Environmentalists

Environmentalists Help Uranium's Price
By James Finch

This past weekend’s stunning confession by Nobel prize-winning author Gunter Grass that he was once a member of Hitler’s elite SS, and that he had lied about his involvement for the past 60 years, again reminds us of the hypocrisy found in the Leftist-leaning environmentalist movement. Herr Grass’s biographer was reportedly “dumbfounded” by this revelation. So were we. A leading German historian Joachim Fest told Der Spiegel magazine, “After 60 years, this confession comes a bit too late. I can’t understand how someone who for decades set himself up as a moral authority, a rather smug one, could pull this off.”

Perhaps, the Gunter Grass case can offer us insights into the key personality characteristics of those involved in the U.S., and perhaps the worldwide, environmental movement: smug, leftist-leaning, self-righteous, holier-than-thou and secretive. But there is also a Nazi-like totalitarian bent to the modern-day U.S. environmentalist, one who opposes the peaceful spread of civilian nuclear power to an energy-starved planet.

Let’s talk about specific environmentalists and discover how some developed their nuclear-contrarian philosophies. For instance, why won’t Hillary Clinton’s “energy guru” Amory Lovins join members of a more scientific club, which includes Dr. James Lovelock, Patrick Moore and Stewart Brand by endorsing nuclear energy? Here’s one of Amory’s best quotes on the subject: “It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we might do with it.”

A former nature lover in Wales, Amory Lovins got his start as an author by writing a book paid for by David Brower, then president of Friends of the Earth (FOE). Brower liked Lovins’ book about an endangered Welsh park that the FOE paid him to write a few more books. Hardly registering a pulse on the world’s radar screen, Lovins moved back to the U.S. and became a tour guide in New Hampshire. He made a name for himself with the anti-nuclear crowd by writing a book called Non-Nuclear Futures. It was only after the 1973 energy crisis, and especially after he hooked up with L. Hunter Sheldon, an attorney (whom he wisely married), when Lovins was taken seriously. His marriage to Hunter, though, didn’t erase one of his more famous mathematical miscalculations, in which he was quoted as saying, “Phasing out nuclear power should make our electricity cost not more but less.”