Environment & Energy

I am not about to abandon my conclusions based on whining about whether I'm insufferably optimistic or pessimistic or whether someone's opinion of what myopia might or might not be.

I became interested in nuclear energy in response to Chornobyl, and did so not as a supporter of nuclear energy but as a rather dogmatic critic of the enterprise, for which I took Chornobyl to be conclusive evidence.

When I joined DU in 2002, given that some 16 years later the consequences of Chornobyl were nowhere near the consequences of of the collapse of the planetary atmosphere from fossil fuel waste, I was then a supporter of so called "renewable energy." I was as ignorant as any antinuke here about whether the reactionary impulse to make energy as dependent on weather as agriculture is or was a good idea or not. I educated myself and I changed my mind.

This place is populated with antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes still, all of whom apply criteria to nuclear energy that they apply to nothing else, not waste, not cost, not speed, not reliability, not carbon intensity and not the fossil fuels about which they don't give a rat's ass.

The price and environmental impact of energy, the latter often, correctly monetized as "external cost," should be obvious simply by comparing the poster boys and girls in antinuke heaven, Germany, and nuclear nirvana, France.

Whenever I point this out, usually with references including real numbers, I am met with soothsaying, denial and other quasireligious rhetoric.

Simple statements, the simplest of all possible if the 2nd law of thermodynamics, "changing the form of energy loses energy" is often met with oblivious chanting and/or logical fallacies such as poisoning the well and worse.

I am not interested at all in whether any individual regards me as myopic or not. I have a demonstrated history of changing my mind. My general perception is that there are lots of people here with the inability to do that, to change their minds.

I've been at that exercise, the exercise of seeing if my ideas stand up to scrutiny, for my entire adult life, half a century of it. I support my views and if I cannot support them, I change them. I've worked incredibly hard at developing my ideas in fits and starts. I am proud of the effort, and I am having the possibly undeserved pleasure of having a young person on the front lines of energy development to whom I can share and hand off my developed ideas, my son.

If we're going to talk about myopia, and I really don't give a shit to whom we apply that state, I would submit that we should notice that the planet is burning, the atmosphere is collapsing, entire ecosystems are disappearing and along with them supplies of fresh water, and still we wallow here, decade after decade taking about batteries, electric cars, solar cells and wind turbines, oblivious to the fact that trillions of dollars spent on them has done nothing to arrest this course.

Nuclear energy was discovered and developed by the greatest minds of the 20th century and largely rejected on criteria we don't apply to fossil fuels about danger and war and sustainability and so on. After half a century people are finally poring through the records of the work of these long dead great minds. The task of these highly educated people working to undo the historical rejection of this form of energy is incredibly difficult.

I admire these people. I'm sure the enormity of the task fills them with self doubt. To me they recall the challenge issued by my political heroine, Eleanor Roosevelt, "You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

I am fairly well convinced the situation is irretreivable, but I'm willing to be proved wrong after my death. I want to be proved wrong. That is called "hope." These people who can prove me wrong, including my son, may not do the the things they think they cannot do, but unless they make the enormous effort they will not know whether or not they were right or wrong on their doubts.

I myself have had the pleaure of being wrong, and I couldn't care less who respects that or not.

Have a nice day.