i respect your conviction enormously, it makes solid sense, your logic is irrefutable...

but...you never mention conservation, or the moral imperative of meeting somewhere in the middle between concorde and mombai.

you paint a graphic, poetically tragic picture of mud-eating malian mothers, and my gut is duly wrenched...

you buttress your opinions with excellent writing, and your sincerity is indubitable...

also, you are very honest about your own inability to face giving up the goodies you've allowed yourself to feel entitled to, and i feel the same way.

your superior scientific background and obviously conscientious due diligence on your subject is nothing short of awesome, and i have no argument whatsoever with all that you say, it's what you don't that leaves me disturbed and a bit hopeless, as all i have is a gut-level response to the idea of what kind of world would ensue if we took the road you suggest, and it seems like jumping out of a frying pan into a fire....

the carbon crisis is poised above us like a damoclean sword, and i resonate strongly with your awareness of this, and the compassion that i believe is the driver for your sense of mission, exposing yourself to the abuse you do by espousing your position takes courage, much more courage than i feel, making the choices i feel myself gravitating to.

i wish so hard that nuclear power really was as safe and clean as it was promised to be. my partner's father worked as a nuclear engineer, till he died in his 30's from thymus gland cancer. apparently the measurement of the radioactivity on the workers was blown off by many of the workers themselves, so to work more overtime.

i wish i trusted human nature more, so i'd be happier to give over more personal control over my own sense of security to the kind of 'security system', created around the mortal dangers around so many stages of the nuclear industry, set up by huge institutional entities whose probity and objectivity were above reproach...etc, etc

i wish...

but not even the fear engendered by our political 'mis'leaders whistling past the graveyard and further delaying facing and really dealing with the huge challenge it will be to make a slow descent into the future shock, is as big a fear than the one i feel contemplating your projected world, and if you mentioned conservation, changing social values, re-engineering the grid to a more p2p approach, and celebrated the many innovative ideas that are popping up, (such as adam seigel does), and believed more in peoples' ability to sacrifice together to have a better world, (which will need a hitherto never-seen level of committed populist consensus), rather than just digging ourselves deeper into a centrally-controlled, big-daddy authoritarian dystopia, where there may be less carbon in the air, but there'd be a whole hell of a lot of other pollution of our social topography, and i'm not just talking about isotopes!

i'll shut up now, as i have nothing remotely rational to counter your well-tailored arguments...maybe another, like deanander, can balance out this hymn to nukes with something much denser and soundly reasoned than my terrified concern, which is possibly all in my head.

i feel right, but i don't know...it seems you feel and know you're right.

probably jerome's version, backed by dkos' energy buddies, will be the one we run with.... we 'll use more nukes, which'll make you happy, and we'll pump for many more other solutions too, for the good and simple reason that very few people have the deep confidence as you and starvid seem to do, to live happily in the shadow of a nuke plant, see it outside the window every day, and feel a warm glow of pride in human achievement...

great diary, even though i could not disagree more wholeheartedly with you conclusion, i cannot but heartily respect your dedication and sincerity.

+ you write your ass off, up there in noo joisy!

thanks

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty