Should I defect from the Coulter-Monbiot evil nukular axis?

If you thought it was bad that the loony demonic Princess of the right Ann Coulter carried on about the joys of radiation, consider a tidbit from today’s news.

George Monbiot, environmental wacko and leftist idiot extraordinaire, has come out in favor of nuclear power:

Support for nuclear power has fallen among the British public by 12 per cent since the Fukushima disaster, according to a new poll. But the UK nuclear industry has reason to cheer regardless, because left-wing environmentalist George Monbiot has today explained why he now supports nuclear power.

Monbiot has written extensively on climate change and the radical steps needed to avert disaster. Among his other works are attacks on corporations and the dangers of Bob Geldof and Bono.

In his column for the Guardian today headed ‘Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power’, Monbiot explains that he still loathes “the liars who run the nuclear industry” but he accepts that nuclear power has to be part of a green energy mix.

Monbiot argues that the risk of meltdown at a nuclear power station is small in comparison to the damaging effects of coal power and even renewables. “Deep green energy production – decentralised, based on the products of the land – is far more damaging to humanity than nuclear meltdown,” he writes.

As an example he explains how the damming of rivers in Britain before the industrial revolution was “renewable, picturesque and devastating”, since it wiped out stocks of migratory fish.

Fukushima has not put Monbiot off nuclear because “a crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami… The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting… Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation”.

With Ann Coulter and George Monbiot in seeming agreement, might it be time for me to rethink my ill-informed position


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4 responses to “Should I defect from the Coulter-Monbiot evil nukular axis?”

  1. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    I’m… well… I think the British slang “gobsmacked” describes it well.
    Ann Coulter and George Monbiot actually more or less agree on something. And (with some caveats on Ann) I basically agree with both of them. Will wonders never cease?
    I think I’ll go eat a banana or three and try to calm down…

  2. M. Simon Avatar

    Radiation doesn’t particularly scare me (I’m a Naval Nuke after all). But I don’t think that a system with trillion dollar (could be multi-trillion) accidents a possibility is a viable commercial venture.
    You will note that the government provides plant insurance. i.e. the risks are socialized. Which is always true explicit or implicit if the risks get big enough.
    We have had “too big to fail” mess us up. “Too big to insure” has been the system for nuke power since its beginning.
    I believe that if nuke power had to actually pay the cost of insurance there would be no civilian nuke power.

  3. Joseph Hertzlinger Avatar

    If everything both George Monbiot (who thinks the news from Japan means nuclear energy is safer than expected) and Bill McKibben (who thinks the same news means nuclear energy is more dangerous than expected) say is wrong, then … clearly nuclear energy is as safe as was expected.
    Meanwhile, the fact that people in the Rocky Mountains region have low cancer mortality rates is clear evidence that radioactivity keeps people from smoking.