Doug Casey on Why the Left Hates Nuclear Power, By Doug Casey March 22, 2019
Justin’s note: Doug Casey says the left is
wrong about one of the most politically incorrect energy sources: nuclear
power.
If you
read yesterday’s Dispatch,
you know
why the left wants to eliminate nuclear power entirely… and why we think that’s
a huge
mistake.
Today, Doug Casey takes a
closer look at this subject. And in typical Doug fashion, he doesn’t hold
anything back. As you’ll see, Doug says this is a problem that goes beyond
environmental issues…
Justin: Doug, the new crop of
Democrats has made it their mission to save the planet. And yet, leftists have
shown nuclear power almost no love. In fact, the Green New Deal doesn’t include
any new money for nuclear power. Why do you think that is?
Doug: First, the government
shouldn’t be spending money on nuclear, or any other form of power generation.
Why? The capital they spend must first be taken from those who created it. It’s
vastly wiser to leave it in the hands of wealth creators, who will likely use
it to create more wealth, than give it to politicians, bureaucrats, and other
government employees.
But before I answer the
question, let me first make a statement. There’s no question that nuclear
energy is the safest, cheapest, and
cleanest form of mass-power generation. We’re only having a brief conversation,
so I’ll only deal in broad strokes. Let me add that I’m also a fan of solar,
wind, and other alternatives, which are evolving and becoming increasingly
viable for specialized applications. But they’re not direct competitors to
nuclear.
Nuclear is extremely safe.
The fact is that, even including the 20 odd firefighters who died at Chernobyl,
and several who died at Fukushima, the number of people who’ve died because of
nuclear isn’t even a rounding error compared to other mass energy sources. Coal
kills hundreds of miners directly every year, and thousands more with its
pollutants.
When a dam collapses, the
numbers can be huge. As happened with the 1975 Banqiao Dam catastrophe in
China, which killed 179,000, and made 11 million homeless.
Chernobyl happened
because of the socialist system of the old Soviet Union; the whole country was
an environmental disaster in every way. Safeguards, even a containment
building, weren’t even on their radar screen. Fukushima was a freak accident,
the result of not just the largest recorded earthquake in Japan’s history, but
a giant tsunami as well.
Nuclear is extremely
clean. The few dozen cubic meters of waste from a plant can be encased in
glass, and stored forever. And even viewed as a future resource. Each coal
plant, however, generates cubic acres of radioactive ash annually. Hydro alters
the entire ecology, by submerging many square miles of land behind the dam.
Nuclear should be
extremely cheap. It only costs as much as it does because of the immense amount
of regulations imposed on the industry. Even with all the political and legal
barriers erected against it, nuclear is still the cheapest source of baseline
energy. In a free market, its cost would be a fraction of its competitors’.
Furthermore, today’s
nuclear power plants are second or maybe third generation, with 50-year-old
technology. If the industry wasn’t so heavily regulated, and there wasn’t so
much anti-nuclear hysteria, we’d already be using self-contained miniature
plants. Reactors would be the size of those on nuclear submarines, hermetically
sealed, fueled for 10 years, buried, and powerful enough to run a town of
10,000 people. Anywhere, with trivial transmission costs.
We probably wouldn’t
even be using uranium at that point. We’d probably be using thorium, an even
better fuel. We only use uranium because the government needed nuclear weapons
when the technology was evolving in the late-’40s but that’s a whole other
topic.
Today’s plants are
fantastic, even with today’s highly regulated and politicized environment. But
they’re 50 years behind where they could and would be because of the
anti-nuclear hysteria. It’s as if the government decided cars were dangerous –
which they are, killing 50,000 people a year – in 1955. And halted further
development of them. We’d all still be driving ’55 Chevies.
Justin: Doug, I agree that most of
the anti-nuclear hysteria stems from the belief that it’s dangerous. People
associate it with meltdowns. But the left seems to view nuclear power even less
favorably than the right, despite the fact that it’s a cheap form of clean
energy. Why do you think that is?
Doug: Why, indeed, does acceptance
or rejection of nuclear power generally break down along political lines?
You’re correct to point out
that the left tends to be anti-nuclear while the right tends to be pro-nuclear.
Part of the reason is that rightists are generally pro-technology; they’re
interested in controlling nature and the physical world. Leftists, on the other
hand, are much more interested in simply controlling other people, and social
engineering.
It goes beyond nuclear
power. The same is true of the environment. The left says, “Earth first, Earth
above all! Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails!”
Many of them feel that humans are a plague upon the planet. They like the idea of birds and the
bunnies much more than the reality of people. Which is odd, since you mostly
find them living in big cities, like New York, Boston, LA, or San Francisco.
In fact, rightists are
generally much more sensible environmentalists. For instance, hunters are
generally hardcore conservationists – and they’re almost always politically
right-wing. They support the environment in practice – not just by lobbying and
kvetching.
Look at the current
controversy over global warming and anthropogenic climate
change. The
political breakdown mirrors that of nuclear almost exactly.
Generally speaking, the hard
sciences – like chemistry, physics, and math – attract rightists. Leftists tend
much more to soft, arbitrary things like English, sociology, psychology, or
gender studies.
Rightism has its problems,
but Leftism is a genuine psychological aberration, an actual psychological
disorder. As support for that statement, I offer absolutely every one of the
current Democratic candidates
for president. Leftists say they love humanity in general, especially the
poor. In fact they hate other people as individuals – including themselves.
However, they’re clever hypocrites that disguise this with rhetoric about
unicorns and rainbows.
For instance, the whole idea
of hate crimes came out of the left, not out of the right. All of the mass
murderers of recent history – Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot – were
collectivists. Some will say Hitler was “right wing,” which is ridiculous. He
was a national socialist, with all the left’s views, adding a hatred for Jews,
and a passion for nationalism.
That said, I don’t have
particularly high regard for most of my fellow men once they form groups. Watch
a political rally – something collectivists love – and it’s easy to see humans
as just highly evolved chimpanzees. But I do like individual people. Leftists
on the other hand say they love humanity in general, but they hate most people
one-on-one.
But I don’t want to go off
on too much of a tangent. As a libertarian, my philosophy is neither “right”
nor “left.” When it comes to nuclear power, and most areas of scientific and
technological controversy, however, I find I align with the right.
Justin: Good stuff. Thanks for
taking the time to speak with me today, Doug.
Doug: You’re welcome.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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