Scott Miller

Following up on our many discussions on climate change (and what to do about it), I thought I’d draw your attention to the attached Op/Ed piece from the New York Times.

Nuclear Power Can Save the World (New York Times Op/Ed)

I agree with them that nuclear power will very likely have a significant role in our electricity generation once we get serious about reducing CO₂ emissions.

Two of the authors recently published a book, “xxx,” with a foreword written by the third. I usually try to assess whether Op/Ed authors are “fringy” or not; here are two reviews of the book.

A Bright Future by Joshua Goldstein and Staffan Qvist (Financial Times–Book Review)

A Sensible Climate Change Solution, Borrowed From Sweden (The New York Times–Book Review)

The New York Times one is overall supportive of the nuclear argument; the Financial Times is a bit more reserved, but appears to agree that increased nuclear-powered electricity production will very likely need to be a part of a future CO₂ energy production mix. But read them yourselves and form your own view.

In recent weeks, there have been claims that elements on both major US political parties have fostered / encouraged / expressed anti-Semitic behavior and views. See Donald Trump on the Republican side and Ilhan Omar for the Democrats.

In my opinion, neither individual, nor their respective parties, are bathing themselves in glory in their handling of this subject. So what’s happening?

• Is anti-Semitism substantially on the rise?
• Are the standards by which we “flag” anti-Semitism changing (lots of references to “dog whistles” and “tropes”)?
• Is the political atmosphere so poisoned that no one wants to listen to any subtlety from the “other side,” and instead will always assume—and assert—the worst?

We’ll discuss on Monday.

With other events capturing the US public’s attention a couple of weeks ago (US-NoKo summit in Hanoi, Cohen testimony before Congress), the US media (and, therefore, public) almost missed a sequence of important events in India and Pakistan—reciprocal incursions into the other’s territory by each of these nuclear-capable countries. It was characterized on NPR as being “the closest the world has come to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Here’s a link to a BBC collection/chronology of the events: India-Pakistan Air Strikes. (Or find your own sources.)

We’ll discuss.