The Energy of the Future?

On his recent trip to the Middle East, French President Sarkozy exclaimed: "In 40 years from now there will be no oil left and in 100 years no more gas, nuclear power will replace those energy sources . . . It is the energy of the future."

Nuclear is certainly the fuel of the future. For one thing, the waste produced in reactors is going to be around for tens of thousands of years. That's a hell of a lot of future. Do you think that humans are really going to keep an eye on this most hideous of wastes during those long years? Or, as we usually do, are we going to forget about it and then have it come back to bite us in the ass? Only an idiot wouldn't bet on the latter.

While it's nice to hear a president speaking so candidly about the end of oil, the dream of nuclear is a nightmare for more than the waste reason outlined above. First of all, we must be pretty thick to pin all our hopes on a fuel that, much like oil, will peak and decline as well. There is only so much uranium on the earth. Once it's gone it's gone.

So essentially we are just buying a few years before we are forced to live like every other being on this earth: simply. The only true infinite (and even then . . .) source of energy is the sun which grows crops (and therefore animals like us) which provide everything humans need (food, fuel, paper, meat, clothing--sorry no computers or plastic).

If only we could learn this and change course now instead of going through the pain of climate change and then the threat of nuclear waste to end up where we should have been going in the first place. But humans are pretty stupid and shortsighted so what do you expect?