In today’s Washington Post comes a good piece on the growing role of nuclear energy in the discussion over what to do about climate change:
Nuclear power — long considered environmentally hazardous — is emerging as perhaps the world’s most unlikely weapon against climate change, with the backing of even some green activists who once campaigned against it.
[…]
To be sure, many green groups remain opposed to nuclear energy, and some, such as Greenpeace, have refused to back U.S. climate change legislation. Groups that support the bills, such as the Sierra Club, say they are doing so because the legislation would also usher in the increased use of renewable energies like wind and solar as well as billions of dollars in investment for new technologies. They do not say they think nuclear energy is the solution in and of itself.
“Our base is as opposed to nuclear as ever,” said David Hamilton, director of the Global Warming and Energy Program for the Sierra Club in Washington. “You have to recognize that nuclear is only one small part of this.”
But Steve Cochran, director of the National Climate Campaign at the Environmental Defense Fund — a group that opposed new nuclear plants in the United States as recently as 2005 — also described a new and evolving “pragmatic” approach coming from environmental camps. “I guess you could call it ‘grudging acceptance,’ ” he said.
“If we are really serious about dealing with climate change, we are going to have to be willing to look at a range of options and not just rule things off the table,” he said. “We may not like it, but that’s the way it is.”
That position, observers say, marks a significant departure. “Because of global warming, most of the big groups have become less active on their nuclear campaign, and almost all of us are taking another look at our internal policies,” said Mike Childs, head of climate change issues for Friends of the Earth in Britain. “We’ve decided not to officially endorse it, in part because we feel the nuclear lobby is already strong enough. But we are also no longer focusing our energies on opposing it.”
The change in sentiment among progressives on nuclear energy is a welcome sign. As PPI has written in the past, supporting nuclear isn’t just smart policy, it’s also smart politics.
Last week, we published a policy memo by Andrew C. Klein, a professor of nuclear engineering at Oregon State University, on “Why Progressives Should Be More Open to Nuclear Energy.” Read the whole thing here.
