Lovelock: The Environmental Case for Nuclear Power
Gaia-hypothesis propounder James Lovelock has Greenpeace, and others, in a tizzy over his recommendation that environmentalists need to get over their concerns about nuclear power, since he believes it offers the only hope of averting catastrophic climate change: ‘Only nuclear power can now halt global warming’.
May 26th, 2004 at 9:30 pm
The French and Japanese are in a competition over which will be the site of the world’s first fusion power plant (there are lots of nuke plants now, all fission plants). What we need is fusion power, and other alternative sources.
What everyone seems to have overlooked in all this Iraq-war nonsense is that if Ronald Reagan had never been elected, we would have gotten going on serious alternate energy research and progress a quarter century ago.
Back in the mid-seventies you got a hefty tax incentive if you invested in solar panels on your roof (water, electric, etc.) which is why you see a fair number of them on 40 year old houses. That son-of-a-bitch Reagan got rid of the tax credit, as I recall.
He delayed the phase-out of CFC’s which was underway under Carter, thus helping create the ozone hole.
He cut solar research funding.
He also did things like getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine, thus allowing Rush Limbaugh and all his verminous clones to spread lies about the environment (and everything else); running up a deficit, thus taking funds away from environmental programs; delaying imposition of catch limits thus causing the overfishing which caused local fish populations to crash and put fishermen out of business anyway; and packed the courts with judges who would later install the present dictator.
Ronald Reagan and his oil-industry Vice President George Bush the First set policies in motion thatkept us more, not less, addicted to foreign oil, and more and more entangled in Middle Eastern despotism, religious extremism, and spy games.
By the way, the Soviet Union would have fallen in a few years anyway. Don’t give Reagan all that credit. The Soviet system was sick and hollow by the time Nixon visited in 1972 (some of those who went with him came back convinced that the Evil Empire had grown tired and cynical). You see, an atheist ideology can only promise a better life in this world, and the Soviet Union in 1989 had seen its 70th birthday, the biblical three score and ten that is said to make a full human life. Babies of the revolution were dying of old age. If the Soviet government couldn’t stock the stores after one lifetime, there was no reason to give it another. religious tyrannies, on the other hand, are theoretically immortal, therefore even more frightening.
Without Reagan, no Afghanistan funding of future Al Qaeda. No Bush 1. Without Bush 1, no Gulf War and probably no Al Qaeda resentment of our presence in their flea-bitten Saudi Arabia. Without Reagan/Bush oil policies, Saddam would have had LESS MONEY TO SPEND ON HIS ARMY. If we weren’t buying that oil, what would Saddam have done, hold a yard sale?
Without Gulf War 1, no 9-11.
Without Reagan/Bush fascist judges and No-Fairness-Doctrine propaganda, no Bush 2.
And now Bush 2, having taken all the branches of the United States Government, and having weakened the Bill of Rights to the point that he can just arrest John Kerry as an enemy combatant if he feels the need, will use Diebold computers and ChoicePoint ‘felon’ lists and drumhead recalls and bayonet redistricting to steal the next election, if we the people allow him to.
This is the nightmare given to posterity by all those ‘Reagan Democrats’ who were too stupid to see beyond the lies of the Right.
July 29th, 2004 at 2:04 pm
Lovelock is Just Weighing Risks
He has ertainly flip flopped since his earlier days ..see: Leave a Reply
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