You are to be soundly congratulated for your
editorial exposing the international scientific and political
controversies surrounding the subtle, yet cataclysmic artificial
exaggeration of the "greenhouse effect" and the absolute
necessity to reduce global deforestation and fossil-fuel burning
before we're boiled in our own broth.
However, you are to be soundly reproached for
going on to suggest that we can "transform the [nuclear power]
industry into an enterprise that can produce clean power without
threatening the life around it." That would violate the known
laws of physics -- endlessly toxic nuclear wastes and
catastrophic nuclear accidents are the unavoidable consequences
of that industry.
There is but one safe, endless supply of energy
for us on Earth -- the power behind the weather itself and
behind photosynthesis, and thus fossil fuels and life itself: "The faraway sun is a giant, safe nuclear reactor...Most of
the sunlight that has reached the Earth, though, has not been
put to work for people. This has been the greatest waste of a
natural resource that people have ever seen." [Please note
that I have just quoted another of my letters published in the Times.]
Where there's a will there's a way: We can
harness solar energy, if and only if in this next decade we have
leadership that will be as dynamic and imaginative as our work
force is now underemployed, yet inherently ambitious.
The next time Michael Dukakis utters the word "photovoltaics", I hope it's no longer chic to snicker.