Thirty five years ago, on this day, July 26, 1988, the Australian Financial Review reported on what “the greenhouse effect” might do to the energy mix (it didn’t).
Environmental problems associated with the “greenhouse effect” could force the world to replace fossil fuels with nuclear energy – which would give Australia the opportunity to become the foremost uranium supplier, according to a leading petroleum industry expert.
Mr Bob Foster, general manager, external relations, for BHP Petroleum said last week: “Australia can lead the world on how to mitigate against the greenhouse effect.”
Sargent, S. 1988. Environment problems seen with fossil fuels. Australian Financial Review, 26 July.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone had started to talk about climate change. And the biggest Australian miner BHP was able to see dollar signs because it had lots of uranium and could envisage a turn to nuclear. The deeper context is that from the 1950s and 60s onwards, advocates of nuclear had been talking about it as a greenhouse solution. See, for example, Philip Abelson in 1968, New York Times 1969 Thatcher 1979 for a very small selection
What I think we can learn from this is that proponents of the nuclear dream (or nightmare, depending on your perspective) have been using all the arguments that they can for a long, long time.
What happened next
Nuclear power did not save the world. Nuclear power was never going to save the world,
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.