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A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow.  Joshua S. Goldstein and Staffan A. Qvist.  PublicAffairs.  NY. 2019.

Hard Cover.  Sewn and Glued.  277 p.  Notes. Index.  0.9 lbs.

Recommended and gifted by a long-time friend. Available at Alibris.com

Dear Mr. Goldstein and Mr. Qvist,

My friend recommended this book to me a couple of years ago, but I resisted due to the topic.  I should have listened to him.  It’s not easy to change one’s mind about something that has been so passionately felt for so long.

But you two lay out the facts so simply and accessibly that you have challenged my cherished, out-of-date opinions.

And “A Bright Future” is topical.  It relates to the current geopolitics of the war in Ukraine, the rising number of extreme weather events, and the growing use of solar and wind power that has paradoxically given rise to increased electric utility costs across the country.

This is a practical book, as defined by Adler and Van Doren.  A cookbook is a simple practical book with a presentation of rules—a ‘how-to’ book.  I read it for the purpose of educating behavior that I already know I wish to perform.

By contrast, your book, while practical, has underlining principles and is therefore also persuasive.  The questions Adler has us ask ourselves while reading the book will lead us to persuade our behavior or not.

With practical books based on principles, the first two questions we need to answer are what the book is about and what is being said in detail.  The third question Adler encourages us to ask is if the reader agrees with the author’s objectives and the means to get there.  And the last question of a principled, practical book is, “If I agree then how shall I act differently?”

Let’s first look at the facts you lay out, or, define what the book is about and what you are saying in detail:

First, the book is about climate change and the need to address it now, not later.  If we stop raising emissions today and keep those emissions at the current level, global warming will still worsen.  We need to stop carbon emissions, now.  Period.

Second, here are some of the details you lay out:

Climate change is caused largely by carbon emissions.  If we focus on carbon emissions and act now, we can stop global warming from making Earth far less livable.  Coal use is growing because it is cheap; methane use is growing too because it is also cheap.  Together they supply 85% of the world’s energy.  Both emit carbon.  Thus, the specific focus of your book is electricity generation.

To decarbonize our electricity we need to get off carbon-sourced fuels.  Not to stop increasing the use of carbon-based fuels, but to stop using carbon-based fuels, now.

Analogy: an asteroid is heading for earth and is on course to hit it.  If it’s predicted to hit us within 5 years, how would the world respond?  We would likely respond immediately (you don’t mention the Ozone Hole threat, but that is an example of how the world responded nearly instantly to an immediately-pressing problem).  But what if the asteroid won’t hit us for another 50 years.  How would the world respond?  Most likely very slowly, as we have thus far regarding climate change.

Solar, wind, and hydropower must all be tools the world uses to deal directly with climate change.  But as you point out with facts, figures, and numbers, they also have their limitations.

Here’s an analogy you offer that’s almost humorous in the image it conjures: “A cheap ice cream cone in a remote desert would be a bargain, but a thousand more would be worthless unless you had a freezer.”  You go on to state with simplicity, “Currently, we lack affordable, long-term, grid-scale electricity storage—the equivalent of the ice cream freezer.”

A humorous image—one person desperately trying to gobble down a thousand ice cream cones in a hot desert before they all melt because there’s no freezer—is not so humorous when one considers that our public policy is supporting 100% solar and wind power without equivalently adequate power storage.

Your book gives the details on what ‘affordable,’ ‘long-term,’ and ‘grid-scale’ electricity storage all actually mean.  The details are sobering.  And there are other serious limitations to these two power sources you also discuss.

As for hydropower, we have very few places left in which large-enough dams can be built to generate a meaningful amount of energy without seriously impacting ecologies, people, and historical remains.

As you two point out, ‘natural’ gas may sound innocuous—I work in a Natural Foods store after all—but it’s just methane, a carbon-emitting energy source, pure and simple.  Methane has an even stronger impact on climate change for additional reasons beyond carbon. 

There is an upside: methane is currently cheap—thank you fracking—and also happens to be cleaner in some respects than dirty coal.  But once we are finished investing in changing from coal to methane, the climate change gains we believe we’ve made with ‘natural gas’ will then become burdens.  And geo-politically, it couldn’t get any messier than the role natural gas plays in Russia’s current aggression in Ukraine.

Readers of this review will have to read your book for all the persuasive specific details, statistics, and citations. 

There’s also the subtitle to your book: you give concrete examples of other countries where carbon emissions have already been reduced per person, while maintaining high standards of living, increasing their economic output, and all while increasing their populations.  It IS doable!!

Now that we’ve answered the questions of what the book is about and what are its details, we must next look at the third question: Do I agree with your objectives and the means to get there?

