USA needs nuclear to achieve net zero, says US Energy Secretary Granholm

[hunter]

52. Wouldn't replacing coal plants with nuclear plants be part of that "growth?"

Next, shutting down the least efficient gas power plants and most onerous hydroelectric projects.

And, at the same time, building affordable "automobile optional" urban housing.

And so on.

To someone currently suffering a crappy low paying job that's not making the world a better place, or someone who can't find work at all, employment in any of these endeavors would be "growth" even as the per capita environmental footprint in developed nations declines.

It's not ethical to impose "degrowth" on people who live in poverty, people who already suffer the smallest survivable environmental footprints.

Anyone living in a shack in places like Kolkata, Cairo, or Mexico City isn't really the problem. Even with the garbage and sewage in the streets, their per capita environmental footprint is far, far smaller than that of any affluent "first world" person. Improving the infrastructure of these communities is the right thing to do even when it increases the per capita environmental footprint. That's economic growth.

I don't have a lot of patience with people who say overpopulation is the problem, especially affluent people who point to people in other nations who have no economic power. Someone who has an environmental footprint a hundred or even a thousand times greater than some family of five living in a slum really shouldn't be talking about "two-child" policies or anything like that.

It's apparent to me that the economic empowerment and education of women, along with realistic sex education and easy access to birth control, is the most ethical path toward a sustainable human population.

The poster children for overpopulation ought to be the Duggars, 19 kids and counting. Never give a million dollars to people like that.