Will Key West Address The Real Climate Change Issue?
Key West newspapers have noted that Key West was readmitted to the flood insurance discount program. This subsidy, financed by tax payers at large, may or may not be fair. This debate is good, but it also carries the risk of not dealing with the substance and reality of the issue…stronger winds and higher ocean levels.
Our reluctance to discuss global warming is a result of our being human. Evolutionary psychology suggests most Homo sapiens have a powerful denial mechanism that allows them to refuse examining long held beliefs, or look at problems they will face in the future. Further, greed and self-interest of key players—the fossil fuel companies, pandering politicians—overrides objectivity and clear thinking.
The head line story is that we have to keep the mean global land surface temperature from increasing more than 2 C degrees, and that it might be possible to accomplish this by voluntary measures—principally conservation and wind and solar power. This is a delusional story. A few key points:
-A 2 degree C increase will take us above anything seen in the Holocene, the period that fostered the emergence of modern man. Many scientists believe 2 degrees will prove to be catastrophic. And trend lines indicate that we may far exceed 2 degrees.
-Once a 2 degree C increase occurs, a more rapid, “non-linear” increase in global warming will likely be initiated—methane release, ever more rapid ice melt, ocean current change—all poorly understood but huge risk factors.
-Engineering and math shows that the environmentalist’s solution of conservation + wind + solar power is not an answer. It is a false ideology compounded by our living in a world going from today’s 7 billion to 9+ billion people by 2050, most wanting to live like the Western world. Further, we live in an economic system that is growth dependent, where large amounts of energy are essential.
Is there a way out of this existential conundrum? The lone possible answer is to quickly develop massive amounts of carbon free energy, leaving the remaining fossil fuel in the ground. And there is but one way to do this: to launch, before our limited time runs out, a “Manhattan” or “going to the moon” program, with the cornerstone of that effort being the development of 4th generation nuclear reactors.
Fortunately, we have the technology to do this. It is technology that is extremely safe and resistant to weapon proliferation. All technologies, including nuclear reactor energy, rest on a continuum of development:
-The US has 99 operating light water (LW) reactors, producing about 20% of our electricity and about 8 percent of total energy consumed. They are generally safe but inefficient.
-Improved, but still largely of conventional design, are the LW reactors now being built. The Westinghouse AP-1000 is an example, with several under construction in China.
-A next-generation design, ready to be built by GE-Hitachi, is a much more advanced and efficient design. It is based on US advanced reactor work done decades ago in our national laboratories.
-Far more advanced are a large number of small, modular reactors (SMR) poised for final development and which could be commercialized with a committed “going to the moon” program. These smaller designs can be built in a factory and mass produced, need no external cooling system, because of laws of physics cannot melt down, can be designed to use the nuclear waste the world has accumulated, and are not practical for making nuclear weapon materials.
Importantly, there is a huge economic and societal opportunity in moving to an unlimited, carbon free source of energy. Leading economists believe the world needs a new technology based platform from which to continue to grow and advance. Carbon-free SMRs have the potential to catalyze the world’s next industrial revolution and improvement in mankind’s living conditions.
The problem, however, is that capitalizing on nuclear based carbon free energy requires out-of-the-box thinking. Unfounded fear of anything nuclear, entrenched thinking, denial, and ideological myths are stopping us in our tracks.
The denial that exists in all of us takes many forms: those who simply refuse to acknowledge that climate change is real; those who effectively deny the issue by rationalizing that a “future technology will save the day”; those who say that there is nothing that they can do individually that will have any material impact; and the many who acknowledge the reality of climate change but “simply decide to put it out of their mind”.
This realization of denial is important because there has never in the history of man been a call to arms comparable to this one. And because of the unique geography of Key West, we are at the leading edge of this existential challenge.
It would behoove everyone who loves this area to take an active stance…write your representatives, use your vote, read a substantive book on climate change, talk it with your friends. Tell them you understand the need for a “Manhattan” or “going to the moon” program for the urgent development of safe, small modular nuclear reactors…our last realistic hope for mitigating climate change and saving Key West.
Jerry Rabe
Retired director of Strategic Technology Development, the Diageo Corporation. Rabe is author of the book Through the Lens of Reality and seasonal resident of Key West.
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