A reader comments on Michael Shellenberger’s remarks on nuclear power and its supposed superiority to other sources of carbon-neutral power:
I’m very skeptical that Shellenberger controlled for anything, and I’m always skeptical of anything written on Quillette — so much so that I have effectively stopped reading anything there. It’s an outpost for idealist, dogmatic libertarians who refuse to acknowledge any facts beyond those which make them right. Maybe in the name of time, nuclear has a place — but only if they start today, and only if people stop claiming it’s cheaper than renewables. The same improvements in nuclear expected in the future are as guaranteed as future improvements in green energy. But what’s a thousand times stupider, is that we keep ignoring the fact it would be even cheaper and faster to figure out how to consume and waste less energy. Worse, we keep arguing about all these things and doing nothing. Humanity is seriously going to kill itself.
I cannot speak to Quillette, and it’s an important facet of the discussion for readers who are not intimate with the details of the debate. Sources matter in the Age of the Web. But I am familiar with libertarians, having read their ideas for decades via REASON Magazine. They are clever, sometimes even smart – and often dogmatic.
In fact, they’re the equivalent of the progressives in terms of ‘tude.
We need a good carbon tax, as discussed here.
