Have “Green” activists successfully changed the psychology of how most of us think about energy without even realizing it? We believe they have. And not for the better.
For the purposes of this article, we will use the term “Green” to include environmentalists, climate change activists, and all other critics of fossil fuel industries. As far as energy production and use in the US is concerned, the original goal of this group was to curtail the use of fossil fuels (ultimately to zero) in order to reduce the resultant carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into the atmosphere1 and at the same time preserve our natural resources.
In practice, this turns out to be a far greater challenge than anticipated. People have become accustomed to plentiful, affordable energy (gasoline for cars, electricity and natural gas for homes and offices) that is available all the time. Plus, the fossil fuel industry is gigantic, far larger than the coalition of Green activists, and has very deep pockets. A frontal attack on coal, gas and oil companies was never going to work. On top of all that, the clean energy solutions most touted by Green activists, i.e. solar and wind power, remain technologically lacking (by a wide margin) compared to their fossil fuel counterparts. They are not available around the clock (only when the sun shines and the wind blows), they have a much lower energy density, and they are not economically viable without expensive subsidies. In addition, wind and solar farms are typically located far from the consumer resulting in longer transmission lines carrying higher costs and larger power losses.
Thus, the path forward chosen by the Green coalition was to use the federal government as their proxy – the only entity with enough financial resources and influence to implement the Green agenda. But that also proved problematic. It could not be counted on that Green-friendly Administrations would consistently be elected by the citizenry. They weren’t.
Meanwhile, a subtle campaign by activists has been run in the background to change the psychology of how people think about energy use. Being frugal with the use of energy has now become virtuous and morally imperative. It became ethical and praiseworthy. It doesn’t matter for what reason a person decides to be frugal with energy, it is celebrated as the right thing to do for society.
Excessive use of energy has become as abhorrent as littering. Just like it is ugly to see someone litter in public, it’s also now ugly to see someone excessively use gas or electricity when it could be avoided with a modified lifestyle. Walk or bike instead of driving, avoid air travel, keep your home cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer, etc.
The difference is that littering is and always has been ugly, no matter what the context. Energy use only became ugly when it was first associated with pollution, and more specifically, CO2 emissions. Before that, when humans first began producing energy for useful things like lighting, heating, transportation, and machinery, it had only a positive connotation. It was liberating and held immense promise for future innovation.
This is a good place for analogy with Star Trek. In the Star Trek future, technology has evolved to the point where no harmful emissions result from energy production regardless of the scale of energy use. Energy is not only limitless, but completely free from any stigma about how much of it one uses. Do the environmentalists of today really want us moving to that kind of future?
We think not. The reason is that the constant fearmongering, protests, and stigma over the use of energy from fossil fuels has created a profitable industry all its own. Research grants, government subsidies, heavy taxpayer investment in solar and wind technologies have all combined to create a bustling business out of being Green. This business is profitable to a great many of its constituients.2
There is little chance of government money earmarked for Green causes ever going away as long as the stigma placed around fossil fuel-based energy, and the perceived need for zero CO2 emissions in order to save the planet, remains. The very last thing the Green activists want is for that clean, economical, and limitless Star Trek energy source to become available because it would immediately eliminate the need for the Green industry and all the goodies it currently produces for its purveyors.
We are convinced this is why nuclear power has never been, and continues not to be, part of the Green business model. In more ways than not, a modern nuclear reactor today is analogous to that elusive Star Trek energy source. It is a zero-emission power source and very nearly limitless in capacity. However, environmentalists long ago successfully assigned the same negative stigma to nuclear energy as they have to fossil fuel energy, despite the fact that nuclear power produces no CO2 emissions at all.
Green activists will argue that the reason for the stigma is that nuclear energy isn’t safe. They will point to fatal accidents that have occurred in other countries, namely Russia and Japan. But the fact is that in the entire history of commercial nuclear power in the United States, there have been no deaths, not even an injury, resulting from radiation or a core malfunction in a nuclear reactor. By any measure, nuclear energy has been the safest energy source in the US over the last 60 years.
The US began building nuclear power plants in the 1960’s. In 1979, there was a malfunction in a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. There were no injuries or deaths (to plant workers or nearby residents), and no damage to the surrounding environment. The safety and containment mechanisms built-in to the plant worked as they were designed. Despite that, onerous new government regulations and red tape, combined with regular protests by anti-nuclear activists, destroyed the incentive for commercial investment in new reactors. As a result, no new construction of commercial nuclear power plants took place in the US for the next 35 years.
Interestingly, during that same time frame, the US Navy built numerous nuclear reactors to power its ships and submarines. Driven by logic and sound technological reasoning, and unfettered by politically correct coercion from uninformed activists, the Navy has ended up producing more than twice as many nuclear reactors than were ever built commercially in the US. Not a single one of these Naval reactors has ever had an “accident”.
The fact is, the US has had the technology for quite some time to produce plenty of energy (via nuclear) sans any CO2 emissions. We have consciously chosen not to take advantage of that because of political cowardice and overly exaggerated safety concerns.3 Having gotten behind the eight ball, it would now take some time to expand and modernize our current nuclear power infrastructure for it to displace fossil fuels as our dominate source of energy. That time could be dramatically shortened if the same federal and state government motivation and incentives, which are currently directed at zero-emission energy sources having nowhere near the energy density as nuclear (namely wind and solar), were instead directed to new nuclear plant development.
During that hypothetical transition period, the original Green goal of reducing CO2 emissions could still be intelligently met, and without impacting lifestyles. By favoring the use of natural gas over coal and oil, a reasonable compromise can be achieved. Natural gas produces far less CO2 per unit energy than either coal or oil. Yes – natural gas is still a fossil fuel, and it does produce CO2 when burned. But if the true goal of the Green coalition is to reduce current CO2 emissions while maintaining a viable, high capacity round-the-clock energy source (which wind and solar are not technically capable of) why not encourage a shift to much more use of natural gas as the bridge to nuclear?
There is no logical reason whatsoever to force a change in lifestyle, morals, or attitudes about energy use here in the US when we have the answer to the problem staring us directly in the face. There is ground truth that is being ignored, or simply not understood, by the Green coalition as regards both energy production and how we think about and use energy in our daily lives. The stigma that has been falsely layered on our society regarding energy use, particularly nuclear energy, must be eliminated. There is no validity to it. It makes no sense to artificially hold ourselves back from all that could be possible with a clean, safe and abundant source of energy.
1 Green activists believe that reducing CO2 emissions will slow and even reverse global warming. Rather than open another can of worms in this article, we simply state their belief. Our own opinion on the general topic of climate change can be found here.
2 In a most unfortunate way, this situation is very similar to the industry that has been created around racism in the US. There is a benefit to having the industry, which can be in the form of money, power, political influence, preferential treatment, etc. Therefore, despite the ultimate goal of the industry to eliminate racism completely, there is a counter incentive to keep the industry alive. Thus, to protect the profitable business of racism from its own demise, the perception of racism must be kept alive.
3 Nuclear waste is often also raised as a safety concern. The US Government has created its own problem here by refusing to allow “reprocessing” of nuclear waste as is done in nearly every other country that uses nuclear power. Reprocessing not only substantially reduces the amount of nuclear waste that must be stored, but the reprocessed material can also be reused in new fuel rods.