Programming Pauls of Wisdom

Renewable energy is not for tree huggers - its national security

Climate change is real. The science is real (http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf)
There appear to be three options to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

1. Nuclear power. No carbon. lots of radiation
2. Renewable sources. Wind, sun, tides.
3. Carbon Sequestration. Dig up the oil, burn it, stick the residue back in the hole.

Now for the western world any of these is fine.
But the developing world has some harder choices.

Now 1. is probably guaranteed to give us all a dose of chernobyl over the next 500 years.
And to my mind 3. is outrageously expensive and frankly seems like a wheeze the oil companies never thought anyone would really buy. And frankly china, india or bangladesh won't.

They will want to buy western expertese on nuclear power or renewables, because we have the technology to generate (and transmit) cheap energy for growing populations.

now that poses an interesting question - when, in 5 years, china, india, indonesia, all sign the right documents, make the right noises and say OK, we have a population of 2 billion, all of whom burn down forests now, will burn oil and coal soon and all stuffing tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere... what will we say when they want to buy western expertise on building nuclear power stations. Nice big weapons factories, sold under the blackmail statement of "its nukes now or billions starve or we create world climate destruction."

Now would it not be nice to have an alternative to sell them?

In 5 years I would want a nice range of wind turbine technology, solar panels, tidal turbines to sell. I would not want to sell India and Pakistan Nuclear power stations, China better weapons technology, Indonesia its very own WMD technology. Iran has a growing population too. And North Korea.

So either we get off the "hey renewable energy is for hippies" and get seriously Republican on renewable energy, or we sell the most populous, poorest countries in the world nuclear arms programs to stop them fucking up the planet.

How many windmills can I get for an invisible fighter plane?

posted by paul @ 1:15 PM