Politcs of Resentment: Climate Change Edition

As an environmental professional, I can say that I strongly support the use of nuclear power to help solve the problem. I am like many who have changed our minds about this issue.

However, if we are to increase the use of nuclear power we need standardized design, and probably strong governmental regulations to make it happen..

The point is environmentalists apparently don't think global warming is a serious enough problem for environmentalists to make any sacrifices (ie support anything like nuclear power that they wouldn't suport anyway). So why should I worry about it?

How petty, but par for the course for the conservative movement, it seems.

The point is environmentalists apparently don't think global warming is a serious enough problem for environmentalists to make any sacrifices

Funny, I've long thought the same about conservative support for the global war on terror. (PFC Jenna Bush? I don't think so.) As for "environmentalists", that includes quite a diverse group, and basing one's own views on the sincerity of activists (rather than, for example, environmental scientists) strikes me as not the best approach to decision making.

Whether or not environmentalists hate capitalism (some probably do!) just doesn't make a real difference.

Twenty-five years ago, it still made some sense to suspect that global warming might be romantic crap. But that was a long time ago. The scientific consensus is overwhelming. For at least a decade, global warming denial has been just another kind of Republican crackpot extremism.

Capitalism is— by definition— unsustainable. Hate to break it to you, but serious curbing and— one day, maybe— reversal of global warming will require a revolutionized view of natural "resources."

Capitalism's view of conspicuous consumption as economic robustness gives us strip mines, clear cuts and oil slicks. Too bad western democrats have faith that the market will heal itself and capitalists will realize that a dying earth is bad for business. With China and India modernizing so rapidly and the third-world clambering for new technologies, the old model of free-market rapacity must be obliterated, lest we literally "eat ourselves out of house and home."

Debate over this issue is so far beyond the realm of reason; saying Capitalism is the disease and humankind is the willing host infecting every species and biosphere sounds radical, but it's the damn truth. The Free Market is not just unjust and wasteful— it is destructive and seemingly inexorable. Hope lies in grassroots education and activism— but perhaps in strong governmental infringement on personal rights. How else to ration the precious resources remaining? We shall find out if China catches the green bug anytime soon. But I doubt it.

It's worse than "liberals" and progressives like Al Gore and Matthew Yglesias imagine. Their beloved capitalism is a brutal killer and humanity is committing self-slaughter Big Mac by Big Mac. Congress won't save us.

Insane rant over.

Gregorio,
Your insane rant has made our fiends on the right very happy. They think it proves their point.

BTW, will you please define capitalism for me? I would dearly love to see a definition that 1) makes sense, 2) contains unsustainability as an inherent quality of capitalism, and 3) doesn't replicate Marx's unsustainability argument. There is nothing wrong with the logical structure of Marx's argument, but since it hasn't come to fruition in about 150 years, we can rightly suspect some of its empirical predicates by now.

Capitalism is— by definition— unsustainable.

Where's the evidence for that?

So far, it seems like the U.S. has done a fairly good job of sustaining capitalism. We've dealt pretty well with many of our major environmental challenges - deforestation, species destruction, air and water pollution, and ozone depletion - without halting capitalism. There doesn't seem to be any obvious reason why other countries can't do the same.

And it's not clear what other economic system would give us a better environment. Feudal agriculture gave us the Sahara Desert. Look what communism did to China's environment in the 60s and 70s.

Economic growth - caused by capitalism - seems to reduce environmental damage and lower fertility rates to sustainable levels.

"The point is environmentalists apparently don't think global warming is a serious enough problem for environmentalists to make any sacrifices (ie support anything like nuclear power that they wouldn't suport anyway). So why should I worry about it?"

An efficiently compressed package of "conservative", ah, oh well just call it what it is: stupidity. Let's start with the idea of "for environmentalists to make any sacrifices". First, the idea of environmentalism is all about addressing damage to the *environment*, not the damage (i.e., "sacrifice") to people who have environmentalist concerns, ideological or otherwise. When an environmentalist expresses concerns about nukes, it's not about anything other than a judgment on whether nukes are the most environmentally efficacious method of providing power to modern society, all things considered equal. I happen to think that given my experience working in a nuclear fuels processing plant and my understanding of for instance the French nuclear industry and also a careful reading of the nuke posts over on the oildrum that nukes are a plausible possibility for contributing to a solution to global climate change. I also happen to think that if a US government of even modest similarity to the Bush administration were to implement a robust nuke program the result with near 100% certainty would inevitably be massive probably irreversible environmental disaster. So in the current political context, I'm anti-nuke. Now if the very fat algore were to be overseeing the implementation of a robust nuke program, I'd probably be for it. Last time I hear tho, algore is very tepid about nukes.

