by Ken Bell

Myths often have the power to induce massive social change. Consider what is now the dominant religious faith of the media and political elite in America, the dogma of disastrous global warming through human agency. Despite the mantra that no doubt could possibly remain, no dissent could be sustained against the “evidence”, the truth is that not one of the trinity of terms immanent in this idol has been proven. The rhetoric grows more intense with each passing year, at ever higher decibel levels.

But perhaps the most intriguing consequence of the now dominant conventional wisdom of GWTHA is the practical policy dilemma it creates for those among its fervent converts who have yet retained some measure of their sense of reality. If you accept the faith, there is but one corollary you must also accept. As James Lovelock, one of the founders of Greenpeace, declaimed “Only nuclear power can halt global warming.”

The Economist recently examined the nuclear option in “The Shape of Things to Come?”. They discern a powerful shift in public attitudes and consequent policies. Prospects, they suggest, have “brightened for the nuclear industry. In Asia, which never turned against it in the way the West did, the prospects are excellent. China already has nine nuclear reactors, and is planning to commission a further 30. New capacity is being built or considered in India, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Russia has several plants under construction.

“Now western governments are increasingly looking anew at nuclear energy. A few weeks ago TVO, a Finnish consortium, started work on the first new nuclear plant to be built on either side of the Atlantic in a decade. Pertti Simola, TVO's chief executive, proclaims that, ‘Finland has opened the door to a new nuclear era! Many western countries will come behind us.’

“France’s parliament has recently given its approval for a new nuclear plant. Guillaume Dureau of Areva, the world’s largest nuclear supplier, captures the dizzy mood that has overtaken vendors: ‘We are pretty convinced of a nuclear revival and [we] need to prepare for it. We need to hire 1,000 engineers.’”

The impetus behind this renascence ? “The main reason for the shift is climate change. As it has risen up the political agenda, so the impetus for a nuclear revival has grown.

“More, and more respected, voices have been making the case that nuclear energy is essential if the rate of change is to be slowed. As a result, there is an unlikely alliance between the nuclear industry and many environmentalists, as a growing number of greens have come to believe that nuclear energy is the best way to reduce carbon emissions.”

Certainly, the other “alternatives” are delusional. “Sir David King, Tony Blair’s chief scientist, recently argued that one further generation of nuclear power stations is needed (in Britain at least) to buy time, in order to keep down emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, while new carbon-free non-nuclear technologies are developed. He thinks that renewable sources of energy are not currently up to the task: ‘We need another generation of nuclear-fission stations.’ Others agree. The World Nuclear Association, an industry body, dismisses its green rivals in a recent report: ‘the potential scope for renewables contributing to the electricity supply is very much less because the sources, particularly solar and wind, are diffuse, intermittent and unreliable.’”

Not that universal accord or a new consensus has yet been achieved. “Such opinions have caused consternation among nuclear energy’s long-standing opponents, notably Europe’s green movement. Anti-nuclear sentiment was so strong in Germany at the end of the 1990s that the ruling socialist-green alliance banned new plants. Sweden was the first country to turn against nuclear plants, in a referendum back in 1980; at the end of May it shut down its second nuclear plant. Yet in both countries opinion polls suggest waning public opposition to the nuclear option. Indeed, Germany’s Christian Democrats now say they may overturn the ban if they win the forthcoming national election. In Finland, says TVO’s Mr Simola, concern about climate change was the chief reason why his country pushed ahead with the new power plant.

“In America, although the Bush administration remains hostile to any mandatory action on slowing global warming, it is keen to boost nuclear power. That has led some greens to take the view that a nuclear revival is better than doing nothing much about climate change. Leaders of respected environmental outfits such as Environmental Defence and the World Resources Institute have recently made positive noises about nuclear power as part of a response to global warming.”

The Economist continues, exploring several of the key considerations of operating expense, construction cost, waste disposal, standardized design, and, ever so briefly, proliferation questions, while ignoring others, such as reducing dependency upon imported fossil fuels from nations which fund the terror war being waged against us. All these other dimensions are worth your perusal. But none of them is quite so intriguing as the ironic prospect that it may be environmentalists’ panic at their own contemporary bogeyman which leads them to embrace their bogeyman of old.