Is the president's climate plan his chance at a 'moon shot'?

A short video from YaleClimateConnections (about 6 minutes long). The president’s climate plan calls for ambitious action, achieved quickly, like JFK’s commitment to land Americans on the moon.

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As long as it maximizes the use of nuclear power.

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watch the video

Sounds like we have proven ourselves pretty capable of making massive changes when sufficiently motivated. I guess the test is to see if we can be motivated by the health and well-being of others more than money.

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That is the question!

Sadly, I think we may already know the answer.

In addition to the financial side, the religious opposition is still very significant.

On these types topics, it is difficult to separate the partisanship from the religious. It is worth noting that the vast majority of Christians in many other countries fully support efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

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I almost never do. Does he or doesn’t he? Renewables without a nuclear backbone are worse than useless.

Until we get much better energy-storage mechanisms, yes.

It still puzzles me why people are so opposed to use of nuclear: in the long run, coal mining kills far more people than one minor nuclear accident every decade or so.

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There’s no comparison with any other extraction based industry which are tens to hundreds of times worse, nuclear is only slightly more risky than wind power. The only feasible large scale renewables storage solution is hydrogen from wind and PV, as well as for trucks, tractors, other heavy equipment (cranes, quarry trucks etc, etc) and of course aircraft. Others are compressed air, reverse hydro, hauling box cars of rocks uphill. Paving and greening deserts with self-cleaning PV platforms is my fantasy now. To power desalination of irrigation water. Kill coal and oil and gas. Sequestration is insane. Ooh, and if we want to save the rainforests, we must buy them.

Well, mechanically driven perhaps. If we use the trees in the rain forests and plant a gob more, it should help, though not a solution unto itself. Reforestation should get more love.

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Well said. But if we want rainforests to do that, we’d better buy them. All UK upland, currently just grazed by sheep and grouse or planted for softwood, should be planted for hardwood, the government plan to do that with fifty million trees from 2020-5 is a pathetic 1% effort. It would take 500 years at that rate. As well as being born again pro-nuclear from a year ago I’m more recently pro-solar. Only that can green the deserts by being installed in them.

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