One more: "So why should I worry about it?" Because, you silly silly person, it's not about scoring points in some sort of irrelevant-like-a-glibertarian debate game. It's about the world your children and grandchildren are going to live in. Dig?

The definition from Wikipedia is all you need, plus a working knowledge of the ramifications of Capitalism in practice:

Capitalism generally refers to an economic system in which the means of production are mostly privately[1] owned and operated for profit, and in which distribution (business), production and pricing of goods and services are determined in a largely free market. It is usually considered to involve the right of individuals and groups of individuals acting as "legal persons" or corporations to trade capital goods, labor, land and money (see finance and credit).

Since Capitalism hasn't self-corrected and produced mechanisms for ensuring sustainability in the last 150 years, we can rightly doubt its ability to ever do so, especially as many economies are 150 years behind where our own voracious, resource-raping system is now.

Marx was concerned primarily with the material needs of the proletariat, and lacked the desire and perspective to develop a vital ecological component to his theories. Marxian interpretations of environmental issues are often lacking for exactly this reason, as many modern self-proclaimed "Marxists" are such strict-constructionists. I am no Marxist; that's why it's the Green Party and not the Reds. Some needs come first, and environmental concerns must outweigh the immediate material needs of the proletariat: without a planet, we're ALL screwed equally.

As for you, Mr. Noah, any economic system that consistently puts human material needs over ecological concerns is both thoroughly understandable and necessarily unsustainable. As the world population rockets past 6 billion and economies like China, India, Indonesia, and elsewhere modernize and expand rapidly, the damage already done will compound. Feudalism and Communism resulted in catastrophic environmental events— any human endeavor does. Only now, we have the technology and scientific knowledge to combat the degradation of the environment. All we lack is the will, because we remain faithful to this system that allowed us the innovation and necessary comforts to achieve the advancement and perspective we have now. Like any good post-Marxian, I acknowledge Capitalism's usefulness, but I recognize the time to abandon the cult of Profit for the realm of reason and responsibility. Some principles of Capitalism will never die, but the time of unbridled, ignorant Capitalism must be over or

else.

Gregorio,
I can live with the Wikipedia definition as a reasonable one. But it doesn't satisfy your first post, which had capitalism as unsustainable by definition. You seem to acknowledge this, and now up the ante, and add "a working knowledge of the ramifications of Capitalism in practice" to see why capitalism is unsustainable.

Capitalism has a number of mechanisms for sustainability. Regulation is one of them. The air-water cleanup of the 1960's and 1970's was astounding. The cleanup of the food supply and santitation in the late 19th and early 20th century was equally astounding. Both problems were created by capitalism (and urbanization,) and fixed by regulatory capitalism. We have a new challenge with global warming. I see no reason why we cannot address it with the old techniques, too.

If you want a wonderful historical snapshot on the regulatory response to capitalism, browse through the 11th edition of the Encylopedia Britannica.

The integrity of the environment is not easily computed by a Capitalist system.

For example, to a capitalist, one tree = one tree. To an arborial minded person, biologist, forester, or spotted owl, one old-growth Redwood tree = completely invaluable. Cut and dry capitalist environmental controls and solutions simply employ a myopic, incomplete arithmetic that omits some vital ecological information.

I wish Pfizer would make a pill that could help me swallow the Capitalist self-regulation/ salvation through necessity and innovation argument.

"Still, it's absolutely clear that the solution involves reducing aggregate global carbon emissions to some level lower than the current one, that the current trends project emissions to rise indefinitely, and that changing the trend will be politically difficult. Whether or not environmentalists hate capitalism (some probably do!) just doesn't make a real difference."

Not everyone - not even a "consensus of scientific opinion" - would stand behind that premise. Ask yourself this: Why are the climate change people so adamant about calling skeptics names (and calling for them to be shut down)? Is that the way true scientific inquiry works, or is it more like the Catholic church dealt with Galileo?

Gregorio -

any economic system that consistently puts human material needs over ecological concerns is both thoroughly understandable and necessarily unsustainable

First of all, ecological concerns are intimately and thoroughly connected with human material needs. We won't be able to satisfy our material needs if we destroy our own environment, so our material interests require us to protect the environment.

