https://outline.com/KHtq9c If anyone can persuade Trudeau to end his disastrous spirit quest on renewable energy, it's Michael Shellenberger
Here are some key takeaways from my interview with Shellenberger this week:
“I was totally in love with the idea,†Shellenberger said of his early embrace of solar and wind power. “I just think there was something very spiritual, very romantic about being powered by natural flows rather than energy stocks we dig up and burn, or fission … I really viewed renewables as a way to heal America and heal the planet.â€
Shellenberger came up against fierce opposition from local people against massive wind and solar farms, which they saw as a new industrial blight, the wind turbines acting as gigantic insect and bird-killing machines and the solar panels taking up large swathes of natural space and creating their own form of pollution, spent panels that dissolve into toxic dust. “In theory renewables have no environmental impacts. In practice everywhere they are deployed they have huge environmental impacts.
â€
By the early 2010s, Shellenberger was persuaded by thinkers like Stewart Brand to rethink his position on nuclear. He realized places like Ontario and France had most of their energy produced carbon-free because of nuclear power. Another huge moment came when leading British climate scientist David MacKay of Cambridge University was dying and bluntly admitted that England needed nuclear and not any renewables.
As for the oil and gas industry, Shellenberger said, it will take many decades to move from gasoline for cars to either hydrogen-powered fuel cells or electric vehicles. “The carbon density of gasoline … is such an amazing advantage, how much energy and power and endless range you can get in an internal combustion engine. So that’s not going to go away very soon.â€
Canadian Candu nuclear technology works well, is proven and is safe, Shellenberger said. In Canada, a new generation of “boring, standardized†Candu reactors should be built to decarbonize society, with the country exporting as much LNG to coal-burning countries as it can. “This is the only way to go with climate change.â€
But what about nuclear waste? Nuclear is the one power source that does not emit waste, but captures all of it, storing it safely on site, Shellenberger said, as opposed to sending it to landfills or into the atmosphere. “There’s so little waste that nuclear produces … that we have room for thousands of years on existing plant sites.â€
Here are some key takeaways from my interview with Shellenberger this week:
“I was totally in love with the idea,†Shellenberger said of his early embrace of solar and wind power. “I just think there was something very spiritual, very romantic about being powered by natural flows rather than energy stocks we dig up and burn, or fission … I really viewed renewables as a way to heal America and heal the planet.â€
Shellenberger came up against fierce opposition from local people against massive wind and solar farms, which they saw as a new industrial blight, the wind turbines acting as gigantic insect and bird-killing machines and the solar panels taking up large swathes of natural space and creating their own form of pollution, spent panels that dissolve into toxic dust. “In theory renewables have no environmental impacts. In practice everywhere they are deployed they have huge environmental impacts.
â€
By the early 2010s, Shellenberger was persuaded by thinkers like Stewart Brand to rethink his position on nuclear. He realized places like Ontario and France had most of their energy produced carbon-free because of nuclear power. Another huge moment came when leading British climate scientist David MacKay of Cambridge University was dying and bluntly admitted that England needed nuclear and not any renewables.
As for the oil and gas industry, Shellenberger said, it will take many decades to move from gasoline for cars to either hydrogen-powered fuel cells or electric vehicles. “The carbon density of gasoline … is such an amazing advantage, how much energy and power and endless range you can get in an internal combustion engine. So that’s not going to go away very soon.â€
Canadian Candu nuclear technology works well, is proven and is safe, Shellenberger said. In Canada, a new generation of “boring, standardized†Candu reactors should be built to decarbonize society, with the country exporting as much LNG to coal-burning countries as it can. “This is the only way to go with climate change.â€
But what about nuclear waste? Nuclear is the one power source that does not emit waste, but captures all of it, storing it safely on site, Shellenberger said, as opposed to sending it to landfills or into the atmosphere. “There’s so little waste that nuclear produces … that we have room for thousands of years on existing plant sites.â€
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