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My colleagues on the Editorial Board have prepared a very eloquent statement against Wisconsin’s moratorium on the building of nuclear power plants. On the surface, they appear to have made an open-and-shut case.
My objections to nuclear energy have nothing to do with its safety or effectiveness. I am sure nuclear power would be a safe, sufficiently green alternative to the burning of fossil fuels. Rather, I am chiefly concerned for the geopolitical consequences which would likely arise if the United States declared nuclear power the gold standard of the new green economy.
The principal foreign policy prerogative of the United States right now should be making sure the Iranian government does not develop a nuclear weapon. This is a difficult balancing act, since the Iranian government has an intellectual right to civil nuclear power, which even its pro-Western youth celebrate as a major academic accomplishment. I have insisted for a long time that Iran has a right to this power, and its rhetoric on nuclear weaponry is not apocalyptic enough to merit sanctions or intervention. Any state which wishes to develop a peaceful civil nuclear system has the right to do so.
But I’m one of the very few who sees it this way. I suspect there’s a short list of about 20 countries right now that no U.S. administration would feel comfortable watching build civil nuclear power plants. So, if the fight against global warming is moving towards consensus around a small number of green options, and if the U.S. wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing much of the world develop civil nuclear energy, what’s the point? I would much rather have sources of green energy which are least likely to set off any number of geopolitical crises around the world, whose installation in rogue states would pose no threat —- either real or imagined. I would much rather the world goes green together, simultaneously.
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Your mother was bad, politically.
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Yea except that there are many other countries that are also building nuclear power plants. We would need to stop India, the UAE, China and a couple other countries from building any new nuclear power plants. So maybe you’re correct if you were talking about an international effort to stop all nuclear power plants from operating, but we’re just talking about Wisconsin here. Iran will have the justification to build their own nuclear power plants as long as we are currently continuing to operation our own. Unless you are calling for our current 104 power plants to cease operation and can find a way to replace the 20% of our nations power that they provide, your argument doesn’t make any sense.
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So on the one hand you claim that Iran is just a peaceful nation trying to develop nuclear power and that they have the right to do so, while simultaneously claiming that the U.S. should NOT develop nuclear power because it might fall into the hands of rogue states like Iran. You can’t have it both ways.
If Iran is a peaceful nation (which it is not), it should be allowed to develop nuclear power like the rest of the peaceful nations. If it is a totalitarian regime that oppresses its own people and wages war on free nations (which it is) then it has no right to develop the nuclear weapons and we should prevent it from doing so.
“I would much rather have sources of green energy which are least likely to set off any number of geopolitical crises around the world, whose installation in rogue states would pose no threat �- either real or imagined.”
If you’re basing your opposition to nuclear on what you contend is an imagined threat, then why can’t I imagine a threat from green energy? We should not protect against imagined threats, only real ones, like Iran.
And the best way to protect against Iran getting the bomb is topple that evil regime instead of calling for Russia to supply it nuclear material, as Obama has done.
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Whats with the whole “Evil Regime” shit? You sound like Chimp Bush.
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A totalitarian theocracy that is actively issuing death sentences to its own citizens for politically speaking against the regime; a regime that does not tolerate freedom of speech nor democratic elections and oppresses women; a regime that is the number one sponsor of terrorism in the world, calls for the death of authors in the West who publish books it doesn’t like, calls for the destruction of Israel, denies the holocaust, is seeking nuclear weapons, and is primary promoter and exporter of the militant Islamic ideology behind Bin Laden the 911 terrorists, …
That is an EVIL REGIME.
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I bet you were happy to be able to hide your name behind the “Badger Herald Editorial Board”
I’d be embarrassed if something this poorly written was published with my name on it.
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Who wrote this?
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There are safer, faster, cheaper and cleaner ways to solve the climate change crisis. The technology already exists for us to change to 100% renewable energy in the next few decades. And we can do it without producing deadly, highly radioactive waste which remains a threat to people and the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. There are many good reasons, politics aside, to choose another path. And we won’t have to choose between nuclear power and fossil fuel. That’s a false choice.
Want to know more? Visit www.ieer.org
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If you can develop and bring such a technology to market without taxing me, such that it can compete with nuclear (and nuclear is allowed to operate in a free market), more power to you.