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Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Anti-nuclear people in here arguing about disasters that killed a few k people in 50 years. Also deeply worried about nuclear waste that won't have an impact on humans for thousands of years, but ignoring climate change is having an impact and might end our way of life as we know it before 2100.
They're bike-shedding and blocking a major stepping stone to a coal, petrol and gas free future for the sake of idealism.
People tend to overrate the harms from potential changes, while simultaneously vastly underrating the harms that already exist that they’ve gotten used to.
This is the most wise thing I've read today. We all know it, but it needs to be said more.
The biggest enemy of the left is the right, it's just that everyone on the left can agree that they're terrible so it doesn't come up in discourse too much, whereas the people who are on your side but want to do things a different way will take up much more of your attention.
If socialists and liberals worked together in Germany, the Nazis would not have come to power. It's their bickering that led to liberals giving Hitler power in a coalition and socialists famously saying "after Hitler, us".
Even when there's a fascist takeover, it's enabled by the left of center arguing with itself.
Firstly, liberals are not left of centre, they are the original capitalists, the ideology that socialism was built in opposition to.
Secondly, Liberals will always side with fascists when push comes to shove. To liberals, Fascists are distasteful, bigots and extremists, however, fascism does not threaten the liberal system. It does not threaten the liberal ruling class, at least inherently, whereas socialism is an existential threat to that class. To a liberal economy, to a liberal nation.
And to Germany's communist party, fascists were also distasteful, bigots, and extremists, and they would lead to the collapse of capitalism.
"As late as June 1933 the Central Committee of the [KPD] was proclaiming that the Hitler government would soon collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions, to be followed immediately by the victory of Bolshevism in Germany." - The Coming if the Third Reich, Richard Evans
I'm not going to make some ridiculous statement however that leftists will always side with fascists when push comes to shove. German liberals tolerated fascists to get political power, and German communists tolerated fascists to get political power. They were both fucking idiots for doing so.
You're correct that on the entire spectrum of political theory that liberals are on the right. However, on that grand spectrum, liberals are also authoritarian, and communists are also authoritarian -- because the entire notion of having a centralized government is authoritarian. It's pointless to look at the spectrum from an objective, academic position, because it's totally incongruous with the actual reality of things. When it comes to the scope of Western politics, liberals are left of center, and most tend towards positions of complete civil equality for everyone, which is libertarian in Western scope.
Arguing that liberals are actually on the right is like arguing that we never actually have negative temperatures in winters because Kelvin is always positive and it's impossible to have negative Kelvin. You're technically correct, but for realistic purposes it's utterly meaningless.
This would be a good mirroring response if it had any amount of truth to it. To the Communists in Germany, the fascists were their mortal enemy. The two parties were fighting in the streets. The Communists saw the fascists as a capitalist system, they certainly were not under the impression that fascism would bring about the end of capitalism.
A declaration by the Communists that the Fascists would collapse under their own contradictions is not evidence to the contrary, or evidence that the German communists tolerated the fascists.
Liberal and libertarian are not the same thing and cannot be conflated, and authoritarianism isn't anything with a state.
I swear, the political compass has rotted people's brains.
But that's kind of part of the problem though... By resorting to violence they destroyed democracy in Germany by the legitimizing the authority of the state.
As cited by the University of Cambridge:
“Smash the Fascists…” German Communist Efforts to Counter the Nazis, 1930–31 Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
By James J. Ward
A lot of the anti-nuclear sentiment comes from the 80s when the concerns were a lot more valid (and likely before half the pro-nuclear people in this thread were born).
But blaming people on social media for blocking progress on it is a stretch. They're multi-billion dollar projects. Have any major governments or businesses actually proposed building more but then buckled to public pressure?
Anyway, I'm glad this conversation has made it to Lemmy because I've long suspected the conspicuous popularly and regularity of posts like this on Reddit was the work of a mining lobby that can't deny climate change anymore, but won't tolerate profits falling.
At least part of the billion dollar cost is the endless court fights and environmental impact reports before you can even break ground.
Like every other piece of infrastructure. Are you actually advocating that people should just be able to build power plants wherever they want?
No, I'm saying the opposition to nuclear plants is uniquely strident. It's almost easier to get a new coal plant built. And it shouldn't be.
I really don't get this "nuclear as stepping stone" argument. Nuclear power plants take up to ten years to build. Also (at least here in Germany) nuclear power was expensive as hell and was heavily subsidized.
We have technology to replace coal and gas: Wind, solar, geothermal, etc. Why bother with nuclear and the waste we can't store properly...?
Isn't the main worry the "side product" of weapons grade nuclear materials?
I don't have the sources right now, but nuclear reactor designs exist that output minimal weapons grade materials and some that output none at all. IIRC they are in use already, but I'd have to check what their names are.
There are nuclear plants in operation today that do not use or create any fuel that is capable of being weaponized. In fact, coal plants emit more radiation than a modern nuclear power plant.
The issue of reactors creating weapons grade materials and the radioactive impact of a plant on the surrounding environment are really 2 totally separate issues. You're right on both counts, but the way you put them together makes it sound like they're somehow related.
Also to split some hairs, just because you can't make a nuke out of radioactive material doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be weaponized, you could make dirty bombs out of pretty much anything radioactive, just conventional explosives to scatter radioactive stuff around making it hard to clean up. Pretty sure that spent fuel of any type would probably make for a great dirty bomb if the wrong people were able to get their hands on it.
No.
How do you plan to reach 80% non-carbon-based energy by 2030? That's the current stated goal by the Biden Admin, and it's arguably not aggressive enough. Nuclear plants take a minimum of 5 years to build, but that's laughably optimistic. It's more like 10.
SMR development projects, even if they succeed, won't be reaching mass production before 2030.
The clock has run out; it has nothing to do with waste or disasters. Greenpeace won.
And in doing so, helped doom us all together with big oil, gas and coal.
This is why I'm very wary of groups that are environmentalists vs groups of scientists. I have strong distaste for the former as woo woo people who only follow the science when it's convenient.
10 years from now, you might be in a situation where the grid is unstable and capacity is insufficient in front of demand. You will also be facing potential renewal of existing solar panels, wind farms, batteries storage, etc.
If you lack capacity, any attempt at industry relocation locally will be a pipe-dream.
And at that time, you'll say either "it's too late to rely on nuclear now" or "fortunately we're about to get these new power plants running". You're not building any nuclear power plan for immediate needs, you're building for the next decades.
Meanwhile, one country will be ready to take on "clean production" and be very attractive to industrial projects because it already planned all of that years ago and companies will be able to claim "green manufacturing". That country is... China!
They aren't left. Communists are strong pro-nuclear for the last 70 years.
None of them is ignoring climate change, Actually you are more than anyone else since you are promoting an energy source that isn't green. Many other nuclear accidents happened over the past years but you sound like the kind of person that doesn't care much about the environment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste_dumping_by_%27Ndrangheta
"Nuclear energy isn't green" lol. You sound like an anti-vaxxer.
Nuclear is not green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_energy
Citing a Wikipedia article that categorizes things as green or not green is not a reputable source. Anyone could edit the page right now and invalidate your claim. I'm not convinced you are right or wrong but I'd like a stronger argument.
Nuclear energy is THE ONLY green energy.