No, that’s not an ironic title, as anybody who deals with either the anti-vaccination or the anti-nuclear power crowd* for any length of time will readily enough attest. Ronald Bailey of Reason (H/T: Instapundit) is busy beating his head against the wall over the smug, self-congratulatory rhetoric of James Speth (from the latter group): Bailey had to read Speth’s book, and noted that Speth was bragging over helping to block the production of fast breeder reactors. Now, you can make the argument that blocking these kinds of nuclear plants is a good thing, as fast breeder reactors produce Evil Sinful ScaryDevil Killing-Metal plutonium and The Triple-Cursed Dirt of Hell radioactive waste; and if nuclear weapons are your absolutely greatest worry, well, it’s a free country. But Speth’s supposed greatest worry is global warming.
Or, as Bailey notes:
…in an alternative universe in which 200 reactors come online, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would be about 35 percent lower than they currently are. In other words, the reactors that Speth opposed could have been a huge part of the solution to what Speth claims is humanity’s “biggest threat.”
They could have, but that would have been a violation of Speth’s religious beliefs. And we should all stop pretending that we think that the anti-nuclear Left is motivated by anything more rational than a particularly illogical theology; or that the Democratic party isn’t happy to pander to them.
Moe Lane Continue reading The Democratic Party’s War on Science.