or negatively.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:57 am
Yeah, when he says “we’re not supporting clean coal” he means we as Americans are not actively making clean coal a priority. That is to say, currently, but his ticket’s plan is to change that.
Opposite of a lie.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Biden is right. We (USA) are not supporting clean coal right now and China is making dirty coal plants every week. He goes on to say we need to make clean coal technology happen. How is this close to a lie?
October 9th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
When was this done? both Obama and Biden have stated, at the earlier stages of their campaing No to coal technology. Is this another “change” to suit?
I thought I was the only one I saw Obama for what he is, nice to know others are not blind yet. Obama will step on anything, including his dead mother to reach his own personal goal, there is no friends, no acquaintences he will stand by, if they do nothing to expedite his climb! He is more powerful than most people give him credit for, he is more cunning and corrupt than the most henious mafia top dog, he plays both sides of the fence very well. I wonder if he needs the votes of gays how far will he go? just a thought! Obama can do all this because he is a Chameleon (the ability to change to mimick surroundings and blend in, to avoid detention) very dangerous stuff, you will never know who or what you are dealing with. WATCH OUT AMERICA!
October 9th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Hello America,
[Insert current democratic presidential candidate] is the most liberal, most corrupt, most flip-floppy, most dangerous, most america-hating person ever!!
Sincerely,
Republicans every four years
October 16th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
The context of Senator Biden’s remark, specifically, the statement,
“We’re not supporting clean coal”
is unclear. In any of the postings on this site, I think it important that more of the statement that proceeds and follows the assertion whose truthfulness is in question. Pronouns are also difficult in this context, as it is difficult to judge from this passage its antecedent To call the statement a lie means taking the antecedent of “we” to be “Barack and I” or “our campaign.” I agree with Dan and Colby who point out that the probable antecedent for “we” Senator Biden intended was “Americans” or “our government.” This is supported by the location of the event at which the remark was made. I live in Ohio. Ohio was a coal producing state, and much of our electricity (and I would guess, though I may be wrong, the majority of our electricity) is still produced in coal fired plants, though for a number of years, because we do not have clean coal, all new power plants, are natural gas fired. The one statement that is questionable in the passage is this one:
“No coal plants here in America. Build them, if they’re going to build them, over there.”
This is a statement in contradiction of the stated policy of the campaign, but it seems to be more in the nature of a stump speech muddle than a declaration of policy or an attempt to have it both ways. Clean coal technology, if it is possible, would be a boon to Ohio. The intent might have been to note that coal plants are not being built here in America, because there is no clean coal technology that would allow them to operate within our current emissions guidelines for things like sulfur dioxide and particulate pollution. In order to judge if this is I lie, I would think one would need to know the audience to which it was addressed– in my own moral system, to be a lie a statement must be known to be false and be made with intent. So, if this had occurred in a speech to the local Sierra Club, for example, I would be more inclined to think that it was an attempt to be on both sides of the fence.
Last night in a restaurant with friends I was watching, or attempting to watch, the final debate . The sound on the set was off, and close captioning was on an attempt to avoid annoying other diners. It was quite difficult to follow due to the transcription errors and seeming mis identifications of words in the captioning. Because of that transcription problem , it was difficult for me to follow any sort of line of reasoning that may have been presented. I suspect something similar here. The transcript is so choppy that I’m not sure what point, if any, Senator Biden was attempting to make about the adoption of clean coal technology here in the United States.