When I think of the green revolution I think of things being clean, sustainable and being kind to the earth. For me, that means windmills, solar power, and figuring out a way to take care of our water resources to utilize them for energy and preserve their use for future generations.

We all know that coal and other fossil fuels need to go, but then there is the in between- and when you are talking about energy that means things like clean coal, or cleaner than coal (like natural gas), or nuclear energy.

And the Obama administration is coming out at pro-nuclear, which I think is a bad call. Halfway measures at this point in the game are just not going to cut it. Yes, it is clean energy in the sense that there are no carbon emissions, but in a larger sense, it creates waste that is toxic and is not going anywhere anytime that any of us can think of.

"We have not built a nuclear plant in this country in a long time but we want to work with the industry to make that happen in the not too distant future. We have been working with the nuclear industry to understand exactly what it is they need," Carol Browner, President Barack Obama's top energy and climate adviser at the White House.

Thomas Friedman wrote a great op-ed in the New York Times today about how China is leaping far ahead of the U.S. in developing green technologies to produce energy efficient power, and that the U.S. needs to act fast and definitively in order to compete in the future. And I don’t see creating more nuclear plants as moving in the right direction. It’s just more halfway measures that lean toward appeasing powerful lobbyists in Washington. We can subdue ourselves by saying that it is clean and reducing emissions without thinking about the waste that it does create.

The U.S. currently has 104 nuclear reactors in operation, providing, according to The Nuclear Energy Institute, nearly 20% of the electricity in the U.S.

"The president believes that nuclear needs to be a part of our energy future. If you believe as we do that climate change is a serious problem ... then you need to be open to what are all of the ways in which we can produce energy in a clean manner," said Browner.

Again, this is not producing energy in a clean manner. It is producing energy without carbon emissions, but there is most surely waste, which is not clean in anyone’s book.

I think the truly revolutionary move would be to categorize nuclear energy as a wasteful, dirty practice that is one that is being phased out, similar to the fossil fuel options. It’s not even an argument against the possibility of spills or explosions, that are still there whether we have new, safer technologies or not, but moreso a recognition that it is not sustainable as a form of energy production and creation, whether there are carbon emissions coming out of the smoke-stacks or not.

Photo Credit: Tony the Misfit (via Flickr under CCL)