Nuclear
EnergyNuclear
EnergyAnyone who opposes nuclear energy is condemning a quarter (or more) of the human race to starvation.
Food and population both correlate to energy-use-per-capita. The more energy used per person, the more food per person...and the fewer children each family has, easing overpopulation. If the whole world is going to be fed, and if overpopulation is to be brought under control, then per-capita energy use in the world must go up...by several orders of magnitude.
The only way to raise per-capita energy use that much is to produce more energy...lots more energy...by the same several orders of magnitude.
Land-based solar power, wind power, geothermal power, hydroelectric, etc. -- all these can, at most, double the world's current production of energy. That's not enough.
The world does not have the fossil fuels to produce the energy we need. Nor can the world afford the enrironmental damage that mining and burning those fossil fuels produces.
Fusion and space-based solar power are both real good bets, and could give us what we need...but we've been "twenty years away" from commercial fusion for most of my lifetime, and nobody's going to be building Solar Power Satellites by the hundreds any day soon.
Guess what that leaves? Nuclear fission. At least until we can get those SPS's built, or get commercial fusion going.
So if you oppose nuclear fission power, you oppose the only thing that will feed the world.
What about the dangers? Three Mile Island? Chernobyl? Meltdown? We're all going to die!
-Don Sakers (2/21/98)
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