Did Stewart Brand start a cascade?
13 April 2005 by Hydrogen PowerIt’s beginning to appear as though Stewart Brand and the related discussion going on around the Internet could be a trigger event for a preference cascade. Now that a well known and respected figure with undeniable credentials in the environmental world has come out in favor of nuclear energy, it may now be respectable for other environmental groups or individuals to admit, they, too, believe nuclear energy could be the best of the available options for moving away from fossil fuels. Until some figure or event makes a change in thinking acceptable, many will shy away from proposing an idea or showing openness to it. Now that Brand has moved the discussion over the threshold, we may find previous resistance collapsing. Many more supporters may exist and may have always existed than anyone realized.
Those in favor of a hydrogen economy should look at a nuclear-hydrogen economy as the most comprehensive of the available options for future energy needs while reducing output of greenhouse gasses. In the same way that scientific theories answering more questions are better than those answering few, the symbiotic relationship of nuclear power to the grid while producing hydrogen for a multitude of other power uses and at the same time dramatically reducing greenhouse emissions is hard to beat. Let the cascade begin.
Your thoughts? Please remember, this is a public forum. All comments are filtered. Profanity will not be tolerated.
