Image credit: White House
PUBLISHED IN THE NEW REPUBLIC, 14 APRIL 2016.
One of the main reasons that lefties like me don’t just back Bernie Sanders, but have an uncommon amount of trust in him, is his dogged, unflappable, remarkably un-politician-like hyperconsistency. For 40 years, he has stuck to the same script on campaign finance, on the billionaire class (even referring to “the richest one-half of one percent” way back in 1971, long before Occupy Wall Street), on the death penalty, on workers’ rights. In 1983, he was fighting for LGBT civil rights when Reagan administration officials still regularly subjected gays, lesbians, and people with AIDS to hate-filled ridicule. He opposed a dodgy trade deal with Panama long before the Panama Papers were leaked. On issue after issue, he’s been on the right side of history, years ahead of schedule.
But there’s one issue on which Sanders has been hyperconsistently wrong. One yuuuuge-ly important, planet-saving, tiny little thing. It’s his irrational, evidence-free opposition to nuclear energy.
Sanders—along with much of the left—needs to take another look at this issue. Because with his democratic-socialist, public-sector ethic, Sanders may just be the only candidate who could actually deliver the sort of mass build-out of nuclear power that the world desperately needs if we are to stave off catastrophic climate change. And even if he doesn’t become president, an informed change of heart on nuclear could convince many of his fans to follow suit.
In recent years, a small and scrappy, but growing, grassroots pro-nuclear movement has emerged among progressives, scientists, conservationists, climate activists, and trade unionists who see nuclear power fundamentally as a social justice issue—as the best, cleanest way to end energy poverty around the world. (Witness, for instance, the campaign to save the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California.) Sanders’s waking up to the facts that have persuaded this new generation of environmentalists to embrace nuclear could help make support for the power source—and the vast energy wealth it can bring to humanity—the great left-wing cause it should be.
On his campaign website, Sanders argues that in the wake of the meltdown at Fukushima in Japan, and because “the toxic waste byproducts of nuclear plants are not worth the risks,” he wants a moratorium on renewing nuclear plant licenses. He is “delighted” when existing plants such as Vermont Yankee in his home state are shut down, and does not even support building new, advanced nuclearplants that have solved the safety issues that worry anti-nuclear activists. Instead, he reckons solar, wind, geothermal, and energy efficiency on their own will be enough to save us from climate disaster.
Ahead of next week’s New York primary, Sanders has called for the shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear plant outside New York City, hinting of a Fukushima on the Hudson. “We cannot sit idly by and hope that the unthinkable will never happen,” he said in a statement. “It makes no sense to me to continue to operate a decaying nuclear reactor within 25 miles of New York City where nearly 10 million people live.”
Like Sanders, James Hansen, NASA’s former chief climate scientist, has been arrested protesting progressive causes—most recently in 2013, outside the White House at a demo against the Keystone XL pipeline—although Hansen is best known for his 1988 congressional testimony about global warming that raised public consciousness about the issue. Last week, he criticized the senator’s position on Indian Point as “fear-mongering,” saying, “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has repeatedly certified the safety of Indian Point. The scaremongers have taken minor maintenance questions and wrongly suggested they point to significant problems with the plant.” Hansen added that “Sanders has offered no evidence that NRC has failed to do its job, and he has no expertise in over-riding NRC’s judgement.” He urged voters to “uphold science against ideology.”