BNC Anti- to Pro-Nuclear, Pro- to Anti-, who's changed their mind? Barry Brook | 15 April 2011 at 1:03 AM | Categories: Nuclear, Policy | URL: http://wp.me/piCIJ-19u

Anti- to Pro-Nuclear, Pro- to Anti-, who's changed their mind? Barry Brook  | URL: http://wp.me/piCIJ-19u

Today I was speaking to a colleague about Fukushima and its implications on public attitudes to nuclear as a way to mitigate climate change. After I mentioned George Monbiot's recent investigative journalism on anti-nuclear claims, he responded by asking: Okay, sure, that's one person, but conversely, how many pro-nuclear environmentalists have turned anti-nuclear as a result of Fukushima?

George Monbiot - anti- to pro-nuclear

Well, that's actually a good question, and I don't really know the answer. So perhaps you can help? (see below for my preliminary sketch). What I'd like to do is compile a list of the following:
-- Prominent pro-nuclear advocates who have subsequently become anti-nuclear in their sentiments
-- Prominent anti-nuclear people who have changed their mind and switched to support of nuclear energy
The above two are binary choices, but there are other possible (more middle-of-the-road) attitudinal changes that would also be worth considering:
-- Anti-nuclear to neutral (or neutral to anti-)
-- Pro-nuclear  to neutral (or neutral to pro-), and finally...
-- Folks who formerly said "we can displace fossil fuels with 100 % renewable energy" but subsequently changed their mind after assessing the hard numbers
The largest group of people are almost certainly those that haven't changed their mind on this matter (or at least not for a long while), and there is probably not a lot of point listing these. Some obvious examples include Bruno Comby (always a pro-nuclear environmentalist?) and Helen Caldicott (perpetually anti-nuclear). Further, as far as I'm aware, no prominent environmental group (Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy, etc.) seems to have changed their position either, but if you know some that have, then they ought to be listed too.
Okay, to make this exercise tractable, we need some boundaries, so this is what I suggest:
1. The people involved should be prominent and (relatively) independent (e.g., public intellectuals and scientists, well-known environmentalists, politicians, celebrities? etc.). By 'independent' I mean those who have no clear vested financial interest in taking any particular position (difficult to be sure of, I acknowledge, given that everyone has some hook to hang their hat on).
Read more of this post