Dear Bill McKibben: Earthrise, Climate Truth, and the Nuclear Gap

On Tue, Apr 22, 2025, at 7:04 PM, Eric Anders wrote:

Dear Bill McKibben,

I want to begin by thanking you for your recent piece in The New Yorker, “The Failure—and Hope—of Earth Day” (April 22, 2025). Your reflections on the Earthrise photograph—captured by my father, Bill Anders, aboard Apollo 8—were deeply moving to me and my family. As you wrote, “With that image, we saw where we lived for the first time.” That single sentence distills what made the photo so transformative: it allowed the world to glimpse, for the first time, the fragility and unity of our home from the vantage point of deep space.

That image—equal parts scientific document and spiritual icon—was more than a symbol. It was a call to conscience. For me, it has become a compass. In the wake of my father’s death last year on June 7th, I’ve felt an urgent responsibility to carry forward the legacy of Earthrise, not only as his son but as someone committed to confronting the truths of the climate crisis without illusion or delay. As The New York Times obituary noted that day, he left behind not just a photo but “a turning point in environmental consciousness.” I want to honor that turning point by transforming it into an institution.

To that end, I’m in the process of founding Earthrise Accord—a new nonprofit devoted to exposing fossil fuel climate disinformation, advancing clean energy justice, and confronting the full scope of the fossil fuel industry’s harms. My hope is to have Earthrise Accord fully launched by the first anniversary of my father’s passing this June, as a way of continuing his work and giving enduring structure to the values that animated that iconic image.

The term "accord" was chosen deliberately to emphasize our commitment to fostering agreement and cooperation among diverse stakeholders. It reflects our belief that addressing the climate crisis requires collaborative efforts that transcend political, cultural, and national boundaries. By uniting scientists, policymakers, legal experts, and advocates, Earthrise Accord aims to create a cohesive and effective response to the challenges we face.

Though my father was a Republican and I’m a longtime supporter of Bernie Sanders, we always agreed on one thing: nuclear power is essential if we are to survive climate change. My father was not just an astronaut—he was also a nuclear engineer and former Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Long before the urgency of the climate crisis was widely understood, he saw nuclear as a moral imperative: a technology capable of lifting billions out of energy poverty without sacrificing the atmosphere.

We now know—and the best scientific evidence supports—that renewables alone will not be enough. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made this clear. A 2022 report by the UN Economic Commission for Europe concluded that nuclear power is “indispensable” for deep decarbonization. And a landmark analysis published in Joule (Jenkins et al., 2018) found that 100% renewables pathways—especially in large, industrialized countries—require enormous overbuilds of solar, wind, and storage, leading to excessive land use, system fragility, and escalating costs.

Nuclear power, by contrast, is the most land-efficient, safest form of reliable electricity we’ve ever developed. France proved this in the 1970s and 80s, decarbonizing its grid with nuclear faster than any country before or since. The U.S. Navy has safely operated nuclear propulsion systems for nearly 70 years without a single serious accident. And contrary to myth, nuclear waste has been managed safely, securely, and without environmental harm. In fact, all of the high-level waste produced by the entire U.S. nuclear fleet over its history could fit in a single football field, stacked 10 yards high. Compare that to the unquantifiable damage of 40 billion tons of carbon pollution emitted each year.

Yet nuclear has been systematically undermined—not just by fossil fuel interests directly, but through a disinformation campaign that redirected progressive environmentalist energies into opposing the one technology that could have replaced fossil fuels at scale. Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, and other once-honorable environmental organizations were recipients of fossil fuel funding during the crucial decades when nuclear power was vilified. As you know, the fossil fuel industry has long deployed this two-pronged strategy: delay climate action and discredit alternatives that threaten their dominance. Anti-nuclear propaganda was, and remains, one of their most successful weapons.

