As far as I can tell, there are precisely three environmentalists of any note who have come to support nuclear power: James Lovelock, Stewart Brand, and Patrick Moore. It’s become something of a parlor game for journalists to mix and match those three names in an effort to claim that there’s a "growing debate" among environmentalists about nuclear.
As far as Moore goes, I wonder how much time has to pass before journalists stop calling him "the former head of Greenpeace" and start calling him an industry lobbyist? This Wall Street Journal mash note manages to burn through several hundred words about Moore’s miraculous conversion without ever mentioning that he’s a paid shill for the nuclear industry. Isn’t that relevant?
Anyway, it’s always amusing to see mainstream journalists’ unshakable conviction that greens oppose nuclear power because their brains stopped working in the ’70s. It simply never crosses their minds that greens have "re-evaluated" nuclear power and found it (still) wanting. This notion that global warming is supposed to spur new support for nukes makes no sense — global warming just means we need to allocate our resources as intelligently as possible, and sinking billions of taxpayer dollars into trying to revive the moribund nuclear power industry is a waste of money that would have more impact spent elsewhere.
