Patrick Moore's presentation isn't as slick as Al Gore's. The slides he shows lack a certain visual panache and don't compare to the ones in An Inconvenient Truth. Moore himself seems a little frumpy, particularly as he peers out across the audience recently gathered in the Warnors Theatre in Fresno.
But attendees paid $20 to hear the former Greenpeace leader extol the benefits of nuclear energy as a clean, safe, reliable, economic, and — perhaps most important to the current political and media focus on global warming — emissions-free source of power.
It's hard to imagine Moore at the helm of an inflatable boat steering into the line of a whaling ship's fire, but that iconic Greenpeace image is exactly what he wants you to associate with him. The Vancouver, British Columbia, native is quick to tell you he's a former leader of one of the most effective international activist organizations ever. But he said he's older now and wants to be for things instead of against them.
What's Moore for? Warding off the warming of the world.
What does he think will do it? More nuclear power plants.
If there's any great and unifying issue thrumming through the national psyche, defying political party lines and flooding the media filters these days, it's global warming. While leaders argue left and right about nearly every issue that comes before them, there is at least consensus that something must be done about climate change.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped on that bandwagon last September when he signed into law Assembly Bill 32, mandating a 25 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020.
Thirty-one states recently agreed to join a voluntary greenhouse gas emissions registry similar to California's, 10 northeastern states are creating a cap-and-trade market, and already half the country has laws requiring that a certain percentage of local power portfolios come from renewable energy.
The alternative-energy troops who've long been waiting in the trenches have stepped up to fight, armed with the tools they've been honing for years: solar panels, wind turbines, tidal power, and biofuels. They say new options and innovations abound for weaning the country off its fossil fuel habit.
But there are already critics who say those approaches aren't going to be enough — and that we need to go nuclear against this planetary threat. And now they have some unlikely new allies.
Maybe you've seen the headlines touting the new nuclear push, running in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and all the daily syndicates. They all claim the same questionable facts: Nuclear power is clean and emissions free. It's safe, reliable, and cost-effective. It isn't contributing to global warming — and these days even the environmentalists like it.
James Lovelock, the renowned Gaia theorist, thinks nuclear energy will be essential to power the developing world. On a Sept. 13, 2006, airing of KQED's Forum, he told host Michael Krasny, "I would welcome high-level nuclear waste in my backyard."
During the hour-long program he said the dangers of radiation were exaggerated; there wasn't that much waste generated; and in order to mitigate the increasing effects of climate change, we should ...
Easy isn't right.
Nuclear energy is a less potent and more lethal alternative to oil; than wind power.
Real reliance on natural energy is wind, solar; and a society based upon reason; not brute econonic might.
Nuclear energy is off the shelf of oligarchic-finances; alternative solutions are both easier and better for the mass of humanity; present, and future.
That said, this article was for the most part very fair. Patrick Moore is trotted out in almost every discussion of nuclear power. He's a paid advocate and that should be disclosed. But the reality is that liberals only seem to have a problem with paid advocates when they disagree with them. Vinod Khosla had a massive conflict of interest in promoting Prop 87 that would have been money in his pocket - but SFBG didnt have a problem with that.
Perhaps I have a better memory than most, and a better library, but I've been hearing these promises about solar and wind power since the 70s. And let's be frank -- people can make all the excuses in the world about why alternate energy sources take time to develop, but Amory Lovins and all of that 70s show were telling us we'd be living off solar by now.
They were wrong -- and they weren't just a little wrong. They absolutely flat-out lied about what solar power could do and how fast it could develop.
So I don't apologize this time around for saying that I like solar, and we should develop it, and I even think it will be a good long term contributor to our energy portfolio.
But the truth is that every year that goes by where we aren't embracing nuclear is a year that COAL will pump millions of tons more of CO2 in to the air. And you can watch Inconvenient Truth all you want -- if you're opposing nuclear energy...at least the development of the technology...then you are the reason for each incremental year of coal-dependence.
I also want to know why, if there really is no "global war on terror", that I should be concerned about a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant? Get your story straight guys. Which is it? And if Iran is just misunderstood and doesn't really intend to make Holocaust II, why should I be worried about recycled & reprocessed plutonium being stolen?
In short, why do liberals only fear Al Qaeda, Iran and North Korea when they can be used as arguments against nuclear power? Isn't the fact that they want to kill you enough?
Imagine being outside, looking up, and seeing only black silicon for miles and miles in every direction. Why? because it will give you a sense of how much silicon we would need to even make a DENT in our energy portfolio. You may feel good and get women with that solar panel on your Marin rooftop, but for those of who use the internet and stay up past sunset, we need a reliable, significant power supply. And solar just ain't there. Nuclear has some issues, but it cannot be so easily dismissed.
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