Earthrise Accord draws some of its legal inspiration from California v. Big Oil, a historic case that finally calls out the climate lies and cover-ups of the fossil fuel industry. But that lawsuit, as groundbreaking as it is, misses one of Big Oil’s biggest and most consequential deceptions: the attack on nuclear power. That omission undermines the very climate accountability the suit seeks to establish. You cannot fully expose the fossil fuel industry's lies if you ignore how they weaponized liberal environmentalism against nuclear power. Nor can we secure a livable future by doubling down on energy solutions that are intermittent, spatially intensive, and technologically insufficient for the scale of the crisis.

Earthris Accord is being set up as a transnational initiative—headquartered in Vancouver, which allows us to engage Pacific-facing policy and avoid the political volatility now threatening U.S.-based climate nonprofits. I’m building a board that brings together Chinese-Canadian and French legal experts, to reflect our central thesis: that the world’s largest emitter (China) and the world’s most successful nuclear decarbonizer (France) must be part of any serious global response. 

I also served as a psychoanalyst for many years, and I see our planetary impasse not just as a political or technical problem, but as a failure of symbolic and moral integration—a refusal to hold the full truth of what is necessary.

It would mean a great deal to me if you would consider advising us. Your voice carries enormous weight among people we hope to reach—not least because you’ve spent decades reminding us that climate change is not just a science problem, but a spiritual and ethical one. I believe we agree on the core question: the Earth is sacred, and the lies told in the name of profit must be exposed and stopped.

You can see the preliminary version of our website at the link below, though it is still being finalized. I’d be honored to speak with you further and share our plans in more detail.

With deep respect, Eric

Eric W. Anders, Ph.D., Psy.D.

Founder & Executive Director

Earthrise Accord www.EarthriseAccord.org

Honoring the legacy of Earthrise. Advancing climate justice through truth, accountability, and clean energy for all.

Bill McKibben’s Reply – Solar Hopes and My Nuclear Response

Bill McKibben’s name has long been synonymous with bold climate action. As a committed environmentalist myself, I’ve admired his leadership in the fight against fossil fuels. Recently, I reached out to Bill to share the Earthrise Accord perspective on an often contentious topic – nuclear power’s role in addressing climate change. To my surprise, he responded graciously. In his reply, Bill reaffirmed a conviction held by many mainstream environmentalists: that we can rely on solar panels, wind turbines, and battery storage to carry us to a carbon-free future, with little need for new nuclear plants. He expressed optimism that rapidly dropping renewable costs and improving batteries will make nuclear energy largely unnecessary. For example, he noted that replacing a single 1 gigawatt nuclear plant would require roughly 6 gigawatts of solar capacity (plus storage) to provide equivalent reliable power – a daunting build-out, but one he believes is achievable with today’s technology (Comments - Stare at the sun - by Bill McKibben - The Crucial Years). Bill also reiterated a common concern that new nuclear plants are too slow and expensive to help in the tight timeline we face, arguing that they “take decades to plan and build,” decades we simply don’t have given the climate urgency (The Future Is Electric | Bill McKibben | The New York Review of Books).

Reading Bill’s reply, I felt a mix of gratitude and frustration. Gratitude, because one of the environmental movement’s heroes had taken the time to engage in dialogue. Frustration, because his response – thoughtful and well-intentioned as it was – reflects a deep divide in our approaches to the climate crisis. Here was one of the world’s most influential climate advocates reaffirming a renewables-only vision—graciously, but unmistakably—while setting aside the case for expanding nuclear energy. As someone who has long engaged with both the science of climate change and the psychology of risk perception, I felt compelled to respond on two fronts. First, on a personal level, I wanted to acknowledge Bill’s longstanding contributions while exploring why our views on this issue diverge so sharply. Second, and more broadly, I recognized that our exchange reflects a deeper fault line within environmentalism itself—a debate not just about technologies, but about ideology, strategy, and what true climate realism now demands.

In this blog post, I will reflect on that email exchange and what it signifies. I will not mince words about where I think mainstream environmentalism has gotten it wrong on nuclear power, even as I remain respectful of all that pioneers like McKibben have achieved. This is a thoughtful but unapologetic exploration of why I – and the organization I co-founded, Earthrise Accord – have come to see nuclear energy as essential for climate justice, and why we believe clinging to a renewables-only position is a dangerous misstep. I invite you to follow along on this journey through history, science, politics, and personal discovery.

