Much as I love to watch Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti dissecting the neoliberal elites as said elites fail to have answers for the problems they themselves caused, I must dissent from this interview conducted recently on Breaking Points:

The problem is, of course, that even the nice liberals with big egos have no real solutions for the problem of mitigating climate change. What they obviously don't see is that a revolution in human affairs, one which won't be enacted merely by electing Democrats to public office, will be necessary to mitigate climate change. For some reason nobody wants to see the situation straight, and so we have:

1) fossil fuels meeting 80% of the world's energy needs. Okay so you're going to replace ALL of that (and more -- don't forget economic growth!) with "alternative" energy sources.

2) An enormous outlay of "fossil capital" which will have to be devalued to zero if fossil fuels are to be replaced. If you're wondering what that outlay is, start with global fossil fuel reserves. I'm sure that destroying all that capital won't make any sort of dent in the existing global economy, though. And of course nobody will invoke WTO rules when the governments start to devalue fossil capital assets. Will they?

3) Lots of "alternative energies" which look way kewl and bitchen from the perspectives of their promoters (as everything looks good when you're in sales), but then nobody wants to discuss the costs of the enormous ramp-ups that will be necessary for even the most minimal mitigation of climate change (while everyone presumes that the existing system will be duplicated on the grounds of "alternative energy.")

No wonder Jensen, Keith, and Wilbert think it can't be done. However, I disagree with the "Bright Green Lies" conclusion in asserting that the idea of a "transition" really hasn't been tested. The only way you are going to provide a genuine test for the notion of a transition, however, is to put an end to the capitalist system. Ending capitalism will free the discussions of energy consumption, fossil capital, and alternative energy from their domination by competing sales pitches. Otherwise people are going to listen to all the special interests promoting their favorite non-solutions and choose the most well-funded pack of lies. Or, more likely, the choice will be made for them.

There's no other way. What Rosa Luxemburg said a long time ago is still true: socialism or barbarism. Remember, though, that our barbarism is 15% less scary than theirs.

But instead of reflecting upon these realities, what we're debating here is nuclear power. Maybe the safety problem can be solved. Maybe the nuclear waste problem can be solved. Here's the one that can't. The nuclear that's needed, the stuff produced by thorium breeder reactors, is too expensive. The expense that is the killer is of course the one in building the plants themselves. Otherwise you're stuck pondering the fact that the vast preponderance of the world's uranium ores are crappy low-grade ores in which the costs of mining, refining, and using the stuff are barely met in the energy produced therein. Nuclear power thus looks a lot better now than it will look in the future. For its promoters, nuclear power exists in an idyllic today in which the outlay as a percentage of the total energy produced is small and nobody need worry about supply problems caused by enormous ramp-ups.

But, really, what we're thinking about here is some kind of idealized post-capitalist nuclear power. Capitalist nuclear power is, and will be, just another industrial item caught up in the twilight stage of an economic system so dominant that nobody at present dares to think of what an alternative might look like.