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Wired Magazine presents a pragmatic guide for the "environmentalist" crowd. You know, the ones that like to champion what they believe because it sounds good on a bumper sticker. It's a very good think-again piece for those open to looking at working solutions. The headline of the Wired piece drew me right in: Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What It Means to Be Green. I hope people will take me at my word that I care about our world and the environment, every bit as much as the far-left green camp. Politically conservative folks enjoy outdoors activities, beholding the vast diversity and beauty of nature, walks in the morning, playing with their kids in parks, swimming in lakes, breathing the air, watching furry creatures run about—all that. Our difference is in how we put into practice caring for the world and what we see as the best practices. In general, if you show me something that really is not working, I will look for a better solution. Most conservatives are predictable in this way. In my experience, this is not true of the left, and most self-proclaimed "environmentalists" have a pattern of falling into that category. Example: Nuclear power. Wired's piece opens with this general lead before pointing us to 10 specific areas for the moderne environmentalist to rethink:
The environmental movement has never been short on noble goals. Preserving wild spaces, cleaning up the oceans, protecting watersheds, neutralizing acid rain, saving endangered species — all laudable. But today, one ecological problem outweighs all others: global warming. Restoring the Everglades, protecting the Headwaters redwoods, or saving the Illinois mud turtle won't matter if climate change plunges the planet into chaos. It's high time for greens to unite around the urgent need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Just one problem. Winning the war on global warming requires slaughtering some of environmentalism's sacred cows. We can afford to ignore neither the carbon-free electricity supplied by nuclear energy nor the transformational potential of genetic engineering. We need to take advantage of the energy efficiencies offered by urban density. We must accept that the world's fastest-growing economies won't forgo a higher standard of living in the name of climate science — and that, on the way up, countries like India and China might actually help devise the solutions the planet so desperately needs. Some will reject this approach as dangerously single-minded: The environment is threatened on many fronts, and all of them need attention. So argues Alex Steffen. That may be true, but global warming threatens to overwhelm any progress made on other issues. The planet is already heating up, and the point of no return may be only decades away. So combating greenhouse gases must be our top priority, even if that means embracing the unthinkable. Here, then, are 10 tenets of the new environmental apostasy.
Before focusing in on our favorite here (Nuclear Power), here's a taste of the "10 GREEN HERESIES" Read about them here.
Live in Cities:
Urban Living Is Kinder to the Planet Than the Suburban Lifestyle
A/C Is OK:
Air-Conditioning Actually Emits Less C02 Than Heating
Organics Are Not the Answer:
Surprise! Conventional Agriculture Can Be Easier on the Planet
Farm the Forests:
Old-Growth Forests Can Actually Contribute to Global Warming
China Is the Solution:
The People's Republic Leads the Way in Alternative-Energy Hardware
Accept Genetic Engineering:
Superefficient Frankencrops Could Put a Real Dent in Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Carbon Trading Doesn't Work:
Carbon Credits Were a Great Idea, But the Benefits Are Illusory
Embrace Nuclear Power:
Face It. Nukes Are the Most Climate-Friendly Industrial-Scale Form of Energy
Used Cars — Not Hybrids:
Don't Buy That New Prius! Test-Drive a Used Car Instead
Prepare for the Worst:
Climate Change Is Inevitable. Get Used to It
Right, then. On to the Wired nuclear power focus. [bold emphasis mine]
Look at the environmental protection agency's CO2-per-kilowatt-hour map of the US and two bright patches of low-carbon happiness jump out. One is the hydro-powered Pacific Northwest. The other is Vermont, where a 30-year-old nuclear reactor, Vermont Yankee, keeps the Ben & Jerry's cold. The darkest area corresponds to Washington, DC, where coal-fired power plants release 520 times more atmospheric carbon per megawatt-hour than their Vermont counterpart. That's right: 520 times. Jimmy Carter was right to turn down the heat in the White House. There's no question that nuclear power is the most climate-friendly industrial-scale energy source. You can worry about radioactive waste or proliferating weapons. You can complain about the high cost of construction and decommissioning. But the reality is that every serious effort at carbon accounting reaches the same conclusion: Nukes win. Only wind comes close — and that's when it's blowing. A UK government white paper last year factored in everything from uranium mining to plant decommissioning and determined that nuclear power emits 2 to 6 percent of the carbon per kilowatt-hour as natural gas, the cleanest of the fossil fuels. Embracing the atom is key to winning the war on warming: Electric power generates 26 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and 39 percent of the United States' — it's the biggest contributor to global warming.1 One of the Kyoto Protocol's worst features is a sop to greens that denies carbon credits to power-starved developing countries that build nukes — thereby ensuring they'll continue to depend on filthy coal.
1Correction appended [1pm EST 5.20.08]. 39 percent of the US' greenhouse gasses come from electric power, not 9 percent as previously reported. That last line was the biggest take away for me. The much-loved by the left Kyoto plan would actually ensure that developing countries would stay in a Dickensian soot covered world. Have a Nice Day! Now even though it is off the nuclear power topic, I wanted to post their section on the carbon credit nonsense since it is such a hot topic today, with the Cap 'n Trade Bill 2191 on the horizon:
What a cool idea: Instead of reducing our own carbon emissions, we'll pay other people to reduce theirs. Win-win! Not so fast. Carbon offsets — and emissions-trading schemes, their industrial-scale siblings — are the environmental version of subprime mortgages. They both started from some admirable premises. Developing countries like China and India need to be recruited into the fight against greenhouse gases. And markets are a better mechanism for change than command and control. But when those big ideas collide with the real world, the result is hand-waving at best, outright scams at worst. Moreover, they give the illusion that something constructive is being done. A few fun facts: All the so-called clean development mechanisms authorized by the Kyoto Protocol, designed to keep 175 million tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere by 2012, will slow the rise of carbon emissions by ... 6.5 days. (That's according to Roger Pielke at the University of Colorado.) Depressed yet? Kyoto also forces companies in developed countries to pay China for destroying HFC-23 gas, even though Western manufacturers have been scrubbing this industrial byproduct for years without compensation. And where's the guarantee that the tree planted in Bolivia to offset $10 worth of air travel, for instance, won't be chopped down long before it absorbs the requisite carbon? Nationally managed emissions-trading schemes could do a better job than Kyoto's we-are-the-world approach by adding legal enforcement and serious oversight. But many economists favor a simpler way: a tax on fossil fuels. A carbon tax would eliminate three classes of parasites that have evolved to fill niches created by the global climate protocol: cynical marketers intent on greenwashing, blinkered bureaucrats shoveling indulgences to powerful incumbents, and deal-happy Wall Streeters looking for a shiny new billion-dollar trading toy. Back to the drawing board, please.
More to come. As Mike Ledeen says, faster, please.
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