Second of all, you still haven't explained why capitalism is "unsustainable". Got any evidence for this claim?

You acknowledge capitalism's importance in bringing us the technology and perspective we need to preserve the environment, and yet you claim - very strongly and absolutely - that capitalism has now outlived its usefulness. That seems like a very dangerous judgment to make - that NOW, unlike any other time in the past, is the moment when we need to abandon capitalism or

else.

If the Catholic Church had definitive proof that the Sun rotated around the Earth and Galileo was motivated by spite and greed, then yes.

I speak from an ideological standpoint. I by no means have faith in any grand revolutionary overthrow of "Capitalism." That would be as fruitless and impossible as winning a "global war on terror." I advocate revolutionizing Capitalism through individual education and a transformation of priorities facilitated by responsible, informed governance from profitable to sustainable development with a focus on equality. That is truly the only hope for the continued survival of the human species.

Gregorio, your observations about capitalism and resource management seem largely similar to a lot of peak oil arguments I've heard. In my opinion, it's a bit of a simplified view of how capitalism deals with scarcity. I don't know if profit is the driving motive behind capitalism - I like to think of it as rational self-interest, in which profit definitely plays a role but is hardly the end-all consideration.

I think the best solutions remember that we are in market-driven economy, and implement regulations that take the efficiencies of markets into consideration. Kyoto-style carbon credit trading strikes me as a really good solution to carbon emissions problems (which also would make nuclear power much more economically feasible in the energy markets - see MIT's "The Future of Nuclear Power"). Another would be subsidies for renewable energy or energy efficiency R&D, with maybe cash prizes for certain goals or competitions (like the X Prize or DARPA's robot vehicle prize a few years back) related to lower carbon emissions. Tax credits for hybrids or solar panels are also a good idea in principle, even if I disagree with some of the specifics of these provisions.

I'm certain that we can continue to sustain our economic health while simultaneously sustaining our environment with appropriate regulations and incentives by governments.

For the record, I am an environmentalist:

"To an arborial minded person, biologist, forester, or spotted owl, one old-growth Redwood tree = completely invaluable."

I do not think that equation comes out that way. Worth more than an unregulated market would value it at? yes probably. Invaluable? No. Would I sacrifice the old-growth forests to solve global warming? Absolutely. Does that trade-off make any sense? No.

Also, as for nuclear power - I was under the understanding that the U.S. does allow nuclear power. I think we even have nuclear power plants, right?
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/states.html

The question is, how heavily do we want to regulate nuclear power? I think very heavily, given security and safety concerns. Perhaps addressing global warming will raise the prices of other energy sources, and it will therefore make nuclear power comparatively more attractive. I don't think that means we need to abandon the regulations that keep a real disaster from occurring in this Country.

I'm very frustrated when people act as though environmentalists have eliminated nuclear power in this Country. We actually do have nuclear power plants.

I think it's worth noting that most of the basic economic theories that show capitalism is "good" - including the ones that deal with environmental problems as "externalities" - assume that companies make zero profit. In those theories, companies just minimize their losses. In fact, when companies do end up making profits, it's often called a "market failure".

What capitalism is really about is people trading things. the problem is when people trade things that aren't renewable (like the environment), which leaves people in the future screwed. When that happens, restrictions on capitalism are definitely needed. Very few serious economists would dispute that point.

But throw out the capitalist system altogether? That's an incredibly dangerous and risky move.

The same could be said about abortion and social conservatives, with someone like Rick Santorum playing the role of Al Gore:

1. Abortion is a result of unplanned pregnancies.
2. Unplanned pregnancies could be greatly reduced by increased access to contraception and stressing it in sex education in schools.
3. Most social conservatives opposes expanding access to contraception and contraception-centered sex education in public schools.
4. Social conservatives are not serious about ending abortions.
5. Abortion really isn't killing, and we can't let those social conservatives get away with restricting it.

Now, current voters are not at direct risk from abortion in the way they are from global warming, but it does illustrate the tendency for us to dismiss concerns if we don't like the messenger.

The capitalist market solution to global climate change is reducing fossil fuel emisssions through the imminent arrival of $100-per-barrel oil, as post-peak oil reduces the readily available supply.

