What do Yucca Mountain and Guantanamo Bay have in common?
Well, there's the obvious stuff. Both have Spanish names. Neither is a great
spot for a family vacation. Each is controlled by the federal government.
Oh, and both are essential tools in wars a lot of people claim they want to
win.
See, Yucca Mountain is where the government wants to keep incredibly
dangerous substances - nuclear waste - until we figure out a better way to
handle it.
Guantanamo Bay is where the government keeps incredibly dangerous people -
jihadi enemy combatants - until we figure out a better way to handle them.
Victory in the war against climate change is inconceivable without nuclear
power. Even if we turned America's breadbasket into ethanol-corn and solar
farms, we wouldn't come close to reducing carbon emissions to 80 percent
below 1990 levels by 2050 (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's avowed goal,
compared with John McCain's target of 60 percent). Even if every American
lived like a Prius-driving, vegan eco-feminist, we'd still fall far short. A
recent MIT study found that even the homeless in America have twice the
carbon footprint of the global average.
Clean, efficient, safe nuclear energy could force enormous savings in CO2
emissions, replacing coal- and gas-burning power plants on a scale solar
never can. It also would boost America's "energy independence," a phrase
environmentalists use to enlist support from Americans immune to climate
fear-mongering.
Is it a silver bullet? Surely not. But expanding our nuclear energy
infrastructure belongs near the top of the list of options for those who say
we must do "everything in our power" to stop global warming. (I'm not one of
those people, by the way.)
But generating nuclear power produces radioactive waste, so we really should
find a safe place to put it. Yucca Mountain, in the Nevada desert, is just
such a place. But anti-nuclear environmentalists have done everything they
can to keep it from opening, largely because having a safe waste repository
would make nuclear power more attractive.
Which brings me back to Guantanamo Bay, where the Yuccafication process is
nearly complete.
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