Green Energy and Forever Wars

The real reason for “Green”

There are several things to be said about the green movement. First, it takes the unusual position of coopting a natural impulse of our people as stewards of the land and protectors of animals to an extreme conclusion. Second, it warps this sense of stewardship and forces us to work against ourselves. There is no moral problem with conservation per se, of course, and the great American achievements of conservation and land preservation should be celebrated. In fact, it is one of the great achievements of the Teddy Roosevelt presidency. As polarizing as Teddy was, and such opinions even further wrapped up in the progressive attachments of his relative FDR, the National Park System was still ultimately a good thing.

However, there are patterns within the green movement. We must always ask ourselves the question: Why? Why does the green movement only exist in the West? Why does it ignore the trash heaps and burning of coal in the third world? Given that the West has already de-industrialized significantly, this ongoing process seems strange. In some nations, this process continues even further, and the consequent spike in energy prices via lack of supply combined with continual demand has been enough to force German firms to close down or leave Germany.

The refusal by the green movement to entertain nuclear forms of power belies its insidious nature. Nuclear power is useful, and largely CO₂-emission-free. It’s like these people are still stuck in 1986 or something. The memory of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, as well as the more recent Fukushima disaster, looms large in the mind of progressive activists, I’m sure. Of course, Fukushima was a freak accident. Who could predict that the reactor would melt down because of damage caused by a tsunami? A once-in-a-lifetime event at best. What? Didn’t you remember to build anti-tsunami seawalls? Maybe building on a possible tsunami floodplain was unwise and should have been a design consideration. A greater criticism would be the storage of spent nuclear fuel rods and associated waste. But surely that could be planned for. Basically, a nuclear dump serves the same purpose as an actual trash dump. Society will always have waste middens; just find a suitable place where these things can be stored, and build the infrastructure.

Another reason, and more likely the primary reason for the hostility to nuclear power, is that it solves the energy problem to a large degree. It provides high-paying, prestigious, white-collar jobs to white guys. In the pattern we see over and over again with leftists, they demand their solution to a problem they created. The solution to the problem exists already, but that solution just isn’t within their control.