Your objectives are to mitigate climate change, now!  I agree. 100%!

The means to get there must include—along with solar, wind, and hydropowers—nuclear power.  And that has been the hard pill for me to swallow the past few years.

As a confirmed liberal of the 80s and 90s, I’ve been opposed to nuclear power.  I’ve been in anti-nuclear marches, donated to various anti-nuke causes, cheered on those who laid across train tracks, and argued passionately against anything nuclear.

The first crack in my obstinate shell happened when Stuart Brand, the editor of Whole Earth Catalog, declared his support for nuclear power back in 2005.  How dare he turn his coat on us back-to-the-land liberals?!

But the growing reality of weather extremes, my growing dissatisfaction with hydropower’s disruption of ecologies and human societies—often indigenous and/or poor, and a building awareness of the challenges of solar and wind power…have all led me to be more open to a more-diverse toolbox for repairing climate change.

But what about my fears?  Nuclear power has always had a sort of bogeyman aura to it, to which I’ve given nothing but knee-jerk reactions.  I feel like Dorothy facing her fears on the yellow brick road: Explosions, radiation, waste and proliferation!

You two address these objections in four chapters in the section titled ‘Facing Fears.’

As for explosions, you state very simply, “a nuclear power plant cannot blow up like a bomb.” 

Fear of radiation is overhyped; we’re exposed to measurable doses of it everyday, and even more so when we ride in an airplane or hang out around granite rock, such as in much of the western United States.  Medical patients are limited to the same diagnostic exposure rate per year as those who work in nuclear power facilities.

Your chapter on ‘Risks and Fears’ addresses my mistaken assumptions that led to my hyped-up fears.  Nuclear power is a safe tool to pull out of our toolbox; it has been and will continue to be.  We’ve been brainwashed since the Cold War to believe anything nuclear is bad. 

But nuclear energy ≠ nuclear war.

Along with that, you two detail current benefits to nuclear power, including that it is based on already-proven technology but also that newer nuclear energy technology improves every aspect of it: less waste, even higher safety, more modular, more affordable, and less construction time.

Your book was published in 2019, only 3 years ago.  But the topic of climate change is ever-shifting with every weather season and policy decision.  As such, it is important to keep up by reading magazine articles.  Alas, I’ve been disappointed; clearly there are writers and editors of influential magazines who have not read your book.

One example is the opinion writers at Scientific American, an otherwise dependable magazine for me to learn about the latest scientific advances in both experiments and opinions.  See the November, 2021 issue, page 10 for an example of an article that uses the same tired arguments against nuclear power without considering updated facts. Also see the February, 2022 article by Naomi Oreskes: trite arguments indeed.

Other examples can be found in The Economist.  See the March 5^th, 2022 issue, pp. 65-66, which doesn’t even mention nuclear power as an option for adapting to the oncoming climate changes.  The April 9^th, 2022 issue, pp. 62-64 also does not mention nuclear power as an option on how to stabilize the climate and avoid “catastrophic global warming.”

To their credit, The Economist did print an article in the March 26^th, 2022 issue, pp. 74-75, in which there was serious discussion about SMRs (Small Modular Reactors).

And a popular science fiction novel published in 2021, centered on the issue of climate change and set in the very near future, breathes barely a word about the option of proven nuclear technology.  It does, however, spend a great deal of time on untested technology designed to slow down glaciers’ movements across land and into the sea.  (See my next review.)

So in answer to Adler’s third question—do I agree with the objective and the means—I do agree with the objective to stop climate change and I do agree that nuclear power should be included as an option in any serious discussion about climate change and how to mitigate it.

Now onto Adler’s fourth question—If I agree then how shall I act differently?  While I can no longer oppose serious discussions of climate change that want to include nuclear power as an option, I personally feel compelled to do more. 

I plan to encourage keeping current nuclear power plants active rather than decommissioning them. 

Further, I shall seriously consider outright supporting new nuclear power when proposed as an energy source. 

And finally, I am, after all, writing this review in a favorable light, for your book has persuaded me to, at the very least, be more open-minded about nuclear energy.

You two have written one of the most accessible books for the layperson on nuclear energy and why it needs to be an actively considered tool in our repertoire for dealing with climate change.

It was published in 2019 but much of its data is from 2017.  It is obviously due for an update.  Are you working on a new edition?

And readers of this review, read “A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow.”  In the very least be open-minded to the discussion of nuclear power.  And further—along with wind and solar power—support nuclear power as one of many tools to use for facing climate change.

Other reviews that mention this book: The Ministry For The Future, Essay based on The Science of Storytelling