The United Nations opened its climate change conference in Durban, South Africa, on Sunday with yet another jeremiad of impending doom.
Delegates were told climate-related events are driving up the price of food and at the same time driving down the availability of supplies. Even people who can afford to eat may end up starving. To prevent that, the world must abandon its huge dependence on fossil fuels — oil, coal and natural gas.
That is something that we hear almost every day. It is something many people believe to be true, although it is not at all clear to everyone that human activity is the sole cause of global warming. What we don’t hear on most days in the present intellectual climate is the recent message from French President Nicholas Sarkozy.
Sarkozy was not speaking directly to Durban’s delegations. He was addressing his remarks to his European allies, particularly the Germans, and he talked about the energy option that is too often ignored — nuclear power. Germany, in the wake of the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan this year, has promised to shut down all its nuclear power plants by the year 2022. Other nations have been panicked into similarly precipitous action, even as they wring their hands over global warming.
France will have none of this and it has good reason to demur — 75 per cent of the country’s electricity comes from nuclear plants and it comes not just free of greenhouse gases but all also free of serious accidents in France over the last 65 years. It would be “madness,” Sarkozy claims, to shut down French nuclear power stations and replace them with expensive wind or solar power or, worse, coal-fired power stations.
Burning oil, coal, even natural gas, creates greenhouse gases. Other alternatives, however, remain pipe-dreams in a world that is watching its wallet. Nuclear power is the only safe and reliable alternative to fossil fuels. We know it is not without its own dangers, but we need to listen to Sarkozy.
From the Winnipeg Free Press