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Since Peter Dutton has reignited the appetite for the dream of unlimited energy from atom-splitting, we have to think about the risks again. Is it more dangerous to keep burning coal and gas and oil and boil the planet than to have a few Chernobyls or Windscales? How do we balance such risks?
There is money to be made in war, especially from making weapons, and what we are witnessing at the moment in Ukraine and the Middle East is simply the latest episode in a story that goes back centuries.
Big changes are occurring in the financial sector that suggest the climate change agenda is starting to lose crucial support with the world’s largest fund managers. As support for ESG goals wane, the conversation is shifting to nuclear energy. But does it make any financial sense?
Nuclear energy has snuck its way onto the table of Australian public policy. Given that Australia is a country that hosts military nuclear platforms, the impetus to translate it into a civilian context is proving powerful.
The problem with the discussion about nuclear energy is that it is a distraction; an ideologically driven misdirection by those who are more concerned with opposing renewables and the 'green-left' than solving our country's energy problems. Nuclear just doesn't make sense for Australia at this stage of the game.
The debate around climate change shows the danger in believing we humans are principally rational. History gives example after example of how our biases can make us do very irrational things. In the words of Dan Ariely, our species is 'predictably irrational'. It is helpful for us to know this, so that we can become better.