Between Nuclear and Fracking or Coal and Pollution, the
Choice Is Clear
Over the past few years I've given the New York Times’s
Justin Gillis a (deserved) hard time for some of his reporting. I'm now happy
to given him some well-earned praise on the occasion of his first monthly
column at the Times on climate change. Gillis wisely chose to write his first
column on energy innovation, with a focus on nuclear power and China:
We have to supply power and transportation to an eventual
population of 10 billion people who deserve decent lives, and we have to do it
while limiting the emissions that threaten our collective future.
Yet we have already poured so much carbon dioxide, the main
greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere that huge, threatening changes to the
world’s climate appear to be inevitable. And instead of slowing down, emissions
are speeding up as billions of once-destitute people claw their way out of
poverty, powered by fossil fuels.