Nuclear energy is still regarded with skepticism. But nuclear power’s critics wildly overstate its dangers, and preserving and expanding this energy source is essential to a just green transition.

The challenge of climate change is aptly called “civilizational.” We live in a world built by fossil fuel energy. The costs of fossil fuels are well documented — not just climate change but also millions of deaths per year from air pollution — but the benefits of fossil fuel–powered modernity are too often ignored. Fossil fuels have powered electrification, industrial mass production, rapid long distance transport, virtually labor-less agriculture, and provided the industrial heat to forge a more-than-50-percent urban world built of steel and cement.

The level of energy needed to replicate this

See Full Page