The new nukes are good. But will they sell in Berkley?

Begging your pardon, but I distinctly remember stating in that other thread that if the waste issues could be worked out, nuclear could be a viable option. I don’t see how that qualifies as me “not touching” the issue.

On urbanization, I agree with Manish. Urbanization without sprawl is a good thing, environmentally speaking. It’s the sprawl that’s the problem.

The GMO issue is more complex. I probably fall squarely between the enviros and corporate interests on that one. We need to proceed with caution there, but I wouldn’t rule it out completely. I do have other concerns with it that have nothing to do with the environment, however. Namely, the aggressive patent enforcement issues.

On nuclear, I think we’ve still got quite a ways to go on the waste issue. I’m not wholly opposed to it, especially if it can be demonstrated to be cleaner than fossil fuels in the aggregate. (As a side note, one of the biggest reasons it hasn’t caught on isn’t so much people’s opposition to it, although that’s a factor, too — it’s cost. The startup costs for a new nuclear plant are quite high compared to more conventional sources. For-profit energy companies can make a lot more money with a coal-fired plant, even one with tons of cleaning enhancements.)

It seems like it was years ago. Perhaps the poison is stronger than I suspected.

I’ve been getting in arguments with fellow enviros over nuclear power for years now, and I expect that battle will continue for years more. Once people realize how much safer pebble-fuel reactors are, things will calm down a bit.

WTF, persimmon? I couldn’t get either you or tgirsch to touch on any of the nuclear power talking points from the Global Warming Skeptics thread, and now you are all for them? Pebble bed reactors? Nuclear power in everyone’s backyard? Reprocessed fuel instead of figuring out how to keep plutonum buried and safe from bad people for thousands of years in someone else’s back yard?

Were you bitten by a radioactive clue over the weekend or something?

I’ve been getting in arguments with fellow enviros over nuclear power for years now, and I expect that battle will continue for years more. Once people realize how much safer pebble-fuel reactors are, things will calm down a bit. There are new nuke plants on the drawing board for the first time in at least a decade, and it will be interesting to follow the permitting process. I know nuclear waste is long-lived, but having it contained seems like a big advantage over other wastes that we dispose of simply by dilution into our air and water.

With both nuke power and GMOs there is a major Luddite component to the resistance. GMOs will probably find acceptance, but I have to agree with Manish. Monsanto’s sterile seeds are deeply offensive and a really bad move for an emerging technology trying to win public favor. Likewise, suing farmers whose crops seem to have been naturally pollinated by adjacent engineered crops is grossly offensive. If GMO corporations end up in a decades-long PR war, it’s their own damn fault.

I suppose the predictions don’t seem bold to me because I’m more scientist than romantic, though I know I’m a romantic too because I have the same sort of reaction to a blown-off hilltop or a culverted creek that fundamentalists have to aborted fetuses. Topography is sacred.

As to nuclear power, its got a lot of advantages to other forms but some disadvantages too.

As to GMO, I think that there are some beneficial things like adding nutrients, but I also think that GMO for the sake of changing the colour and texture is really not necessary. GMOs can also be avoided by using crop rotation and the like. The GMOs that don’t reproduce so that Monsanto can make money every year are just wrong frankly.

I totally didn’t get his point about population growth.

“I’d like to see Rad Decision widely read.” – Stewart Brand

Where I break with most environmentalists is that I don’t romanticize nature too much. The woods is a good place to hang out, and I want my air and water clean, but not as an end in itself. I want those things because they produce benefits for me.

Anyway, I do think mainstream environmentalists will come around eventually, but it’s a pretty big shift and a lot of leaders are going to need replacing. I just don’t see that happening on a short timetable of less than 10 years.

To put words into his mouth: “Because I think they’ll eventually figure out what I did.”

Which IMO, is a bad way to try and predict people’s behavior. It also leaves out the quasi-religious component of the “Greens” today, which is a rather fatal failing. With that, his predicition to my mind is silly. (Even though I agree with him personally.) I’ve just been arguing with the people he’s saying are going to change their mind in a huge paradigm shift, completely changing their entire worldview, for too long to think they’re willing to change anywhere near that much.