Old Foes Soften to New Reactors.

Several of the nation's most prominent environmentalists have gone public with the message that nuclear power, long taboo among environmental advocates, should be reconsidered as a remedy for global warming.

Stewart Brand, a founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and the author of "Environmental Heresies," an article in the May issue of Technology Review [, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,] explained the shift as a direct consequence of the growing anxiety about global warming and its links to the use of fossil fuel.

"It's not that something new and important and good had happened with nuclear, it's that something new and important and bad has happened with climate change," Mr. Brand said in an interview.

For many longtime advocates of environmental causes, such talk is nothing short of betrayal. Because of safety fears that reached a peak during the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 [and we also remember the catastrophic explosion at Chernobyl in 1986] and unresolved questions of how to dispose of nuclear waste, environmentalists have waged unrelenting campaigns against plants from Shoreham on Long Island to Diablo Canyon near the California coast.

But as mounting scientific evidence points to a direct connection between increasing carbon emissions and climate change, Mr. Brand and others have come to see conventional fuels like oil and coal as a greater threat.

In his article, Mr. Brand argued, "Everything must be done to increase energy efficiency and decarbonize energy production."

(5-15-05, The New York Times.)
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I am happy to see this change in thinking. I have always considered myself a strong advocate of the environment even though I favor nuclear power.