That will not pull out of the atmosphere the CO2 we've already spewed out, and will not save our climate for my kids. Their lives will not be like ours because of our profligacy. Our motives, or those of the willfully ignorant right wing will not matter if the entire midwest becomes a parched dustbowl and sea level rises 20 feet over the next century with the collapse of polar ice shelves, and we can't feed ourselves.

The idea that ANY of our elected representatives would be willing to ignore addressing such a scenario, even were they to pigeonhole it as a low-probability, high-severity risk is appalling. The wingnuts bought the whole Missile Defense package under the same risk profile.

FWIW, Jim Hansen, the NASA environmental scientist who did more than anyone else to sound the alarm over global warming, is pro-nuke. I'm a red (albeit a wussy social-democratic sort of red), not a green, and I say that if the Swedes and the French can handle nuclear power, so can we.

On the topic of Chait's column, Atrios has observed that for much of the right, global warming is simply a fuck-the-liberals issue. They don't care a whit about the substance of the matter. All they need to know is that the libruls are alarmed about global warming, and that one of their favorite hate-objects, Al Gore, is leading the charge. They will continue to fight tooth and nail even after the big oil companies have begun to back away from hard-line denialism--in fact, they'll redouble their efforts. No amount of evidence and no effort of reason will make any difference. This points to a worrying trend. Every political tendency has its lunatic fringe, but it seems to me that the mainstream US right is moving ever closer to a certain programmatic irrationalism. What is the Iraq catastrophe, after all, but the shipwreck of a political fantasist's daydream? Put this willful rejection of reason and indeed of reality itself together with the right's strong authoritarian streak, and you begin to wonder about the future of "normal" political discourse in this country.

"...that the current trends project emissions to rise indefinitely, and that changing the trend will be politically difficult."

Looks like a thread for crazies.

1)Nuke is simply too expensive with too little return for the market to get into anymore. Their money is better spent in China or wherever. Takes a ton of energy to transport all that cement. But it is not crazy.

Watched HBO's Rome tonight. Thinking on Octavian/Augustus, and what qualities he had to settle things down and bring peace and prosperity to the Empire. I see only one person out there with that brutality and cleverness.

And it will take brutality. Most estimates say we have 10-20 years to prepare for Peak Oil and Global Warming, and many say 5-10 years. Republicans will block everything sane, and all they need is around 37 Senators. They would giggle hysterically at President Gore. I don't see any ideas out there to get 65 liberal Senators into office. So Global Warming/Peak Oil will not be adequately addressed, and billions may die.

Or the American Republic needs to die. Only Hillary Clinton is clever and brutal enough to get rid of the Constitution, crush the opposition, and establish the necessary military dictatorship needed to save the Empire, the country, and the world.

HRC for Empress!! I'm quite serious.

"Your average liberal may not know anything about IQ science, but liberals do know they hate Charles Murray. So, hold up Murray as a hate figure and liberals will let that dictate their thinking on the issue."

"Most estimates say we have 10-20 years to prepare for Peak Oil and Global Warming, and many say 5-10 years."

Don't worry, peak oil and global warming will cancel each other out.

I haven't seen "Rome", but as everyone at the time knew, Octavian restored the Republic. Besides, the equivalent of an Octavian would be an amiable, young, heir of a more established politician, who more senior politicans think is easily led. I think we've already got that sort of person in power.

"Looks like a thread for crazies."

Steve Sailer is here...

Wow, who could have dreamed that Steve Sailer would be able to link global warming to his spittle-flecked hatred for the genetically inferior Negro?

"Charles Murray may not know anything about the scientific method, but liberals do know they hate Charles Murray's unsupported racism. So, hold up Murray as an example of how not to do peer-reviewed scientific research and liberals will let facts dictate their thinking on the issue."

Fixed that for you, Stevie. You can safely go back to braiding nooses for those who threaten our racial purity.

Anyway, I'd go with nuclear as part of the solution, if we could be sure of thinking through such things as waste disposal. The light-water non-breeder reactors so prevalent in North America need more uranium, don't they? This probably isn't going to be harmlessly extracted from the ground by solar-powered mining equipment. Breeder reactors get into security/nonproliferation issues, though we could probably get some pointers from the French. As Mr. Carter noted upthread, any increase in use of nuclear power would have to be implemented by responsible people, or we'd get into even more of a mess. And we can't be too pie-in-the-sky about nuclear power, the way we were at the dawn of the Atomic Age. Fission is just another stopgap measure.

