Misjudgements

Three times in the past 60 years, major misjudgments were made by elected officials because 95% of congress lacks any scientific background. This has allowed them to be misled and sometimes manipulated. The first started in the 1960’s with groups like Greenpeace. Using fear as their weapon, they convinced the general population that nuclear power was dangerous and had to be stopped. They used the fear of a melt down that could lead to a release of radioactive materials into the atmosphere, some even suggesting a possible nuclear bomb explosion. They followed this up with exaggerating the problem of storing waste material in unsafe ways across the country. This led to over regulation to the point where the 100 reactors that were scheduled to be built were cancelled and not one new site was constructed over the next fifty years. The activist had won. The second mistake was also promoted using fear and that was global warming. In this case, the activist joined forces with certain scientist who profited from the fear, to convince the people that fossil fuels were the cause and set a goal of zero carbon by 2030. The UN and the Paris Accords added to the fear and promoted the idea of zero carbon. Important elected officials led by Presidents Obama and Biden called climate change an existential threat and laws were passed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The experts saw the solution to the problem was to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar. This was pushed by the new green deal, that combined social programs with the production of solar panels which opened the door to campaign contributions by way of government subsidies. Once the program became political it automatically had support of half the population and the promoters were well aware of this fact. The third big mistake was the subsidizing of electric vehicles. Once again this became a political issue and government subsidies followed. The fact that the cars needed long charging times, that there were very few charging stations and that many of the stations got their power from fossil fuels did not dampen the enthusiasm for EV’s. The excitement caused car companies to invest billions before they realized the consumers did not want the hassle of dealing with these cars and they are now writing off loses totaling tens of billions. This was a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. Common sense is slowly taking over and nuclear power is seen as the solution to climate change. It has taken almost a hundred years to recover from these mistakes but help is on the way.