Stop, you're scaring me: climate change, nuclear power, and very serious people

Yesterday's New York Times had an interesting piece by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger about climate change communication.  They made the sensible point that scare stories tend to discourage effective responses to climate change.  Instead, people retreat into inaction, or erect personal defenses against a dangerous world � buying armored SUVs rather than Smart cars.

Instead of focusing on fear, a better way is to create messages that connect with peoples' experiences and values, including their views of how the world works, the appropriate role of government, and so on.  Folks like the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and Katherine Hayhoe have done terrific work on this topic.

So Nordhaus and Shellenberger make a useful point.  But towards the end they veer into weird territory, urging that we embrace "solutions" like nuclear energy.  This in spite of ample evidence that, in all but a few countries, nuclear energy's time has passed, and is unlikely to return, for very good economic reasons.  (It should also only take a moment's thought to realize that if a nuclear power station takes 10, 15, or more years to build, it's hardly an effective response to a climate emergency.)

One has to wonder about the inspiration for this nuclear fantasy.  Perhaps a clue comes from Paul Krugman.  He often explains peoples' preference for economic nonsense in terms of their desire to be thought of as Very Serious People.  Perhaps the same dynamic is at work when people invoke nuclear power: it seems to signal a willingness to think hard, and embrace an unpopular and difficult idea.  Even if it is nonsense.