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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28905 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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Do environmentalist organizations push to warn the globe faster

The closest to that being true I can think of is GreenPeace, but they are more motivated by oil money and hippie bullshit about anti-nuclear.

I think “environmentalists” being anti nuclear is a perfect example of what OP is talking about.

They’re anti nuclear because that would actually fix the problem, and remove their source of meaning.

As an environmentalist I can confidently state that this isn't the case. There are largely two motivating reasons behind being anti-nuclear, specifically

1: Nuclear waste is a serious problem and preventing it from leaking out into the environment on a long enough timescale is extremely difficult. This doesn't apply to some reactor designs, but those run into problem number 2.

2: Nuclear power doesn't actually generate electricity profitably enough to matter. There isn't a single nuclear power plant reliably generating both electricity and profits without extensive government subsidies anywhere in the world. Keeping some around is worthwhile because they're incredibly useful for research and generating exotic isotopes for medical purposes, but even then they just can't carry their weight when they have to deal with market forces. Some people say that environmentalist pressure is behind this, but I really don't think environmentalists are that successful, and this approach also fails to explain why countries like Saudi Arabia which have zero need to cater to environmentalists have invested in this kind of technology. Russia, Iran, China - all of these places have both significant reasons to pursue power-generation technology that doesn't require extensive fossil fuel imports, along with a total disregard for anglosphere environmentalists and yet they simply do not do so.

No, they have historically been anti-nuclear because nuclear power was seen as a threat to the environment, from the (supposed) threat of radiation to issues with nuclear waste to the effect of waste heat on local marine environments.

I think they're anti-nuclear largely for historical reasons -- the slur about "green on the outside and red on the inside" is accurate, and the Soviet Union wanted them to oppose nuclear.

You're both kind of right -- my take is that they're anti-nuclear because nuclear energy "only" fixes the problem -- meaning, it fixes the energy crisis without upending society and providing a chance for socialists and communists to stick their noses in and gain influence. Any solution that doesn't involve huge societal upheaval and restructuring is therefore useless to them; they need transitional chaos for a chance to grab power during it.

The biggest reason for the anti-nuclear stance was that the environmental movement had strong roots in the previous pacifist movements (in some ways supplanting them) and their anti-nuclear-weapons campaigsn, and pacifist movements and fear of nuclear weapons were going to be strong in Cold-War-era Europe whether the Soviets supported them or not. (The Soviets not as much supported pacifist movements by themselves as tried to take over and utilize them with varying rates of success, and the New Left milieu that formed the basis for environmentalism, pacifism and similar causes ended up also fueling the dissident movements and internal Communist party reformist tendencies that played a large part in bringing the people's republics down.)

Another big thing was simply that early environmentalist movements, going by the modes I talked about here, were strongly "bodily purity" movements with global warming initially playing no part or only a small part in their agenda, and it's only later that the bodily purity thing (with obvious connections to fear of radiation etc.) was supplanted by climate-change-oriented environmentalism. This supplanting can be seen in how younger parts of the environmental movement are now belatedly moving to a more pro-nuclear position, visible for years in Finland and also now in other parts, evinced by things like this campaign.

Another big thing was simply that early environmentalist movements, going by the modes I talked about here, were strongly "bodily purity" movements with global warming initially playing no part or only a small part in their agenda, and it's only later that the bodily purity thing (with obvious connections to fear of radiation etc.) was supplanted by climate-change-oriented environmentalism. This supplanting can be seen in how younger parts of the environmental movement are now belatedly moving to a more pro-nuclear position, visible for years in Finland and also now in other parts, evinced by things like this campaign.

You know, I've been seeing you make this argument for a while, and I figured it made sense, but now that I hang around with some certified weirdos I'm pretty sure you have it precisely backwards. You can mock all the "my precious bodily fluids" people all you want, but I don't think I met anyone with a water filter at home that was anti-nuclear. By contrast it's the anti-climate-change people who are, and they're not even greens, just normie center-left Euros. They're absolutely certain that nuclear waste needs to be stored for 1 million years in a safe location, to avert disaster.

Do you see a positive correlation between water filter users and people who like homeopathy, as the most central and unobjectionable instance of environmentalism-adjacent body purity beliefs? I don't know anyone who actually uses a water filter apart from myself and a US techno-liberal friend (of the "geoengineering + nuclear power environmentalist" persuasion), but based on having lived in the German heart of the anti-nuclear movement for a long time, I would wager that to their eyes a water filter looks less like a tool for bodily purity and more like another incomprehensible corporate high-tech gizmo adulterating the natural and sustainable goodness that is tap water. Going against your gut feeling regarding what is natural already amounts to a failure of maintaining purity.

What I'm talking about is not really individual people and their views but the direction of the environmental movement as a whole. What I've called "bodily purity environmentalism" is pretty dead as a strain - which doesn't mean that there are no longer people concerned with bodily purity, they just don't really do it as a part of an environmental movement (trying to affect widespread societal change) but through individual changes like, indeed, water filters. OTOH my argument about the wider movement is that the anti-nuclear thing is, in the end, a holdover of an eariler era and is bound to undergo a change in views in at least younger generations, something that does take its time but has already happened here and where I think the Ia Anstoot thing is a reflection of this spreading to other countries, as well.

I think another explanation is that the environmental movement includes a lot of people who are ideologically opposed to energy use and a lot of modern technology. Environmental measures that tell people to cut down on their energy usage are what they want. Environmental measures which relieve the need to cut down on energy are not what they want, and that's what promoting nuclear power to help global warming does.

Currently the most common anti-nuclear movement around here is that nuclear is actually not all that efficient in generating energy (due to building costs and the delayed construction of OL3 plant etc.) and that renewables are actually more efficient (or just about to become so), are ongoing a boom etc.

Much of current environmentalist agenda (electric cars etc.) is absolutely based on the continuation and even extension of energy use.

Currently the most common anti-nuclear movement around here is that nuclear is actually not all that efficient in generating energy (due to building costs and the delayed construction of OL3 plant etc.) and that renewables are actually more efficient (or just about to become so), are ongoing a boom etc.

Whether this is a valid argument or not depends greatly on the truth value of that proposition, and the extent to which (to whatever extent it's true) it's true because of the actions of the enviromental movement.

I had this conversation with a red tribe engineer in a heavily blue tribe family environment recently at some social cost. Nuclear is the way to go if you want to be pragmatic. I'm really hoping for Germany or anyone in Europe to restart building these.

You might be encouraged by recent work in current-gen small modular reactors. Oak Ridge National Labs is standing up 6 of them, a few efforts got approved to start construction, and the US military is obviously interested given their focus on expeditionary logistics.

We can only hope.

I think the Sierra Club was anti nuclear (among other reasons) because it would allow for increased third-world population.

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