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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.

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.

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.

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.