Climate Files 55 / Drop the Nuke Bias
Being antinuclear is like a religion to many environmentalists. But solving climate change will be a compromise of what is possible and needed. We are not going to get a green utopian world to emerge and solve climate change with windmills. Even environmentalists want to be able to charge their cell phones and laptops. Should we throw it all away, or find out a realistic way to power it all once the coal plants are gone? We should be supporting nuclear plants over CCS any day. The last thing we want to do is spend billions locking in coal for another 50 years, something that could kill us all.
The Clean Air Act is under attack by Republicans with new legislation trying to block EPA again again. You can help save it by contacting your Reps. here.
Some news discussed in this episode includes information on and quotes from the books Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen and the Vanishing Face of Gaia by James Lovelock. Hansen’s letter to Obama is here (PDF). The UK must raise its CO2 emissions target to a 42% cut, says a new report. Read why our endless consumerism needs to be replaced with sustainable living here. The story about Bell Labs greening the internet by 2015 is here. There is a lot more in this episode including an audio description of what a thorium reactor is and how it works.
Read another interview with Stewart Brand, whose interview is played in this episode, here at e360.
More info on thorium reactors:
- How a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) works
- Energy from Thorium blog
- Uranium is so Last Century
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Music at end: Nuclear Power Plant by Zen Eyes
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Climate Files 20 / Enjoy it While You Can
Enjoy your life while you can, because nothing we are doing right now will likely stop climate change in time. That is the terrifying message from Sir James Lovelock, UK scientist and inventor. Global heating will proceed. All Congress does is pass a cap and trade bill which won’t even cut emissions until about 2040. The bottom line is that climate change is coming and we will have to possibly move and definitely try to adapt.
In mid-June Lovelock spoke to the Seattle Town Hall. James Lovelock discussed adaptation, consequences of human activity, and how much time we have left of the lives we recognize as “normal”. The Congress thinks cap and trade is the way to fix climate change, and this wrong belief means we have no choice but to adapt — or die. Changes are coming, ready or not.
Dr. James Lovelock Warns the World!
“Our main task, should the earth continue to heat, is to adapt and learn how to survive,” he said. “We’re unlikely to become extinct by global heating, but we may be cut back to one billion people or less.” British naturalist Dr. James Lovelock has some strong words for the world. The futurist warns that the Earth is a living organism that is undergoing massive changes.
He believes the Earth is sick and in order to heal itself it may need to get rid of a few billion people.”
Some will be terrified by what he and other scientists are observing as the Earth gets remarkably warmer but Dr. Lovelock sees opportunity for people to decide to live in more hospitable place. But in order to do that, people have to get used to the idea that things in the future won’t be as they are now. The “American way of life” — shopping, consumerism and waste — is fast coming to a close. Yet Lovelock does not feel that it’s ‘too late’ to reduce the effects of climate change.
More on James Lovelock here on Grist.
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Photo: Dr. James Lovelock, Town Hall Seattle, by Michael Bradbury
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