Al Gore’s speech
Al Gore gave a speech the other day where he made some concrete proposals about what to do about global warming. I was surprised by the scope of the proposals and somewhat pleased by the creativity. I don’t know that what he proposed is fiscally or politically workable (we’ll see the reaction as he builds them out) but I’m glad to see more substance from him on what to do about the problem.
The speech text is reproduced on , where the blog author applauds Gore for not promoting nuclear power as part of his proposals (something Gore’s been talking about for a long time). Personally, I’m skeptical that we can succeed at the scope of changes necessary without it.
My grandfather, Dr. Arthur L. Quirk, was the head of the physics department at the University of Rhode Island during the atomic age. He was the driving force behind the creation of the research nuclear reactor there, which opened in 1964. I grew up thinking of nuclear power as a beneficial source of clean energy.
I was a freshman in college when Three Mile Island nearly melted down. That made me think a little. By the time Chernobyl spewed nuclear fallout all over Eastern Europe in 1986, I had come to the conclusion that nuclear power was too dangerous to pursue further. The waste disposal problem alone is enormous, and nobody wants to deal with it.
But as I’ve been studying global warming, I’ve begun to believe that while nuclear power has a potential to make a region uninhabitable, normal use of fossil fuels might well make the whole planet uninhabitable. Nuclear power’s failure modes are ugly, but new nuclear technologies like pebble bed reactors are making that sort of failure less and less likely, and catastrophic failure basically impossible. On the other hand, a coal plant in normal use does irreparable damage to the whole planet.
I’d prefer that we not have to use either of these technologies. But I think we’re going to have to swallow nuclear in order to get rid of fossil fuels.
This debate is what I hope to explore in the game. I really hope that it will be possible to win the game without using nuclear power. Let’s see what happens.