Lowering The Level of The Debate at Grist

Kicking around the blogs today is this even-tempered quote from environmental journalist David Roberts:

When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg.

Here at NEI Nuclear Notes, we're not climate scientists, so we don't comment on climate science. We simply say the same thing over and over again: That if you want to continue to generate reliable and affordable electricity while constraining greenhouse gas emissions, you need to have nuclear energy as part of the world's energy mix. We're not the only ones who think this way.

Taking Roberts' thinking to its logical conclusion, what should we say about folks who cheer the elimination of nuclear energy from the global energy grid, and propose replacing it with renewable sources of energy that perform at their worst when demand is at its highest?

Don't forget, when the temperature rose in California, there were a number of people who didn't run their air conditioning because the cost of electricity was too high -- and now we know the results.

And as renewables are not a serious option when it comes to displacing baseload power, that means more coal-fired electric generation in a country where 30,000 people a year die from respiratory diseases caused by pollution from coal-fired power plants, and another 2 million per year worldwide are killed by air pollution.

The bottom line is this: These are serious issues and the decisions we make will have massive economic and social impacts around the globe, including, undoubtedly, ones that we cannot foresee. Comparing the people who disagree with you to war criminals does nothing to move us closer to resolving these issues, and doesn't do much credit to the cause that Roberts represents. For his defense of what he wrote, click here.

UPDATE: Roberts has retracted his call for Nuremberg trials. Good for him.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Electricity, Environment, Energy, Natural Gas, Oil, Climate Change, Global Warming, GHG, Grist