Still, it's absolutely clear that the solution involves reducing aggregate global carbon emissions to some level lower than the current one, that the current trends project emissions to rise indefinitely, and that changing the trend will be politically difficult. Whether or not environmentalists hate capitalism (some probably do!) just doesn't make a real difference.

The Bookchinesque anti-capitalist critique is that the reason these emissions will rise indefinitely is the need for economic growth inherint in capitalism. The end game can't be anything else than a world depleted of all natural resources and choking to death on the fumes left over after the party.

Octavian restored the Republic the way Hitler restored Weimar.

While I'm sure that additional nuclear power is at least somewhat feasible for the US, I think Gore's point in saying that it's a relatively minor part of the solution is that at the global level-- the level at which this problem will have to be addressed, after all-- we don't actually want nuclear plants all over the place. Yeah, we can probably sort out the security issues for a half-dozen or so here, and even bear the expense, but I'm pretty sure we don't want to also have a few sitting in sub-Saharan Africa, or in other less-stable parts of the world that also happen to have energy needs. It's not that nuclear plants may not have some use in countries that already have nuclear weapons, but that advocating them for countries that don't is probably unwise, given how easy it is for weapons programs to be shielded by plants.

latts: generally a good point, but it is actually possible to build a nuclear reactor that cannot be used to produce plutonium nuclear weapons. In fact, a lot are built this way today (no point in producing more Pu than you need to).
Of course, a nuclear reactor is still a bad thing to have in an unstable country (whether politically or geologically) because of the risk of accident or deliberate sabotage.

There's also the CANDU system that eats natural, rather than enriched, uranium and thus can't be used to produce arms. Clever folks, those canucks..

On the substantive point, the entire conservative position on this is driven by aggression. There seems to be some kind of machismo they associate with nuclear power, which I've never been able to understand. In terms of policy, as well, it's just one big strawman.

What a lovely straw-man representation of conservatives.

most acknowledge some sort of constant global temperature change. unlike the incredibly shallow "it's capitalism's fault" knee jerk reaction, we tend to take the long view. that nearly every adamant greenhouse-is-the-cause report is full of errors and deliberate distortions (not just the gore film) and other reasons for change - such as cyclical weather patterns, cloud cover, solar activity and the like are ignored and glossed over.

the hypocrisy of the left in not acknowledging the cost/benefit of their cure-alls, their nimby reaction to available tech ( nukes, wind) their paranoid rantings of corporate greed stopping electric cars and whatnot all coupled with hysterical doom saying and holier than thou attitude turns off more than just conservatives.

and for the capitalism-bashers here, our environmental improvements and record has been far better than the communist countries we are to emulate and far better than the ludite society you want us to be reduced to as the rich pay us off with church of the earth indulgences putting the hoi-paloi into carbon-deficient slavery.

Peak Oil will not cancel out Global Warming. We've got many, many years of oil left and many more years of coal. I think we're in for at least 3C increase in mean temps.

And that's enormous. (Over the last 2000 years or so, temps have gone up or down within a 1C range. +/- .5C from "average". )

Nuclear power will come with a price. The price will include: A police state, to prevent nuclear terrorism, run by the party du jour. The devotion of all our resouces, to the exclusion of renewables and conservation, to build the required number of plants. A huge investment in an industry that has never consistently produced more than 50% of what they planned to produce. And, of course, the total freedom from liability (Price-Anderson redux for everybody involved in building the nuclear industry or running the police state.

Does that sound like fun, or what?

'Fortunately', we have the Iraq war as a sort of example of how a police state, freed from responsibility, searching for 'free' energy, will turn out. Not a pretty sight.

Anybody who can use the phrase "carbon-deficient slavery" without laughing should slowly put down the Kool-Aid and back slowly away from the National Review.

"Nuclear power will come with a price. The price will include: A police state, to prevent nuclear terrorism, run by the party du jour. The devotion of all our resouces, to the exclusion of renewables and conservation, to build the required number of plants. A huge investment in an industry that has never consistently produced more than 50% of what they planned to produce. And, of course, the total freedom from liability (Price-Anderson redux for everybody involved in building the nuclear industry or running the police state."

What are you talking about? There are already nuclear power plants in this country. A substantial part of the French power industry is based of nuclear power plants. Do you even live on this planet?

Sk

Jeff Davis - 5 points for the current "indulgences" talking point (are you one of the folks who actually know the historical context?), 5 for the "but the climate's always is changing talking point*, and three for remembering that some rich folks in MA went all NIMBY on a wind-power project. Not bad.

