If the public wants to continue enjoying the creature comforts offered by civilization, it had better start getting used to the idea of building more nuclear power plants, says Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace activist.
That’s because the only alternative, as natural gas and oil supplies dwindle, is coal, which as a major emitter of carbon dioxide, contributes to global warming.
“The cheap oil is gone,” said Moore, adding that although there is plenty of unconventional petroleum left in the world, most of it will be like the Alberta tar sands: costly, difficult to extract, and unable to keep pace with demand.
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“Oil will be $300 a barrel sooner rather than later, but that’s still cheap. At $60 a barrel, oil is only 10 cents a cup. You can’t get beer for 10 cents a cup. And how easy is it to make beer?”
Present prices don’t make sense, he said, considering the effort and expense required to drill for crude oil, refine it and bring it to the customer.
“A litre of gasoline is over $1 now, but you can hardly find a litre of (bottled) water for $1.”
A former president and one of the founders of the environmental activist group, Moore went on to found Greenspirit Inc. in 1991, which he said seeks consensus-based solutions rather than confrontation.
His keynote speech at Manitoba Potato Days in Brandon last week was sponsored by Syngenta Crop Protection.
Moore’s move 15 years ago resulted in his former comrades denouncing him as a sellout. One anti-logging internet website lists 10 reasons why Moore is a “big fat liar.”
Moore, who began his presentation with slides of his adventures with the 1970s long-hair-and-beard set, said that Greenpeace’s shift from activism to fanaticism drove him to leave.
Had public opinion not shifted away from nuclear power in the 1970s, said Moore, the energy crisis would never have materialized.
“We think we’ve got a lot of gas in Canada. But the whole of North America has less than five percent of the world’s gas reserves and is at present consuming 25 percent of world pro-duction,” he said.
“The U.S. didn’t want to build any more nuclear or coal plants, and so now they have made themselves totally dependent on the outside world for natural gas for electricity and heating, and oil for transportation.”
Ground source heat pumps, also known as geothermal heating, a proven technology that taps heat energy from underground, could provide cheap, carbon friendly heating if the electricity to operate the pumps came from nuclear plants or other sources, Moore said.
Other solutions to the coming energy crisis will require huge investments in renewable sources such as hydro, wind, geothermal, biomass and solar, if costs can be reduced, he added.
