One of the great idiocies of the environmentalism of our time is the opposition to nuclear power. No, not because nuclear is lovely, or advanced, or that technological white heat. Rather, because we are also told that the biggest problem we face is global warming, Hey, it’s even a climate emergency these days. Actually, it isn’t, it’s at worst a chronic problem we can manage but hey, who wants to stand in the way of the milenarianism bus? Nuclear provides nice and lovely baseload electricity without much in the way of carbon emissions. It’s thus great at beating the climate change problem. And if that is the problem we must, must, solve then we should have nuclear.
Which is exactly what the Germans haven’t done. They’re trying – having spent well over a trillion so far – to decarbonise the electricity supply. At the same time as they phase out nuclear. Meaning that actually their emissions are rising as they burn more coal. This is not sensible within the parameters they themselves have set. So, obviously, they should change:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] Angela Merkel’s government is facing growing calls from business leaders to postpone plans to phase out nuclear power in Germany in order to protect the environment. The chief executive of Volkswagen and the chairman Continental AG, a leading car parts manufacturer, are among those to speak out in recent weeks. They have seized on the climate movement of 2019 as an opportunity to argue in favour of nuclear energy, and warn shutting down Germany’s last reactors could leave the country reliant on highly pollutant brown coal. Mrs Merkel pledged to shut down all of Germany’s nuclear reactors by 2022 in the wake of a public outcry following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan. But critics say it was too ambitious to switch to renewable energy and phase out nuclear power at the same time. With renewables unable to make up the shortfall, Germany has been forced to turn to coal. [/perfectpullquote]Oh, sure, it’s possible to insist that everyone should just use less power. Degrade the lifestyle so that coal needn’t be used. Because, you know, Gaia. So therefore we can get rid of nuclear and not increase emissions if only …..if only humans weren’t humans that is. Because reality is that people aren’t going to downgrade life. Which is why the plan to reduce emissions is increasing coal use.
The answer is to change the decision to phase out nuclear. After all, if climate change really is the Big Thing then why the hell wouldn’t you use nuclear?
When the aim, the sole aim, is to dismantle modern industrial society, it is essential that there is no proper technological solution. They, the followers of the climate religion, object to anything that might work and espouse solutions that anybody can see are totally inadequate. If they were honest about the threat they would indeed support nuclear. But they are watermelons, so they don’t. Which brings me back to the two things I harp on about. Ask for due diligence in the scientific justification of climate alarm. And stop taking it seriously for the sake of argument and proposing solutions… Read more »
‘One of the great idiocies of the environmentalism…’
Environmentalism is a great idiocy, there can be no hierarchy of idiocies within it therefore.
Environmentalism is a reactionary movement. It is opposed to the modern world. Sadly, once the fall of the USSR defeated the Left’s anti-capitalist but pro-wealth view of the world, the Left chose to adopt environmentalism as the way to defeat capitalism instead.
Which shows that the Left has always been anti-capitalist rather than anything else.
This attitude does support the occasional comment I’ve seen arguing that, even if climate change is wrong, the beauteous benefits the Green program will provide are so gorgeous that we’ll all be ecstatic once it’s introduced anyway.