* People are always dying of natural causes. Therefore, so-and-so couldn't have actually been killed by human action, even if the consensus in the world forensic community is that the evidence overwhelmingly points that way.

"that nearly every adamant greenhouse-is-the-cause report is full of errors and deliberate distortions (not just the gore film) and other reasons for change - such as cyclical weather patterns, cloud cover, solar activity and the like are ignored and glossed over"
Yep. The vast majority of climate change scientists are full of crap. You know better. Yep.

"all coupled with hysterical doom saying"
Yep. Because conservatives never have any hysterical doom saying going on.

"far better than the ludite society you want us to be reduced to as the rich pay us off with church of the earth indulgences putting the hoi-paloi into carbon-deficient slavery.

Tsk, tsk! Class warfare is so rude.

None of what's being said in this ongoing dialogue is necessarily wrong, but I want to emphasize a central factor that seems to be largely overlooked: The successful quest on the right to create an alternative "knowledge" environment that is in line with their political beliefs: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-mooney/why-republicans-distrust-b44254.html

"Anybody who can use the phrase "carbon-deficient slavery" without laughing should slowly put down the Kool-Aid and back slowly away from the National Review."

I would think "carbon-deficient slavery" would be a good thing, no? Since humans are carbon-based lifeforms, this implies that we've enslaved, perhaps, silicon. We must all have robot armies or something.

Unless we're to be enslaved by the carbon deficient. In which case, I welcome our new non-carbon overlords.

Um - all your nuclear power plants are belong to us?

And of course, my apologies for attributing to jeffrey davis (who has an entirely reasonable comment) nonsense that was actually spewed by coondawg. My bad. Just goes to show that that dog can't hunt.

"most acknowledge some sort of constant global temperature change. "
Let me stress again that this is not in fact any sort of acknowledgment, but in fact an immense dodge&denial (although for some folks the idea that the climate has changed over time (all 6000 years of it, sometimes!) is in fact quite a big revelation. Amusingly, they often seem to imagine that this is also entirely new to the scientists as well, who clearly need to be told that there was an ice age and then it got warmer, because of course they couldn't know anything about that.).

It's an unwilling response now that denying any sort of climate change is increasingly impossible and makes one looks like a fool, given the evidence. Since the first line of defense (nothing's happening, nothing's changing, shut up and keep going!") no longer works, they've fallen back to the second one - ("oh, sure, everybody knows the climate is changing, but you can't imagine people have anything to do with it! It's clearly [trot out explanations that were considered and finally discarded more than a decade ago]. Now shut up and keep going!") Next, we havethe third - "Of course, we all know that anthropogenic climate change is real, but it's too late to do anything. Really, how bad can it be? Warming is good! Think of it as global insulation! Now shut up and keep going!" - some folks are already there. Eventually we'll get the last one: "Of course anthropogenic climate change is a great danger, and we must do everything we can to slow down the damage, which is why we need to cut taxes* to stimulate the economy! Now shut up and keep going!" [* that is, for the rich].

It's just like the creationists, who had to fall back to "well, sure, there's microevolution - just not "macroevolution!" and then the idea of "kinds" "well, sure, all the different kinds of cats - from cougars to kitties - evolved, but the cat "kind" was created!" and among the smarter ones, to "sure, evolution happened, and all of the Earth's biodiversity came from a single cell, but that single cell was made by a coyly unspecified Intelligent Designer! Who then had some unspecified hand in subsequent events, too!"*

* That this, this is one view within the ID big tent. Since ID creationism isn't actually science, but a strategy, there are an enormous range of often-contradictory but non-interacting opinions within the ID big tent (actual scientific fields often have bitter disputes, but that's the point - they're disputes, not an agreement to get along so that political aims can be fulfilled.) Amusingly, there are always people who don't really grasp any of this, and who constantly undermine the Discovery Institute's careful work by going out in public and equating old school creationism with ID creationism (as they don't understand either, and just know that Darwinism is so BAD!), and talking about God. Heh.

I was impressed by the level of discourse, rationality, and knowledge displayed in this thread. Then Steve Sailer and his alter ego "coondawg" had to show up and shit the bed.

So its an interesting thought that Al Gore is not a big fan of nuclear power because he doesn't see it as a world wide solution to our energy crises.

