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Nuclear is no answer
Ever since the nuclear crisis began in Japan, I was just waiting for somebody to
step forward with the argument that ˇ§given all the environmental problems caused
by fossil fuels, isnˇ¦t nuclear energy the lesser of two evils?ˇ¨ The Taipei
Timesˇ¦ editorial indeed repeated this tired, old propaganda of the nuclear
industry (ˇ§The irrational fear of invisible agents,ˇ¨ March 22, page 8).
What is wrong with these arguments is that they are based not on what kind of
world we want to live in, but on purely economic cost--benefit arguments in
favor of either fossil fuels or nuclear fission, with no regard for moral
imperatives. Are we morally justified in creating dangerous global warming and
acidic oceans, leading to collapsed ecosystems? Do we really want to burden the
coming generations with thousands of tonnes of the most toxic and dangerous
waste for hundreds of thousands of years?
The deep-lying fault in these arguments is what environmental economists call
ˇ§externalities.ˇ¨
Energy production via fossil fuels and nuclear fission produces lots of external
effects, such as air pollution, global warming or cancer, some of which can be
economically calculated, but some of which cannot (how do you value a lost human
life?).
Therefore, the whole dreadfully simple-minded economic case which was put
forward in a recent letter in favor of nuclear energy (Letters, March 25, page
8) falls apart if we simply incorporate the externality of having to safeguard
nuclear waste for the next hundred thousand years. The neo-liberal school of
economics is forever disregarding external costs as if they do not exist, which
makes it highly cost-effective to trash the planet. Environmental economics
tries to incorporate these costs. However, many decisions should not be based on
such cost-benefit analyses alone, even if they incorporate environmental
externalities, but on what kind of world we want to live in.
I want to live in a world in which we avert the threat of global warming and
nuclear poisoning through a massive investment into truly renewable energy
sources. I like to show my students a diagram that shows that we only need to
capture less than one-thousandth of all the solar energy reaching the earth to
provide for all of our energy needs.
We do not have a -shortage of renewable energy, but a shortage of political
will. If we made a moral decision to do so, we could revamp the entire world
economy in one or two decades to run on solar, geothermal and tidal energy ˇX the
three truly long-term sustainable energy sources.
Moreover, through economies of scale, renewable energies would soon become
cheaper than fossil fuel or nuclear energy.
Truly renewable energies are the only solution that any responsible parent would
wish for his or her child.
The only people who are despicable are those who are willing to trash the planet
in the name of economic efficiency, which is just another way of saying ˇ§for the
sake of economic greed.ˇ¨
Bruno Walther
Taipei
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