Greets and saluts from the NYC metro area. The confab in Copenhagen is underway and there’s all this glorious talk about how this country or that country or the world is going to reduce emissions by X percent by 2020 or 2050.

How exactly are they going to do that? Are they going to stop building coal powered plants and build dozens of new nuclear reactors? Are they going to electrify all their rail infrastructure? Are they going to rebuild and expand the power grid so that plug-in electrics are going to be easily accessible and widely available so that you don’t have to worry about not being able to plug in your car because of energy shortages?

No, the talk is just that - talk. Nuclear isn’t getting the serious consideration in the US, and China is busy churning out 2 new coal power stations a week, even as they’re looking to bring new nuke plants online at the same time. Conservation isn’t going to get the job done because even if we limit our power consumption, natural population growth means that actual usage continues increasing and with it the related emissions.

Some of the same people who bray loudest over energy consumption are those who are stridently against nuclear power, even though no other energy source is as reliable or can produce cheap energy over the life of the fuel cycle (coal plants are cheap to build, but the cost is immense due to the constant fuel demands; nukes are expensive to build, but once fueled, are cheap to operate).

It’s dollars and sense, and both are lacking in the global climate change talks even setting aside the science involved.