When “Green” Meant Anti-Nuclear: A Brief History

To understand the current reluctance to embrace nuclear power, we must first appreciate the history that shaped the environmental movement’s stance. For decades, “No Nukes” was virtually a green gospel. In the early days of nuclear power, influential groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace vocally opposed its adoption, equating it with the horrors of nuclear weapons and catastrophic accidents. This opposition was born in an era of legitimate fear – the Cold War backdrop of atomic bombs, the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown in Pennsylvania, and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster all loomed large in the public mind. Environmental organizations saw themselves as defenders of people and planet against a technology they viewed as unacceptably risky. Tragically, this early opposition was not only driven by idealism but also, as we now know, fueled by misinformation strategically disseminated by the fossil fuel industry (Nuclear Power and AI: The Climate Solution Green America Refuses to Understand). Documents and historical analyses have revealed that fossil fuel interests actively stoked public fears about nuclear safety and waste, knowing that stopping nuclear development would lock in dependence on coal, oil, and gas. In other words, oil and gas companies often found unwitting allies in well-meaning environmentalists when it came to demonizing nuclear energy (Ibid.).

The result was a decades-long stall in nuclear progress – and decades of continued reliance on fossil fuels that have directly contributed to the climate crisis we face today (Ibid.). Consider this: by the 1970s, France faced the same energy and environmental concerns as other industrialized nations. But during the oil crisis of that decade, France made a decisive pivot toward nuclear power. Today about 70% of French electricity comes from nuclear energy, a choice that allowed France to avoid billions of tons of carbon emissions that would have been emitted had they burned coal and gas like other countries (Ibid.). Thanks to this nuclear investment, France’s per capita carbon emissions are substantially lower than those of similar developed countries that shunned nuclear power (Ibid.). Meanwhile, nations like the United States, Germany, and Japan – where anti-nuclear sentiment slowed or stopped reactor buildout – remained hooked on fossil fuels far longer.

Environmental historian Stewart Brand (a founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and a veteran of the 1960s environmental movement) has offered a sobering post-mortem on this chapter of history. Brand openly acknowledges that by rallying public opinion against nuclear energy in the 1970s and 1980s, environmentalists unintentionally “caused gigatons of carbon dioxide to enter the atmosphere from the coal and gas burning that went ahead instead of nuclear” (Quote by Stewart Brand: “Unfortunately for the atmosphere, environmental...”). He even adds, “I was part of that too, and I apologize.” (Ibid.). This frank apology from a prominent environmentalist underscores a painful irony: in aiming to protect the planet from the risks of nuclear power, the movement exacerbated the far greater risk of climate change. Unfortunately, except for foresighted France (and a few others like Sweden and Ontario, Canada), the world largely “helped stop carbon-free nuclear power cold” during the late 20th century (Ibid.). The climate is now paying the price for those decisions.

Even as climate science became urgent in the 1990s and 2000s, many mainstream environmental organizations held fast to an anti-nuclear stance. Groups such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club have continued to campaign against nuclear energy, shaped by a different historical moment and wary of reopening what they saw as a settled issue (Earth Rise Manifesto: A Nuclear–DAC–Hydrogen Transition). Greenpeace, for example, highlights the accidents of the past and argues that “nuclear power is dirty, dangerous and expensive,” insisting that “the nuclear age is over and the age of renewables has begun.” ( Nuclear Energy - Greenpeace - Greenpeace ). As recently as 2021, the Sierra Club – America’s largest grassroots environmental group – stated it remains “unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy,” despite nuclear’s incredible ability to provide clean and reliable power (Generation Atomic to Sierra Club: OK, boomer, time to rethink nuclear -- ANS / Nuclear Newswire). This stance was born in an era when nuclear was conflated with nuclear weapons and environmental catastrophe, and it has proven stubbornly resistant to change.

