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Another Environmentalist for Nuclear Energy

By Eric McErlain
Philip Stott of EnviroSpin Watch reports that an online poll conducted by U.K. political magazine New Statesman went pro-nuclear with more than 73 percent of the vote.

Stott also points to an article by Mark Lynas in the most recent edition of the magazine (subscription required), where the author, a committed environmentalist, talks about his conversion experience with nuclear energy:
I did attend the Energy . . . Beyond Oil conference in Oxford earlier this month. The meeting focused on what could replace fossil fuels, and I arrived convinced - as I wrote in these pages a few weeks ago - that opting for nuclear power would be a disastrous mistake. Before long my comfortable green certainties were in tatters.

After reviewing each of the renewable options and deciding that they couldn't generate enough power to even replace the electricity that nuclear energy already generates in the U.K. (never mind contribute to additional baseload capacity), he came to this conclusion:
I'm not suggesting that nuclear is a panacea. It can reduce carbon emissions only as part of a combined dash for renewables and energy efficiency, buying us time while truly clean energy systems are developed . . .

If you ask me, anything is preferable to planetary climatic meltdown combined with a 1930s-style collapse into political darkness. Even nuclear power.

You can find Mark's Web site on energy and sustainability issues here.

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Comments

Anonymous said…
I find the poll results interesting and heart warming. I would be interested to know how reliable they are. I am sure that the anti-nuclear environmentalists were just as active as the pro-nuclear environmentalists in encouraging people to vote, obviously the two didn't cancel each other out. Does anyone know how they compare to polls conducted by professional pollsters?
May 26, 2005 at 4:40 PM
Kevin McCoy said…
I found that Mark Lynas's column was available even without a subscription at http://www.newstatesman.com/
200505300014.
May 27, 2005 at 12:20 PM
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