If you tell me an old white person in America opposes nuclear power, I can tell you how they vote. I can also tell you with alarming accuracy what they think about lots of science, like food and medicine. They think natural gas is why climate change happens.
The reality is that climate change happened due to...them. Democrats gutted nuclear energy in America 30 years ago. Democrats cheered when Senator John Kerry and President Bill Clinton declared that any nuclear energy research could be a nuclear bomb. This was the capstone of a 30-year effort to undermine nuclear power in America, with politicians, their supporters, and allies in corporate media invoking the Precautionary Principle and saying any risk was too much.
Natural gas then was not a trivial effort so America had to use more coal. CO2 emissions shot up. We had walked away from actual green energy to make constituents happy, and that would be followed by DSHEA exempting supplements from real oversight. Then President Clinton created a law which prevented human embroyonic stem cell research, so hESC technology had to be created without federal money. Then he created the National Center For Complementary and Alternative Medicine to use science funding to learn acupuncture still doesn't work. Finally, he forced USDA to create an official seal for Organic Food, whose requirements and exemptions would be determined by marketing groups and lobbyists selling organic food.
He was the most anti-science president in American history. President Bush couldn't undo it, he had to be...well, presidential...and Democratic Senator Harry Reid hated nuclear energy, as all old Boomer Democrats do, so he forced his anti-nuclear staffers into positions on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by withholding judge approval. President Obama pretended to like nuclear energy by doing to it what he did to Keystone XL; overruling his own scientists and declaring it needed more study, then announcing the next phase of it and then quietly canceling everything as too expensive.
We've wasted $4 trillion on solar and wind and changed the percentage of conventional energy by 0.1%. For that amount of money, the entire world could have low-cost nuclear energy. Instead, conservatives in Europe have made huge strides because environmentalism has been exposed as empty promises.
Political bonus: if Democrats flip to being pro-nuclear the way they flipped from being anti-vax in 2021, they can cause the Republican party to fracture. Nearly all want it except those with less knowledge, who will oppose it if Democrats suddenly embrace it.
The US Senate has seen the light. In a rare feat of bipartisan agreement, they passed the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act - 88 for and 2 against. Senator Bernie Sanders either took the safe political approach and voted 'no' knowing it was going to pass easily, or he still truly believes American scientists are incompetent.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will get more money and because nuclear power will no longer be the enemy of the Democratic Party, they won't place unqualified activists like Doomsday Clock members in charge. Again.
In 1994, cell phones had utility but they weren't great. Because the government did not micromanage development, cell phones have advanced rapidly while technology government does control, like cable television and internet access, remain mired in high costs. The Biden administration committed $42 billion to broadband for rural areas and literally no one has gotten access. Populists who see themselves as heirs to President Clinton, hopefully not in the predatory ways, colluded with internet provides to promote Internet Equality, which has also meant equally expensive, rather than giving poor people choices in how to spend their money.
If the President can resist tinkering with nuclear energy, by shucking off Baby Boomers who think Three Mile Island was Chernobyl and that Fukushima radiation poisoned fish off the west coast, he can be the Chief Executive who actually made clean, affordable energy a reality. Rather than a president who presided over staggering inflation that caused the states his party controls to have the nation's highest utility bills due to reliance on energy placebos.
Sen. Sanders Still Opposes Nuclear Energy But The American Science Community Marches On
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