I didn't really notice this when the big hubbub was going on last week, but did you know that ex-EPA administrator Christie Whitman and long-time anti-environmental zealot (and oh yeah, "Greenpeace co-founder") Patrick Moore are paid shills for the nuclear industry?
Organizers released a list of 58 companies and institutions and 10 people who they said were members of a new Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which Mr. Moore said would engage in "grass-roots advocacy." A spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association of reactor operators, acknowledged that it was providing all of the financing, but would not say what the budget was.
That sound like "grass-roots" to you?
(More at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and a lot more on Moore on DailyKos. Also, check out the letters to the editor the WaPo received in response to Moore's op-ed, which are utterly devastating to it.)
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GRLCowan Posted 3:11 am
25 Apr 2006
Presumably everyone here is vaguely aware that a dollar's worth of uranium replaces crude oil that costs $70 or natural gas that costs $40. As all three prices rise and fall, this relation stays about the same. City Hall can't make up lost fossil fuel tax revenue on the uranium that replaces it; that's why nuclear energy is a left-versus-right issue where the left is on the take and the right, to a significant extent, isn't.
As another nuclear promoter said,
... [Moore's] article has caused 179 responses in the blogsphere. That is a pretty big splash. Moore has to be making a difference. I don't know what the magic is - when I say the same things no one listens. When Moore says it lots listen. Weird, eh? ;^)
And another:
... Nowhere in Moore's article does he renounce or expose the massive distortions of fact that the antinuclear movement has broadcast for the past two decades. Moore has simply recognized that if the biggest environmental threat is global climate change, nuclear power, in spite of its risks, is preferable to coal-fired electric generation. He generously concedes that in fact nuclear reactors do not emit carbon dioxide -- something that is so obvious he should have known it all along. He is indeed to be commended for recognizing the dichotomy faced by the environmental movement: that one can't rationally be both anti-nuke and anti-global climate change at the same time...
... I am one who actually was forced out of the environmental movement, in an unpleasant, extended process that began in 1985 and continued through 2003. Unlike Moore, I was merely a foot soldier in the wars to preserve the environment. Also unlike Moore, I didn't get space for my nuclear views on any Op-ed pages. Instead I was thoroughly trashed by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for being a turncoat. Nor am I alone.
Moore and the NEI group aren't grass-roots; people like Randal Leavitt and Ruth Greiner and me are, but are paid little attention.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
B: internal combustion, nuclear cachet
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David Roberts Posted 3:23 am
25 Apr 2006
And the "emits no CO2" thing is a red herring. Lots of CO2 is emitted during the full nuclear life-cycle.
Grassroots nuclear advocates are ignored because their arguments are awful. Moore is not ignored because he's got lots and lots of money behind him and the Washington Post is determined to burn what little is left of its credibility.
www.grist.org
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Mr M Posted 8:43 pm
10 May 2006
Energy policy in this country is in a mess with special interests like nuclear barking until frightened politicians run in the direction they want.
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