the_dunk_tank

It also matters little, because energy under capitalism is dependent on the infighting between factions of capital. Like the much-mocked German shutdown of nuclear power. Half opportunism to prevent the electoral rise of the green party and half gift to the mining corporation RWE. Had it not happened, it would be the firms dealing with nuclear power supply, etc. to profit. Nothing gets done without the bourgeois benefitting.

I've been in the nuclear trenches a few times (on the pro-nuclear side, though there are very obviously drawbacks and limitations and by no means do I advocate for paving the world with nuclear power plants or whatever the strawman is nowadays) and I've come to realize that anti-nuclear sentiments aren't fundamentally influenced by these well-thought-out arguments that anti-nuclear intellectuals and professionals have. It's much more to do with their profitability and rate of return and investment cost than like, scientific arguments about the amount of uranium/thorium reserves, or potential for disasters, and so on.

As in, the nuclear debate online isn't actually as relevant in the real world as it seems, and a lot of the displayed concern about Fukushima or Chernobyl happening again in government bodies isn't actually the thing that is motivating them, it's just good-old-fashioned capitalism and they're dressing it up. If we're talking environmental impacts, massive oil spills, while certainly widely known about and important points in the fossil fuel debate, haven't really done much to dent fossil fuel production quite like how nuclear disasters affected nuclear energy's reputation. And it takes a shitload of rare resources like cobalt and copper and lithium to create the renewables that would be required to get us to a fully renewable economy even if we assume energy consumption doesn't keep rising over time. The cumulative effect of hundreds and thousands of mines and quarries on the environment (let alone workers) is gigantic, but they're spread out enough (and often located in countries that the average person couldn't place on a map, let alone care deeply about) that they don't feature as heavily in the debate.

So basically I caution anybody who gets too lost in the sauce over the common issues that online debates are about because, while these things are extremely important, these aren't actually the big reasons why capitalists aren't investing heavily in them, so you're kinda wasting your time (even under the assumption that internet debates are somehow productive). Do you think a capitalist gives a shit whether their nuclear power plant has some leakage that raises cancer rates in the surrounding area, so long as it makes a profit? We have to distinguish the discussion over these things versus the material reality.