healthier, happier and richer

I need ‘bullet-proof’ numbers about why we cannot get to clean energy without using nuclear power. I have tried to start debates on this issue with 350 and Greenpeace followers, but they won’t engage. With them, it seems to be conducted all at the emotional level (that is, with no numbers). In connection with this issue, I recommend James Hansen’s Storms of my Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity and am finishing James Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline: an Ecopragmatist Manifesto.

Russell Frerichs

The question shouldn’t be: ‘Can we get clean energy without using nuclear power?’, because we can. The question should be ‘how quickly can we get all our energy from renewables?’. WWF say that the world can be 100% renewable by 2050 (see WWF: A clean energy future starts now), which is possible. Therefore, the next question is: ‘What do we do for the 39 years until we get there?’ Clearly, we must do all we can on energy efficiency and renewables, as WWF argue, but we also need other low carbon bridge technologies.  Nuclear and/or CCS provide such bridges.

Stephen Tindale