Nuclear Energy?

In The Revenge of Gaia, James Lovelock makes what I found to be a compelling case for nuclear energy. While I don't feel well-versed enough in the nuclear debate to comment intelligently on Lovelock's specific arguments, I was struck by his analysis of current popular resistance to nuclear energy. In particular, Lovelock quotes W.J. Nuttall's Nuclear Renaissance at length:

The real opposition to nuclear power within the public grew in the 1970s and the 1980s. It may be argued that this has been a consequence of the rise of single-issue pressure groups and youth culture. That is, as the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the late 1960s grew out of earlier Civil Rights demonstrations, so the anti-nuclear demonstrations of the late 1970s arose directly from the Vietnam War protests, once that conflict had come to an end. This, however, is a rather Americanized perspective on what has been an erosion of enthusiasm for nuclear power. In Britain the defining socio-political events of relevance are those assoicated with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the late 1960s and resurgently in the early 1980s. Not only was CND passionate and anti-American, but it was also fun and it was cool. This fusion of popular culture with the British anti-nuclear movement of the 1960s is vividly captured by the present writer's uncle Jeff Nuttall in his visceral autobiography Bomb Culture, in which he describes one CND Aldermaston March as a Carnival of Optimism: 'Protest was associated with festivity.' This important aspect of matters nuclear has only slightly attenuated with passing decades. Those advocating nuclear renaissance ignore such aspects of nuclear power at their peril. (quoted in The Revenge of Gaia, 94)

To this, Lovelock writes: "I agree with Nuttall, and it is easy to see why many greens are so anti-nuclear; they often are the children of a union between environmentalism and the CND...gradually as the Cold War intensified and the two superpowers tested larger and ever larger weapons, the all-pervasive fear of all things nuclear became widespread" (94).

While it is typically easy to view today's issues and groups in isolation of the socio-historical contexts from which they emerged, this analysis of anti-nuclear sentiment highlights the importance of taking a historical view and examining origins. This is the work that has been most thoughtfully done for the environmentalist movement (to my knowledge) by Van Jones in The Green Collar Economy, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger in Break Through and by Gavin Hood in X-Men Origins.

Important stuff, I say.

Break Through

Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. An excellent read. I am tempted to say that it is for me the most intellectually influential book I have read since Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. That statement will have to withstand the test of time, but I highly recommend the book to anybody interested in liberal politics, or politics and environmentalism in general.

Explains perfectly why I have never called myself an environmentalist. More on this later...

Goals

I attended a climate policy conference some weeks ago and I was super impressed by a bunch of the speakers but one in particular. Holmes Hummel. She is young, confident, articulate, personable, a Congressional Science Fellow who teaches at Berkeley and consults on carbon-pricing policymaking. After the conference, I reported my impressions to a friend of mine and we came up with the following life goals:

1) Be articulate.
2) Be impressive.
3) Have shit together.

Ideally by age thirty.

Zeitgeist

I watched Fight Club a couple nights ago. The last time I watched the movie I must have still been a freshman in college, so it was interesting to revisit the film.

In one scene, Tyler Durden pulls Raymond K. Hessel, some poor Asian dude, out of a convenient store and puts a gun to the back of his head. Durden--upon learning through interrogation by gunpoint that Raymond had studied biology in community college in hopes of becoming a veterinarian--issues an ultimatum: either Raymond puts himself on the path towards being a veterinarian in six weeks time or he will be hunted down and killed.

A heartening lesson from Tyler Durden with typical Brad Pitt, will-to-power, Randian undertones. The film, and its message, struck a chord in 1999 and ensuing years. It tapped into a deep strain of male anxiety about the meaninglessness of everyday work, of being a cog in corporate bureaucratic machinery, of being trapped in the value system of consumer culture. Forge the life that you want to live, mold your circumstances according to your wishes, be the chief architect of your own life. The film beats this mantra into your head with very little room for subtlety.

In 2009, though, I think the film strikes a false chord. In this great recession of ours, when rugged individuals aren't feeling so rugged, when fatalism is running high, there is a lot of respect to be had for the Raymond K. Hessels of this world, people who are making an honest living and who've adjusted rather admirably to changing circumstances. Tyler Durden, on the other hand, comes off as adolescent in his narcissism, irresponsible. Mischief? Mayhem? I'll pass.

Our zeitgeist is, in my mind, aptly captured in the 2008 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Slumdog Millionaire. D) It's written. How nice would that be?