Games Environmentalists Play

Conn Carroll / January 31, 2008

For global warming crusaders nothing is more important than reducing the carbon humans emit into the atmosphere. The problem, as the more honest environmentalists have noted, is that all of these carbon limiting schemes (whether they be cap-and-trade or a gas tax) would significantly harm the economic growth that is vital to people everywhere. However in the more enlightened in the environmental movement largely ignore an energy source that is clean, affordable, and emits nothing into the atmosphere: nuclear power.

The problem for the green movement is that they spent much of the 1960s and 1970s demonizing nuclear power and now that the perceived threat has change, they can’t wave a magic wand and admit to all their alarmism. Not wanting to appear so blatantly hypocritical, the movement often pays lip service to accepting nuclear power, but then demands farfetched security preconditions. Jack Spencer exposes this game in today’s Washington Post Think Tank Town.
(more…)