Another Environmentalist for Nuclear Energy

We've been talking a lot about Australia in recent weeks (click here and here), where the debate over nuclear energy has been heating up. Long one of the world's top sources of uranium, some folks in Australia are wondering out loud whether or not it might be a good idea to turn to a home-grown energy source to generate electricity.

One of the people helping to drive that debate is Ben Heard of Decarbonise South Australia and Think Climate Consulting. A one-time skeptic, he's now embracing nuclear energy as the only rational way to battle climate change while producing the electricity we need to power advanced societies.

Recently, Heard took part in a television debate sponsored by the Australian Broadcasting Company. As we've written before here at NEI, we're not climate scientists and don't take a position on the validity of research that has concluded that climate change is caused by human activity. However, it's only logical to conclude that you want to reduce the amount of carbon emitted to the atmosphere while still generating enough electricity to power a modern society, nuclear energy has to be part of your energy portfolio.

With that, I'd like to share Heard's opening statement from the ABC debate:



Powerful stuff. Hat tip to Rod Adams for picking up the clip.