Barry and the Dinosaurs
"In principle, quadrupling today's global nuclear power capacity -- to replace, then triple, retiring units -- could provide up to one-tenth of needed carbon reductions. But nuclear power is the least effective method: using it does save carbon, but about 2-20 times less per dollar and 20-40 times less per year than buying its winning competitors."
One day little Barry was out walking in the woods and he came across a yellow baby dinosaur. The dinosaur had a gold chain around its neck with the name “Nuke.”
Barry took the baby dinosaur home but his mother objected to bringing it into the house. “That’s dirty,” she said. “Keep it away.”
“But mom,” Barry said, “nuclear energy remains our largest source of fuel that produces no carbon emissions.”
“Who fed you that line of b.s., boy? You think you can make a pile of uranium after you have dug some big pit mine in South Dakota and not have carbon emissions? You think you can truck that heavy stuff all over the country and not have carbon emissions? Don’t you know about all the coal they burn in Kentucky and Tennessee just to make that stuff so they can burn it in ‘clean’ reactors?
“But mom,” Barry said, “it’s just a cute little dinosaur.”
“Cute little dinosaur gonna get you more just like it. Has it been fixed? You want one of them in Iran? Pakistan? Venezuela? You’re not gonna like cleaning up after all those, especially if they bite.”
So Barry took the dinosaur back to the woods. And there he came across a black baby dinosaur. The dinosaur had a chain around its neck with the name “Clean Coal.” 
“Who fed you that line of b.s., boy?
“But mom,” Barry said, “it’s just a cute little dinosaur.”
“Cute little dinosaur gonna get you more just like it. Has it been fixed? You want one of them in Iran? Pakistan? Venezuela? You’re not gonna like cleaning up after all those, especially if they bite.”
So Barry took the dinosaur back to the woods. And there he came across a black baby dinosaur. The dinosaur had a chain around its neck with the name “Clean Coal.”
“But mom,” Barry said, “it has been said the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal.”
“You gotta be dumb as a post to believe that, boy. Been said a lot of nonsense. We’re already running out of coal in this country, just ask any miner. You seen those places in West Virginia where there used to be mountains?”
“But mom, this little guy is putting the country on track to lead the world in technology that we can export — including to China, which is building coal-powered plants at a rate of one per month now.”
“Momma, we have to get off our foreign oil addiction. Otherwise we’ll have more disappearing jobs, instability and terror bred in the Middle East, rising oceans, and all the rest.”
“But mom,” Barry said, “let’s be practical.”
“You be practical and take that thing back to wherever you found it.”
So Barry took the dinosaur back to the woods, and sat down on a stump and felt miserable. Until he looked up to the top of the trees, which formed a cathedral ceiling with shards of light piercing their crowns. “Isn’t that magnificent?” Barry thought.
Comments