...nuclear energy.
Right now, despite oodles and oodles of bad press - all of which is selective attention - nuclear energy saves lives, as was clearly and irrefutably shown in a paper co-written by one of the world's most prominent and important climate scientists:
Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)
It is one of the most read papers in this important scientific journal, Environmental Science and Technology. I never miss an issue myself.
The paper in this case is open sourced, and anyone can read it.
The popular supposition is that nuclear and only nuclear energy needs to be perfect and without risk, or other forms of energy will be allowed to kill at will. This too, this selective attention, is a crime. Nuclear energy need not be perfect, it need not be without risk to be vastly superior to everything else.
Right now, on this planet, at an appalling rate, seven million people die each year from air pollution. This is the equivalent, every seven years, of World War II deaths, all combat deaths, all genocide deaths, all civilians killed in bombings, all those who starved to death as a result of the damage to transport because of that war.
Here's a scientific paper on the topic of deaths from air pollution, and in fact, all major causes of death, authored by hundreds of professionals in the world's medical and health academic community:
A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (Lancet 2012, 380, 2224–60: For air pollution mortality figures see Table 3, page 2238 and the text on page 2240.)
By the way, "deaths from nuclear energy" doesn't even make the cut off for reporting, even though occupational exposure to cadmium (555 deaths in 2010) does.
This tragedy is barely discussed in the media or on the internet. Why? Because it's normal, unacceptable but normal.
This planet will surely die unless we - all of us - left and right, think anew.
We on the left like to think that we are not prone to dogma. And while I certainly consider myself extremely liberal in terms of human rights, in terms of fighting racists like the current person in the White House and his enablers, in terms of believing in the rights delineated in the 25th article of the Declaration of Human Rights passed by the General Assembly in 1948, I believe we are completely clueless on the left about energy and the environment. In this, we are no different than fundamentalist Bible bangers.
We are, with some exceptions who I've had the pleasure of knowing, completely wrong about how to address climate change; completely conservative, and unable to see through our own intellectual inflexibility.
I fully explored my views on this point a few years back: Current Energy Demand; Ethical Energy Demand; Depleted Uranium and the Centuries to Come
I do not necessarily, by the way, that there is an answer, but if there is one, it involves uranium, thorium, plutonium, americium and curium.
= new reply since forum marked as read