To be sure, the cautionary stance of earlier environmentalists was not entirely without reason. Nuclear technology in its infancy was tied up with atomic weapons, and early reactor designs, while generally safe, were not yet battle-tested by time. The legacy of nuclear waste and the specter of accidents weighed heavily on the public. But we must ask: has the context not shifted dramatically since the 1970s? We now face an unprecedented climate emergency, where every non-emitting energy source should be on the table. Reactors have operated for decades with an admirable safety record in many countries. New designs promise even greater inherent safety and less waste. And most importantly, the climate math has become unforgiving. The atmospheric CO₂ level today is higher than at any time in human history, and we are careening toward dangerous tipping points. It is in this new reality that many of us in the environmental community have begun to fundamentally re-evaluate nuclear power.

Some prominent greens have indeed started to change their tune. Aside from Stewart Brand, we’ve seen figures like James Hansen (the NASA scientist who first warned Congress of global warming in 1988) become vocal advocates for nuclear as an essential climate solution. Even Greta Thunberg, the young face of climate activism, recently stunned many by critiquing Germany’s policy of shutting down nuclear plants only to burn more coal. She bluntly called it a “bad idea,” saying “if they are already running, I think it would be a mistake to shut them down and turn to coal” (Greta Thunberg calls Germany using coal over nuclear a ‘bad idea’ – POLITICO). Such moments hint at a generational shift: younger activists, facing the dire reality of climate change, are questioning the “renewables good, nuclear bad” narrative they inherited. Still, these voices remain the minority in the mainstream movement. Icons like Bill McKibben – and organizations like 350.org that he co-founded – have largely avoided endorsing nuclear, focusing almost exclusively on wind, solar, and battery solutions. This brings us to the present tension: can the environmental movement update its vision in time to meet the climate challenge, or will ideology triumph over pragmatism?

Solar-and-Battery Optimism vs. Hard Reality

Bill McKibben’s hopeful reply to my email exemplified what I’d call the solar-and-battery optimism prevalent in much of the green movement today. There is a near-religious faith that since the cost of solar and wind power has plummeted, and big batteries are starting to come online, we simply need to double down on those technologies to solve the problem. In this view, nuclear energy isn’t just seen as too risky; it’s seen as unnecessary – a distracting detour from the winning path of 100% renewables. Bill cited examples of progress: days when California hit 100% renewable electricity for a brief moment, or the exponential growth of solar installations worldwide. Indeed, the strides made in renewable energy are real and to be celebrated. But as someone concerned with technological and geopolitical realities, I feel compelled to scrutinize the limitations of a strategy that relies solely on sun, wind, and lithium batteries to run an entire world of 8 billion people.

Intermittency and Scale. The sun doesn’t always shine; the wind doesn’t always blow. This simple fact is often waved away by pointing to batteries or other storage that can fill the gaps. Yet the scale of storage required is staggering. Even Mr. McKibben himself has acknowledged that to replace a single 1 GW nuclear plant – which delivers round-the-clock power – you might need on the order of 6 GW of solar capacity plus massive batteries (Comments - Stare at the sun - by Bill McKibben - The Crucial Years). That’s because in real-world conditions, solar farms produce a fraction of their peak capacity once you average over nights and cloudy days. So you must overbuild capacity and store excess energy for later. For one plant, 6 GW of panels and enough batteries might be feasible; but imagine scaling that up nationwide or globally. The land area needed for solar farms and wind parks to equal the output of a fleet of nuclear stations is enormous. Some studies suggest that a 100% renewables system would occupy vastly more land – with attendant impacts on ecosystems and communities – compared to a high-nuclear scenario, which is extremely land-efficient. For environmentalists who care about preserving wilderness and biodiversity, this footprint issue cannot be ignored. A single modern reactor can deliver gigawatts of power on a plot of a few square miles or less, whereas equivalent solar/wind farms could require dozens or hundreds of square miles of land (Ibid.).

