Future is Nuclear!

The challenge posed by global warming and concerns about the future availability of oil have recently given a boost to nuclear power, which is finding supporters even among prominent environmentalists. Last year Al Gore declared that nuclear energy could play a “small part” in plans to avert global warming. James Lovelock, best known for his Gaia hypothesis, advocates the building of new nuclear power plants as the solution to impending ecological catastrophe. Jared Diamond, author of Collapse, says that, “to deal with our energy problems we need everything available to us, including nuclear power.” Even the Union of Concerned Scientists suggests that nuclear power despite the risks it poses might play a role as a “longer-term option” in combating global warming. At the same time many environmentalists and most environmental organizations remain adamantly opposed to nuclear power. For Barry Commoner, who warned of the dangers of both nuclear energy and global warming more than forty years ago in his Science and Survival, the fact that some individuals who have established reputations as environmentalists see nuclear power as a weapon against global warming is nothing short of “appalling” (New York Times, March 22 and June 19, 2007; Christian Science Monitor , July 19, 2007; http://www.ucsusa.org).