The Rise Of Atomic Humanism

The Rise Of Atomic Humanism 

- Ronald Bailey

“ONLY NUCLEAR CAN lift all humans out of poverty while saving the natural environment,” Michael Shellenberger said in his keynote address at the June meeting of the American Nuclear Society. “Nothing else— not coal, not solar, not geo-engineering—can do that.” This, he declared, is one of the first principles of “atomic humanism.”

Shellenberger is the founder of the green group Environmental Progress, which argues that the best tool for fighting climate change is the no-carbon power generated by nuclear reactors. His speech offered a tour through the sorry history of the environmentalist movement’s falsehoods and exaggerations about the technology.