Just to think France would have been nice and green for decades. Imagine if people at Kyoto would have just said 'right, climate change, lets are just start building nuclear power plants as fast as we can'.
But thanks to amazing green environmental organization like Greenpeace and all the fear-mongering for decades the world has missed multiple opportunities to turn into a nuclear society.
Had governments been willing to pay extra for clean energy (and air), nuclear would have taken of in the 70s everywhere. But coal and later gas was just to cheap for anything to compete.
Germany is specially interesting. They have on the forefront of green revolution. I can't even remember the amount of think pieces hailing Germany as this amazing government lead push to green energy. Germany was held up as the global model over and over. The amount of times I have heard talk about German investment in solar is almost mind-blowing.
But when I look at this map, its always brown. And Germany as an engineering society could have easily spent the last 2 decades putting up nuclear reactors. If France could do it in the 70-90, Germany could have done it 2000-2020.
Likely by now they could finish multiple reactors a year. And once you have the workforce and production capability for that pace could have built them all over the East.
What this map really shows is that if you combine nuclear with hydro you are like gone do amazing.
My own country, Switzerland, sadly had a vote (direct democracy ftw) and now nuclear research and new nuclear is basically illegal. Its a damn shame.
The world has just totally fucked up the response to climate change.
But thanks to amazing green environmental organization like Greenpeace and all the fear-mongering for decades the world has missed multiple opportunities to turn into a nuclear society.
Had governments been willing to pay extra for clean energy (and air), nuclear would have taken of in the 70s everywhere. But coal and later gas was just to cheap for anything to compete.
Germany is specially interesting. They have on the forefront of green revolution. I can't even remember the amount of think pieces hailing Germany as this amazing government lead push to green energy. Germany was held up as the global model over and over. The amount of times I have heard talk about German investment in solar is almost mind-blowing.
But when I look at this map, its always brown. And Germany as an engineering society could have easily spent the last 2 decades putting up nuclear reactors. If France could do it in the 70-90, Germany could have done it 2000-2020.
Likely by now they could finish multiple reactors a year. And once you have the workforce and production capability for that pace could have built them all over the East.
What this map really shows is that if you combine nuclear with hydro you are like gone do amazing.
My own country, Switzerland, sadly had a vote (direct democracy ftw) and now nuclear research and new nuclear is basically illegal. Its a damn shame.
The world has just totally fucked up the response to climate change.