But is this really true? Who needs energy right now and who has access to nuclear weapons? Well, we use a whole lot of energy, and obviously, we already have nukes. Europe needs energy. Would anyone really be worried if we helped Germany build breeder-style reactors? It doesn't seem like that would increase the risk of nuclear terrorism all that much. How about Japan? Not that they would be okay with it anytime in the near future, but would you still be worried about nuclear power in Japan? I sure wouldn't.

Now, who needs energy in the near future? China and India have the largest populations, and China, at least is growing their economy at a fantastic rate. But they already have nukes, too!

So it seems to me like nuclear power could be a legitimate solution for the vast majority of this generation's power needs. Sure, there are other countries out there that need power currently, but its a small percentage of the worldwide total and its perfectly reasonable to push off addressing that aspect of the problem until those economies have grown to where they have a real impact on global warming (which may never happen anyways). So I'm still confused why Al Gore doesn't consider nukes to be a good thing to push policy-wise.

And by the way, Peak Oil will not solve Global Warming by itself. Coal is even worse than gas and that's the next cheapest energy source, currently.

So you're saying you prefer Lyndon LaRouche to Al Gore? According to Steve Sailer, sharing one opinion with someone is enough to make you their disciple, like all those Hitleresque vegetarians.

Nuclear power won't run cars until the era of the Jetsons is upon us. Nuclear plants can reduce some energy costs, but cannot by themselves be a solution. And you need a lot of them, and you also need to find and extract rare things like uranium - which could become a real issue if we switched to an all-nuclear grid. A real solution involves a lot of different sources.

The point is environmentalists apparently don't think global warming is a serious enough problem for environmentalists to make any sacrifices (ie support anything like nuclear power that they wouldn't suport anyway). So why should I worry about it?

The interesting thing about this line of rationalization is that it implicitly concedes that "environmentalists" may be trusted to correctly weigh the relative risks of global warming and expanded use of nuclear power.

"Nuclear power won't run cars until the era of the Jetsons is upon us."

Then it must be upon us, 'cause if you plug in your Prius, and you're living in an area where a nuclear plant supplies the baseline power, you've got a nuclear powered car.

Brett Bellmore

An obvious point: you can't plug in your Prius, right now.

Plug in hybrids are a ways away, according to Toyota.

More generally, nuclear can be part of a solution, but cannot be the whole solution.

Electric power is about 40% of US CO2 emissions. Coal fired power is about half of US electricity generation, and about 75-80% of CO2 emissions from the electricity power sector.

Nuclear power is 20% of US electricity production.

So if we double nuclear power, we displace about .2 X 75% X 40% about 6% of US CO2 emission.

Now the US has 84 operating reactors. Let's say an average MW capacity of 800. This can be replaced with 50 3rd generation reactors (1350MW). In addition the US could build another 50, and another 50, displacing about 12% of US CO2 emissions when accounting for the replacement of the existing sector (now, in the future, of course, CO2 emissions will have grown as will electricity demand).

So 150 units. Say 5 a year from 2015 (earliest possible startup date from scratch-- the date of the French Flamanville unit to come on stream). In fact, right now the nuke industry doesn't have anything like that capacity, but assume it can be built up (people educated and recruited, etc.).

5 a year is pretty good going. I think it's possible, but I doubt that say, 10 a year, is likely.

Another factor is economics. Nuclear power works well in baseload, since you are always producing. If your nuke capacity is more than base load, you wind up giving power away for free (more production than there is demand) and so your revenue forecast falls apart.

Given a nuke is 100% fixed cost (almost-- fuel is less than 10%, Ops & Maintenance is probably 20-30% long run if you include refuellings and revamps) the economics of these things crumble if you are not selling all your power at the market average price.

Baseload is c. 50% of peak load, so there is a practical limit to how big the nuclear sector can get.

If you read all these comments, you relize hou lost we realy are when it comes to alternitive feuls. I think there might be some conspiracy from our goverments and there is a lot of con artists in this for money. But one thing is for sure - you can not buy a car that uses water as feul. I think we must start using wind and sun energy to safe money at home and spent it on fuel untill hybrid cars become the norm

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The capitalist market solution to global climate change is reducing fossil fuel emisssions through the imminent arrival of $100-per-barrel oil, as post-peak oil reduces the readily available supply.

That will not pull out of the atmosphere the CO2 we've already spewed out, and will not save our climate for my kids. Their lives will not be like ours because of our profligacy. Our motives, or thos