Reliability and Backup. Real-world examples are giving us sobering lessons. In Germany, which embarked on a famous Energiewende (energy transition) to renewables while phasing out nuclear, emissions have fluctuated stubbornly instead of plummeting. In 2022, Germany closed its last nuclear plants – and then had to burn more lignite coal (the dirtiest fuel) to keep the lights on, especially when wind output was low. The climate activist community was left in the awkward position of seeing a “green” victory (nuclear shutdowns) followed by an increase in carbon emissions – exactly the opposite of what we need. A similar story played out in my home country, the United States, when the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York was closed in 2021 after pressure from environmental groups. The shutdown was cheered as a win for safety and the environment by some local activists. But what happened? In the two years after Indian Point’s closure, New York City’s electricity got dirtier, as natural gas power plants ramped up to replace the carbon-free nuclear supply (A nuclear plant’s closure was hailed as a green win. Then emissions went up | Nuclear power | The Guardian). By 2024, NYC’s grid was producing higher emissions per megawatt-hour than before – an embarrassing backward step for a city that prides itself on climate leadership (Ibid.). As one energy policy expert put it, “from a climate change point of view it’s been a real step backwards,” a cautionary tale of what happens when we remove a firm zero-carbon resource without adequate replacement (Ibid.).

These examples highlight a crucial point: renewables-only advocates often underestimate the challenge of maintaining reliable power 24/7. In theory, you can solve intermittency by building an abundance of storage or dramatically overbuilding capacity (so that even in a bad week of weather you have enough generation). In practice, the cost and complexity of that solution are daunting. Yes, battery costs are coming down, but mainly for short-duration storage (on the order of hours). The hard reality is that storing days or weeks worth of energy (to ride through a prolonged grid stress event, a polar vortex, or a multi-week lull in wind called a “wind drought”) is extraordinarily expensive with current battery tech. We would need continent-scale grids with high-voltage lines moving power across time zones, and massive new storage solutions, and perhaps emerging technologies like green hydrogen, and drastic demand management – all together – to fully back up a 100% renewable system. Is it possible eventually? Perhaps. But is it likely to be faster and cheaper than simply building some nuclear plants? Many energy experts, including those outside the nuclear industry, have their doubts (We need to get serious about the renewable energy revolution—by including nuclear power - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists).

Cost and Speed. McKibben and others frequently argue that solar and wind are now cheaper than nuclear, so why not just build the cheapest stuff? It’s true that per kilowatt-hour, on paper, the levelized cost of solar or wind can be lower than that of new nuclear. But that comparison is misleading. It’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges – or rather, apples and orchards. A nuclear plant’s output is like an orchard that yields fruit in all seasons, whereas a solar farm is an orchard that yields fruit only in summer, and a wind farm yields on a windy day. To get the same annual output as the nuclear “orchard,” you must plant many more “trees” and build systems to store and distribute the sporadic harvest. When you factor in the total system costs – backup power, storage, transmission expansion, and the overbuilding – the economics tilt back toward neutrality, if not toward nuclear in many cases. Moreover, the notion that nuclear “takes decades” while we can deploy renewables overnight is a half-truth. Yes, an individual nuclear project can take 5–10 years to license and build (under current slow processes), whereas a solar farm can be erected in months. But we have to consider timelines at the system level: even after two decades of breakneck renewable growth, fossil fuels still supply about 80% of global energy. Transitioning the entire infrastructure in a single decade with only renewables would require a wartime-like mobilization on a scale we have never seen. Bill McKibben often invokes World War II-scale effort as a model – a mobilization I agree we need – but even WWII industrial buildup had the advantage of using the full suite of available technologies. We didn’t, for example, decide to only build battleships and not submarines because one was cheaper or more popular. We built everything we could. In the same vein, how can we in good conscience leave out one of the most powerful climate solutions (nuclear) at our disposal?

