Do you support more nuclear power plants in the Southeast?
Yes: 46%
To cut our need for fossil fuels, the only realistic option is nuclear power. Wind and solar will never be able to generate the power needed in our part of the country. —Mark, via e-mail
Nuclear power is critical for the development of our energy-hungry country, and the Southeast is the nation’s nuclear capital. The construction of a plant also provides high-paying jobs for the local economy and draws highly educated employees to the area. If the U.S. government would allow reprocessing, there would be much less spent fuel to deal with. —Brittany, Lynchburg, Va.
No: 54%
Japan’s nuclear catastrophe has revealed again the real dangers of nuclear energy. Solar and wind are safer long-term options. —Jill Youse, via e-mail
If there was a way to safely dispose of spent nuclear fuel, then it might be an option. At this point it would be worse than coal and its tons of by-products. Wind and solar energy are just now experiencing a re-birth. If we had been developing them more aggressively since the ‘70s, who knows how much they would be able to produce. The nuclear and petroleum industry seems to have gotten most of the breaks. —Michel, Marietta, Ga.
Generating more nuclear power is not worth the huge safety risks. We need to focus on clean renewable energy, like wind and solar, that will safely sustain us into the future for generations to come. The South can’t afford another catastrophic environmental disaster. Just ask our friends on the Gulf Coast. —Rich Miller, Alpharetta, Ga.
Should commercial logging be banned in national forests?
Yes: 68%
While it’s true that national forests are the land of many uses, there is a big difference between extractive and non-extractive uses. Extractive uses like logging diminish the forest for all other users. Non-extractive uses like hiking and biking have little impact on the activities of others or the health of the forest ecosystem. There is plenty of private forestland for commercial logging. We don’t need logging in publicly owned and shared national forests. It actually ends up costing taxpayers hundreds of millions to subsidize these national forest timber sales. —Dave G., Mars Hill, N.C.
Commercial logging almost always involves clear cuts, which are a short-term benefit for a single company and a giant long-term loss for everyone else downstream. We not only lose clean water, biodiversity, and recreation for the next several decades, but commerical logging in national forests operates at a net loss of over $1.2 billion to taxpayers each year. —Eugene Nicholson, via e-mail
No: 32%
Timber is a renewable resource. Harvesting selected trees under the supervision of the Forest Service is fine with me, as long as it’s not outweighed by damage to other multiple uses like recreation. —John, Hagerstown, Md.
National forests should permit selective cutting only, and companies should pay market value for the timber. They should not be permitted to cut more than the annual growth. The reason that national forests were created in the first place was to protect them from cut-out-and-get-out wasteful timber barons.
—Laurence Almand, via e-mail
