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by Chris Wiegard

Created on: December 26, 2010   Last Updated: December 28, 2010

In a perfect world, the human race could deal with the burgeoning energy demand of seven billion humans while successfully meeting and defeating the dangers of global warming. Humans, however, do not live in that perfect world. For the past twenty years, climatologists have watched in growing concern while human energy demands have quickly grown, and have continued to be met by the use of fossil fuels.  This process has pumped billions of tons of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into our skies, resulting in a gradual increase in global temperatures due to the heat trapping characteristics of these gases.

Climatologist James Hansen argues in his book “Storms of our Grandchildren”, that the human race needs to drive the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere back down to 350 parts per million. We are already up to 388 ppm, and the level is rising at an increasing rate. Hansen looks at the potential energy generating solutions to the problem. There is solar, and there is wind, but so far in the global scheme of things, these two technologies do not add up to a big slice of the energy “pie.”  Hansen argues that if the human race takes nuclear power off the table, the shift to renewable power probably happens too slowly to get the job done of driving greenhouse gas levels down to a sustainable level before the human race experiences serious consequences such as sea level rise.

The problem of global warming is an immediate and pressing threat that forces us to plan with clarity and purpose. It poses the question: What do humans need to fear most? Twenty years ago with memories of the Chernobyl disaster fresh, it might have been logical for the human race to fear nuclear power more than climate change, but more recent discoveries are changing that equation.  Global warming has the clear ability now to raise worldwide sea levels by as much as two hundred feet if it results in the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps. If you compare that to Chernobyl, probably the worst possible case of human incompetence and folly in managing a nuclear power plant, climate change is by far the greater danger.  Compare Chernobyl, a regional emergency that killed hundreds of people through radiation exposure and eventual increases in cancer rates, to climate change, a global emergency that endangers the future descendants of the entire human race. There is no contest as to which of the two we should fear more. Yes, nuclear power demands careful policing to avoid accidents, and yes, it also generates wastes that can be dangerous to humans for thousands of years.  But compared to climate change, it is the lesser of two evils.

Our nuanced conclusion to this topic needs to be that nuclear power is not THE solution to global warming, but without it, the other parts of the solution, namely renewable energy and increased efficiency, do not add up to an adequate solution.  We need first to look at global warming as a real danger that demands an honest look at the tools we have to combat it. Nuclear power is a tool that cannot be ignored in this case.  Ultimately, James Hansen and other climatologists who are realistic about both global warming and nuclear power have the truth of the matter in hand. Somewhat reluctantly, because they are not in love with nuclear power, they admit the truth: that it is an essential piece of our strategy to “bridge” the human energy future between current overdependence on fossil fuels and a future time in which we are able to meet almost all energy needs through more sophisticated renewable power sources including higher efficiency solar, geothermal, wind, and other sources. We need to look at this issue honestly and objectively in the light of recent science, and admit that both the left wing and the right wing are wrong on the role of nuclear power in combating climate change.  The right wing’s pushing of nuclear power is illogical, because as an energy source nuclear power is more expensive than burning coal, and by calling global warming a “hoax,” the right wing has wrongly removed the real reason to expand nuclear.  The left wing on the other hand is realistic on the danger posed by global warming, but less realistic in facing the extreme measures that must be taken in combating it.  Their assertion that we have so far not done enough to push the expansion of renewable energy is quite correct- but it is also unrealistic to expect that this failure will be rectified in time to adequately address the global warming threat before the negative consequences such as melting ice caps and regional droughts arrive.

This is about survival. Let’s employ the metaphor of warfare. When you are in a battle with a deadly enemy, you do not leave your hand grenades back at the fort because you might have an accident and kill one of the soldiers in your own unit. No, you take every weapon you own to the battlefield and you use them all until the battle is won.  After the battle is won, you are free to re-examine the weapons used by your Army. By this same logic, the human race needs to abandon the mistaken notion that we cannot afford to expand nuclear power in our fight against global warming. The correct idea is: we cannot afford to leave it off the table.  Living in an imperfect world and facing the frightening prospect of our grandchildren dealing with the consequences of global warming, we must accelerate our response to this challenge. It is too late to pretend that the challenge does not exist, or that we can face the challenge without using every weapon we have.

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