In the wake of the tsunami in Japan and the radioactive discharge from damaged nuclear power plants, it would take a brave individual to state that nuclear power is the way of the future. Yet a former ardent opponent of a nuclear power industry in Australia, told the Local Government Association Conference in South Australia why he had changed his mind and now advocated nuclear power for Australia.
Founding Director of ThinkClimate Consulting Ben Heard, a leading practitioner in climate change and environmental decision making, regards nuclear power as a central platform to an effective climate change response.
He said if Australia was to get on with the job of developing a nuclear power industry tomorrow, he wouldn’t be asking what took the country so long.
“It was me and other Australians like me, generally acting from some level of moral conviction, who have made it crystal clear that we want nothing to do with nuclear power in Australia,” he said.
“However, over the course of the last few years, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t presume to have all the answers but I have asked myself some tough questions about nuclear power and climate change and responded to them honestly with the knowledge I have gathered. In doing so, I have journeyed from a nuclear opponent to a nuclear proponent.”
Ben Heard said that Australia has entered a completely unacceptable domain of climate change risk.
“Climate change is not happening in a vacuum,” he said. “The world is getting bigger and more energy hungry. We cannot know exactly what will happen this century but we are collectively staring down a very real and imminent risk of the end of civilisation as we know it.
“We are collectively staring down our own mass extinction by the creation of a runaway level of climate change. Our collective response assumes a luxury of time and certainty that we simply do not have.”
