I suppose it’s a good sign. Bryan Walsh, “Future Perfect” editor at liberal Vox, has just penned a piece arguing for nuclear power. Especially, as OMG, Germany is opening coal plants instead of reversing its policty to close nuclear plants. Let me bullet the points he makes.
“especially for poor people… we’ll need to produce ever more energy from sources that emit little or no greenhouse gases.”
“Zero-carbon” wind and solar have increased in capacity and decreased in price.
“nuclear power can claim to be a green dream.”
“Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown, when nuclear power goes wrong, it can go really wrong… But no energy source is entirely safe, and nuclear power, with its lack of emissions, compares very favorably to other sources.”
“Better nuclear power could also play a major role in… reaching energy abundance.” Remember? “nuclear was once touted to be by some, ‘too cheap to meter.’”
Well, OK. So here’s a lefty writer that is giving his liberal readers a nod and a wink that it’s time to stop beating up on nuclear power.
Great. So let’s get to work on nuclear.
But the first thing to do is to talk to all the nice liberal ladies that have been carefully taught to be scared of nuclear and lead them back to telling each other at their book clubs that nuclear will help reduce poverty in underprivileged communities — or whatever gets them back on track.
The second thing to do is to take a bulldozer — or a machete if you prefer, right after enjoying a breakfast taco — through 30 years of liberal-inspired regulatory undergrowth that makes it almost impossible to build nuclear plants.
And the next thing to do is for liberals to stop trying the scare the pants of everyone about everything. After all, it was liberals that made Three Mile Island into a mega-disaster. Remember, the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident in 1979? Studies either show, or do not show that cancer rates did or did not significantly increase in the area around the plant.
Imagine: if liberals had not made a big issue out of the Three Mile Island meltdown we might now have coast-to-coast nuclear power that would be powering “EV” charging stations everywhere, and we wouldn’t have to worry about climate change.
And now I notice that the elite attack on Dutch farmers is all about the horror of nitrogen fertilisers, which has somehow also become another elite obsession.
Earth to liberals! How about you stop exploiting the normal accidents of life and making them into mega political issues that give meaning to your educated elite lives but hammer the lives of ordinary commoners?
It’s the world’s biggest problem — I suppose it has always been the world’s biggest problem. How do we get the elites of the world to just shut up and let the rest of us get on with our lives? Yes, from time to time we might screw up and blow up a nuclear plant, or poison a lake or two with nitrogen fertiliser. But we are practical people. When there’s a problem, we come together to fix it.
And really what problem in the world needs elite intervention more than the weekly shootings in Chicago? There’s a project for you activists! Stop the “gun violence” in America’s big cities! Interpose your bodies! Peacefully protest outside the homes of Chicago politicians! Chase them away from restaurants!
But let the rest of us live our lives in peace with nice homes, affordable cars, and cheap energy. What is so hard about that?