Resource and Geopolitical Constraints. An aspect of the renewables-only vision that gets insufficient attention is the material supply chain. Solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries are not conjured from thin air – they require vast amounts of mined resources: lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earth metals, copper, aluminum, steel, silicon, and more. To supply a 100% renewable system, mining of certain materials would have to scale up astronomically. For instance, the lithium demand for batteries could increase many times over, leading to heavy impacts on ecosystems and communities (lithium mining has already been linked to water depletion and pollution in parts of South America, and concerns about labor conditions in cobalt mines are well known). From a climate justice perspective, we must ask: where will all these minerals come from, and who bears the environmental burden of extracting them? Right now, much of the critical minerals supply chain is controlled by China or extracted in the Global South with significant local impacts. By contrast, a high-nuclear pathway might actually require less bulk material – because uranium is incredibly energy-dense and reactors themselves are heavy industry projects but relatively few in number.

There is also a geopolitical reality: nations are not equally blessed with high-quality solar or wind resources. A strategy that works in a sunny, sparsely populated country might falter in a dense, northerly nation. Northern Europe’s winters, for example, have little sun and often weak wind – a big reason why countries like the United Kingdom and Finland are now planning to build new nuclear plants to ensure reliability and energy security alongside renewables. Meanwhile, countries with abundant fossil reserves (like oil-rich states) might prefer to keep burning those unless a compelling alternative is offered. Nuclear power – being a dispatchable, high-output source – can provide energy independence to nations that otherwise must import fuels or vast quantities of manufactured panels and turbines. It’s telling that petro-states such as Norway and Canada, despite their green reputations, have been resistant to nuclear solutions. Norway, for instance, has a moratorium on nuclear energy even as it pushes renewable-powered carbon capture projects – an inconsistency Earthrise Accord has criticized as short-sighted (ERI’s Mission: A Nuclear, DAC, and Hydrogen Transition). In short, a renewables-only approach can leave us entangled in new dependencies – on foreign supply chains, on massive mining, on complex grid management – whereas embracing nuclear as part of the mix provides flexibility and resilience.

Safety and Public Perception. No discussion of nuclear is complete without addressing the elephant in the room: safety. Opponents will say, “What about Chernobyl? Fukushima? Nuclear waste that lasts thousands of years?” These concerns, while understandable, must be viewed in context and with updated facts. All energy forms have risks – the question is relative risk and what trade-offs we accept. The track record of civil nuclear power over the past 60+ years is actually excellent when compared to fossil fuels. Coal power pollution, for example, kills thousands of people every single day through respiratory diseases and accidents (Nuclear Power: An Exchange | Bill McKibben, Kevin Cahill | The New York Review of Books). Oil and gas have their deadly tolls through air pollution, explosions, and of course climate change itself (think of heatwaves, droughts, and storms already killing people).

Nuclear energy, by contrast, has caused far fewer fatalities. Outside of the unique Soviet-era disaster at Chernobyl (which was a reactor design that no longer exists in the West), modern nuclear plants have not produced mass casualties. Even the Fukushima accident in 2011, traumatic as it was, resulted in no direct deaths from radiation exposure according to the UN and World Health Organization – the evacuations themselves caused more harm to public health due to stress and disruption. Meanwhile, the radioactive waste issue, often portrayed as an intractable problem, is technically solved – we know how to contain and manage nuclear waste securely (some countries like Finland have built deep geological repositories). The volume of waste is very small relative to the energy produced, and new reactor designs aim to even re-use waste as fuel, essentially solving the problem that anti-nuclear activists have long pointed to. And yet, the perception of nuclear as dangerous lingers, largely due to outdated narratives and myths perpetuated over decades (Earth Rise Manifesto: A Nuclear–DAC–Hydrogen Transition).

Bill McKibben reflected that citizens have been wary of nuclear’s dangers for a long time, and whether they have been “too wary is a difficult question, but in a way it hardly matters” because public sentiment affects economic viability (Nuclear Power: An Exchange | Bill McKibben, Kevin Cahill | The New York Review of Books). I understand where Bill is coming from – as a social psychologist, I appreciate that public fears are real forces. But as he himself noted two decades ago, realism is crucial. And today realism means recognizing that the risk of unchecked climate change vastly outweighs the manageable risks of nuclear power. The world has learned from past mistakes; modern reactor designs are far safer and more standardized. Countries like France have shown that a nuclear-powered grid can run for decades without incident and with tremendous climate benefits. In fact, a strong case can be made that continued opposition to nuclear is no longer a “cautious” stance at all – it is an imprudent one in the face of climate peril. By insisting on waiting for 100% renewables, we may be gambling with the stability of the planet’s climate system.

