With the fires in LA it’s hard to feel optimistic about the future. I want to be reminded that all is not lost, we need to do a lot that likely won’t be done but there are still things to do.
So let’s say Climate Stalin became Supreme Leader of the World or just President of the United States tomorrow. Whats next? What steps do we take to stop climate change getting worse and mitigate the damage we’ve already done?
Nuke plants and electrify everything. Absolutely everything needs to be electrified, treat production needs to stop tomorrow, the global north needs to institute massive degrowth that won’t feel like degrowth to anybody but the owners of vacation homes, and we need a fuck ton of nuke plants. We can worry about removing carbon from the atmosphere after we’ve electrified everything, and can pour our new massive power surplus into super power intensive carbon removal machines that make no money.
There’s not enough uranium for enough nuclear plants (though China and India have those thorium reactors)
There’s not enough uranium at the ideal enrichment levels that’s profitable to extract. If we aren’t concerned with getting the most profit possible mining the stuff, we have a few hundred years of supply without needing to recycle (which is easy).
There are only two thorium reactors in the world (one in China and one in India) and they are both highly experimental. There isn’t enough ground based uranium (most uranium is in the ocean and technology to develop oceanic uranium mining is promising) for 100% nuclear power, but there is enough for a lot more. The reason why nuclear power isn’t more widespread isn’t a technical one, but rather it costs more than fossil fuels and nuclear power is contrary to the interests of the bourgeoisie.