First, I must convey a hearty thank you for your many valuable contributions.  But my main concern here is to strenuously object to your claim that we should accept nuclear energy because there is no alternative.

You are assuming without question the desirability and inevitability of the continued pursuit of ever increasing affluence and of limitless economic growth, without any recognition that this syndrome is the fundamental cause of the global predicament and that a sustainable and just world cannot be achieved unless we abandon these goals.  The basic cause of the global problems now threatening to destroy us is simply over-consumption.  There is no possibility that the planet can sustain the per capita rates of resource consumption typical of the rich countries today, with or without nuclear energy.  Yet if the 9.4 billion people we are likely to have soon were all to rise to the present rich world per capita rate of resource use then total resource consumption would be 10 times as great as it is now.

The footprint measure leads to much the same conclusion.  In Australia about 8.5 ha of productive land are needed to provide for one person, and in the US it is closer to 12 ha.  But by 2050 the world average amount of productive land available per capita will be about .8 ha. Again we are probably beyond sustainable levels by at least a factor of 10.

 Your endorsement of nuclear energy comes from your concern about the greenhouse problem and it is this which gives the clearest illustration of the magnitude of the overshoot. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change emission scenarios show that if we are to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration concentrations to safe levels we must more or less cease fossil fuel use.  For example if the concentration is to be kept below 450 ppm the target should be around 1 GT/y, and for a world of 9.4 billion people that averages out at 1.3% of the present North American per capita consumption.

But the present magnitude of the overshoot does not set the main problem.  The situation becomes far more impossible when we add the absurd obsession with economic growth.  If 9.4 billion people were to rise to the "living standards" we will have by 2070 given 3% p.a. economic growth, then the total world economic output will be 60 times as great as it is now.  Yet world aggregate production is already far beyond the level that the planet can sustain.

Even if nuclear energy was perfectly safe, and there was enough uranium, and no possibility of terrorist diversion of plutonium, and a foolproof solution for the waste problem existed, and even if nuclear energy could meet the 80% of energy demand that is not electricalŠnuclear energy still could not make consumer-capitalist society sustainable and just.  It cannot produce the land, water, forests, habitats, fish, grain etc that this ravenous society consumes at grossly unsustainable rates.  It cannot eliminate the holocaust of biodiversity destruction, or soil erosion, or falling water tables, or dwindling grasslands and wetlands and coral reefs.  Energy scarcity, in other words, is only one element in the fatal syndrome created by over-consumption.

Even if nuclear energy could solve all those problems it could make no difference to the second of the two enormous and fatal flaws built into the foundations of this society.  As well as being ecologically unsustainable it is intrinsically and massively unjust.  Conventional development theory and practice allows market forces to determine the allocation of resources, which simply means that the rich few take most of them.  More importantly it has geared Third World productive capacity to enriching the approximately 1%  who own most of the world's capital, along with the few who shop in rich world supermarkets, with miniscule trickle down benefit to the poorest 3 or 4 billion people.  This economic system ensures that only development of what will enrich the already rich takes place.  If no corporation thinks it can make higher profits in Tuvalu than anywhere else in the world, then Tuvalu gets no development. Thus conventional development can be described as a form of massive plunder; the Third World has been developed into a state whereby its vast productive capacity now mostly produces wealth that flows out to others.

Although the grotesquely unjust system is mostly kept in place by the normal functioning of the market economy, from time to time it is necessary to resort to violence in order to keep in place the regimes that will run Third World economies in the ways that benefit us.  Thus, since World War II the US has intervened in the Third World about 60 times, killing about 16 million people.  Your high "living standards" could not be so high without this effort: Without it you could not go on getting far more than your fair share of world resources.

Again the predicament we are in goes far beyond energy scarcity.  We are dealing with a massively flawed culture, one that is based on a blind and never-questioned determination to consume far more than is sustainable and far more than all people could ever have.  There can be no way out of the predicament without acceptance of the need for far less affluent lifestyles, highly self sufficient local economies, an economy in which the market is not the basic determinant of what's produced and who gets it, and an economy that has no growth at all.  Most problematic, there must be transition to some very different values, especially cooperation and frugality.  A sustainable and just society cannot be based on obsession with individualistic competition and greed.

In other words sustainability and justice cannot possibly be achieved without an enormous and radical shift to "The Simpler Way".  Unfortunately this is not your position.  You are siding with the "technical fix optimists" like Lovins, who believe that more conservation, more efficient cars, more recycling etc can solve the problems without any need for us to even think about abandoning the obsession with affluent lifestyles and limitless economic growth.  No wonder Lovins is popular!

There is an alternative and there is only one alternative.  It has to be some form of  Simpler Way.  You cannot conceive of any solution to the looming catastrophe that over-consumption is bringing on other than transition to ways and systems that enable us to live well on a minute proportion of the present rich world per capita resource consumption.  That could easily be doneŠif we want to do it.  I estimate that my footprint and energy consumption could easily be cut to under 10% of the Australian average, if I could live in the kind of eco-village I have detailed on the Simpler Way website. . (Note 1.)  But it would be a very frugal way of life within a highly self-sufficient and cooperative and  largely self-governing community, with no economic growth, in which life satisfactions come from other pursuits than the acquisition of material wealth.  I have no doubt that the quality of life for all  could be much higher than it is now in consumer society. There is no other way to defuse the many alarming glob al problems now threatening the dieoff of billions. (Note 2.)

What's more we could transform existing suburbs and towns into the new forms within months and with little more than hand toolsŠif we wanted to.  Many within the global eco-village movement are showing the way.

You are likely to say that such a transition is extremely unlikely.  I do not think it will be made,  I do ,not think consumer-capitalist society has the wit or the will to save itself.  But that is not central here.  The crucial point is that a sustainable and just world cannot be achieved within or by a consumer-capitalist society, nor can it be defined in any other terms than those of The Simpler Way.  Please give up on trying to prop up consumer society via nuclear energy and join us in trying to get the mainstream to grasp that The Simpler Way is the only way out of the suicidal quagmire.

Ted Trainer
School of Social Work,
University of New South Wales,
Kensington. 2052. Australia.

Notes.

 1.  The site's general address is http://www.socialwor.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/
The alternative, Simpler Way is detailed at http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/12b-The-Alt-Sust-Soc-Lng.html

2. Exaggerated?  See www.dieoff.org

3. For the application of this critical perspective to the concept of "development" see http://socialwork.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D99.De%7Fvelopment.RadView.html