healthier, happier and richer

Prashant Vaze, my co-author of Repowering Communities, has recently been to visit some local renewable energy schemes in Germany and has written about one of them, Schönau im Schwarzwald, which has now been posted on Climate Answers [link…].

Prashant writes that the community in Schönau became active on energy issues in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown and suggests that “rebels need something to rebel against”. I agree about that, but he and I don’t agree about nuclear power. That’s one reason why we don’t cover nuclear in our book. The other, more intellectually-respectable, reason is that nuclear power stations will not be built by local communities.

In my view, rebels should rebel against fossil fuels. Once we’ve got rid of fossil fuel use, we can then rebel against nuclear. Prashant thinks we should rebel against nuclear and fossil fuels at the same time. So he and I have amicably agreed to disagree on this. Climate Answers doesn’t seek to impose a party line – authors are free to write whatever they think is right.