Now, before proceeding, let me make one thing clear in case any of my readers have any doubt about this subject.

I am not a new fangled liberal, but rather am an old style liberal, an Eleanor Roosevelt liberal, the kind of liberal who actually believes that poor people matter, including the more than 2 billion people who have no access to clean drinking water, as well as those billions of people who live in what most Westerners consider extreme poverty, including those who have no shelters, no homes, including those - in Somalia for instance - who live in libertarian paradises where there is no government, and hence, no justice.

Many people who read about Mrs. Roosevelt think of her as a very smart, very proper, very witty, kindly woman, but less appreciated was how damn tough she was, and how very much she was willing to press against the conventional ideas - accepted common wisdom - of her times.

A few years before her death, at a ripe old age, Mrs. Roosevelt traveled through the South in a car with one other person, on a mission connected with human civil rights, with a gun in her lap because she thought she might be lynched and planned to take a lyncher down with her. This was the former First Lady of the United States.

As it happens, Mrs. Roosevelt in many ways, had more in common with her husband's 1940 Republican opponent, Wendell Wilkie, than she did with her husband, inasmuch as she was completely and totally opposed to racial segregation and racial discrimination - as was Wendell Wilkie - even if her country was not and even if her husband, if nominally in her camp, was unwilling to push the issue even as she did. (In defense of any unfavorable comparison between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Wendell Wilkie, it should be noted that Wilkie was "soft" on opposing the Nazi conquest of Europe, while Franklin Roosevelt did whatever he could to participate in that war before popular will embraced it.)

The conventional wisdom on energy is that so called "renewable" energy is good and nuclear energy is (at least among poorly educated people) "bad."

This is anti-intellectual, immoral garbage and this self same anti-intellectual immoral garbage is part of the reason that this planet, inhabited by rich and poor alike, is dying. I have never been afraid to say as much, and will never apologize for saying as much, just as Mrs. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilkie were unafraid and unapologetic for embracing their less than universally popular issue.

I make no secret of the fact that I not only regard nuclear energy as a positive good, but in my view it is the only truly acceptable (and truly sustainable) form of energy.

If that's "radical," I couldn't care less.

I used to be a supporter of so called "renewable energy" but have changed my mind, with the possible exception being for geothermal energy which is in fact, nuclear energy.

Nuclear energy is not perfect. It is not without risks, as we have seen at (for instance) Fukushima. But nuclear energy is the lowest risk form of energy, the cleanest form of energy. If Fukushima killed as many people as falling buildings killed in the recent Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami, it would still kill fewer people than 5 days of normal operations of dangerous fossil fuel facilities, including those that run on Danish oil and gas, existing Danish oil and gas.

The primary objective of humanity should have been to phase out dangerous fossil fuels, although I freely concede that this will not happen, and that more or less the game is over.

In saying this, I am channeling if not the policy, then the spirit of my political heroine, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Anyway, about Denmark, about the linked article, here's what it says:



The tiny country of Denmark is making a rather bold push to open the Arctic region to commercial industry — mainly for the drilling of oil, gas and rare earth minerals. The Danish foreign ministry announced that as the ice around the Arctic melts (read: as climate change progresses) the region will become increasingly accessible to industry. On Monday Denmark announced its 10-year “Arctic Strategy”, which focuses on opening up shipping lanes and drilling areas that are being exposed as the climate changes. Historically, countries around the world have pushed to keep the Arctic undeveloped as a sort of nature preserve. But if we understand this correctly, Denmark — the world’s pioneer in wind power generation — wants to take advantage of climate change by opening up the Arctic to oil, gas and mineral drilling, the very industries that caused the Arctic to start melting in the first place

The bold is mine.

The author sounds, um, surprised.

I'm not.

The author goes on:



We sometimes feel the need to refrain from repeating ourselves, but apparently at times it is necessary. Why can’t we all focus on putting our energy and intelligence into creating renewable resources? Resources that will actually power our future, rather than hold to oil, gas and mineral reserves that are destroying our earth as we extract them — particularly as they are soon to be dried up anyway.

Resources that will actually power our future?

Um, um, um...well, OK, Buffy...

This we learn from an author on a website where they ask that timeless question, Would You Pay $300,000 for a T-Shirt If It Helped Starving Children in Africa?

You can't make this stuff up.

Then there's 14 of Fall 2011′s Hottest Fashion Trends, With an Ethical Twist.

Like I said, you can't make this stuff up.

I apologize in advance for this brief but cynical note on the end of the world.

Have a nice weekend.