March 24, 2009

Greenpeace needs nuclear

As quoted in a March 17 Guardian (U.K.) story, Nathan Argent, head of Greenpeace's energy solutions unit: "We've always said that nuclear power will undermine renewable energy and will damage the UK's efforts to tackle climate change."

This shows how Greenpeace themselves have undermined their anti-nuclear stand by also taking up climate change as issue number 1.

Do they want green energy or carbon-free energy? Right now, you can't have both, because we use far too much energy to rely on diffuse, intermittent, highly variable, and nondispatchable renewables such as wind (whose green credentials, furthermore, are highly questionable).

While we work to develop good new sources and to clean up the way we use existing sources, the best we can do is simply cut down on our use.

But perhaps Greenpeace knows exactly what it is doing in calling for more energy construction. They live by membership donations, driven by facing down a few select environmental crimes. A push for new nuclear power plants is exactly what they need to keep the member dollars pouring in.

And that's what they'll get by forcing the government to choose between renewables and nuclear.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism