Q. What’s your perception of where we’re headed with even conservative predictions for growth of both populations and energy use?

A. I think we’re headed straight back to the Earth’s second stable state, which is a hot state that it’s been in many times before in the past. It’s about 14 degrees warmer than it is in these parts of the world now.

It means roughly that most life on the planet will have to move up to the Arctic basin, to the few islands that are still habitable and to oases on the continents. It will be a much-diminished world.

Q. Can you explain why you think nuclear power is so vital?

A. The really bad thing we did way back when was starting to burn things in the atmosphere to get energy. We started with fire, just cooking food, and probably could have gotten away with that. But once we started burning forests to drive the animals out as a cheap way of hunting, then we started on our downward course. What we’re doing now with fossil fuels is just as bad.

We live in a nuclear-powered universe. We’re the oddballs by getting energy from burning carbon.

My justification of nuclear power is that we’ve reached a stage now where the dire things that threaten us are so great that even the results of an all-out nuclear war pale into insignificance as unimportant compared to what’s going to happen.

Q. You seem to say we have to get over the idea that renewable energy sources — wind, solar — in the short run, are a useful way out of this.