Beyond Sun and Wind: Earthrise Accord’s Vision for a Just Transition

The exchange with Bill McKibben ultimately served as a springboard for me to articulate what Earthrise Accord is all about. Our mission is born from both hope and hard-headed realism. We believe humanity can rise to the climate challenge – but only if we are willing to use every tool at our disposal, and to discard ideologies that no longer fit reality. At Earthrise Accord, we champion what we call a “nuclear–DAC–hydrogen” transition as a pragmatic and just pathway to climate stability (ERI’s Mission: A Nuclear, DAC, and Hydrogen Transition). Let me break down what that means and how it directly addresses the concerns that many environmentalists have.

• Nuclear Power – The Constant Core: We see nuclear energy as the foundational pillar of a decarbonized global energy system (Ibid.). Why? Because it is the only proven technology today that can deliver continuous, high-volume, carbon-free power in virtually any location on Earth. Nuclear reactors don’t depend on the weather; they provide a steady flow of electricity and heat that can run not only our homes and factories, but also the critical climate solutions like direct air capture and hydrogen production. In our vision, existing nuclear plants should be kept running as long as safely possible (shutting them early, as we’ve seen, usually leads to backsliding with fossil fuels). At the same time, we advocate for deploying advanced nuclear designs, including Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which can be built faster and potentially cheaper than old gigawatt-scale plants. These advanced reactors are being engineered with passive safety features (meaning even in worst-case scenarios they shut down safely without human intervention) and some can even consume nuclear waste as fuel. Earthrise Accord is under no illusion that building nuclear capacity is easy – political opposition, regulatory hurdles, and financing are challenges. But we align with prominent ecomodernist thinkers and scientists who conclude that there is no viable path to deep decarbonization without a major role for nuclear energy (Ibid.). This isn’t wishful thinking; it’s a conclusion backed by reams of scientific analyses showing that countries hitting ambitious climate targets always have some mix of firm power sources in addition to renewables. Nuclear is the firmest low-carbon source we have. As we put it in our Earthrise manifesto, integrating nuclear into the climate fight is “not merely a technological roadmap – it is a moral imperative” (Ibid.) for any serious attempt at climate justice and a livable future.

  
  

• Direct Air Capture (DAC) – Cleaning Up the Sky: Even if we stopped all emissions tomorrow, climate science tells us that we likely must remove some of the CO₂ already in the atmosphere to limit dangerous warming. Direct Air Capture refers to technologies that literally pull CO₂ out of the air. This process, however, is extremely energy-intensive – essentially, you’re running giant chemical scrubbers to undo what our smokestacks have emitted. Where will that enormous energy come from? Earthrise envisions pairing DAC systems with nuclear plants that can provide the required electricity and heat 24/7 without emissions (Ibid.). This way, we can achieve negative emissions (taking out more carbon than we emit) to begin restoring a safe climate. If mainstream environmentalists are worried about nuclear power distracting from renewables, we counter that on the contrary, nuclear can directly enable other climate solutions like DAC that renewables alone might struggle to support continuously. The latest IPCC reports have made it clear that some level of carbon removal is “unavoidable” if we want to meet the Paris Agreement goals (Ibid.). Betting solely on renewables means betting that we can get to zero emissions fast enough to possibly avoid needing removal – a very risky bet. Earthrise’s approach is to build fail-safes: deploy renewables and nuclear, and use nuclear’s extra muscle to drive DAC at scale. It’s a both/and, not an either/or.

  
  

• Hydrogen – The Clean Fuel and Storage Medium: The third pillar of our strategy is hydrogen – in particular, clean hydrogen produced using carbon-free energy (we often call it “pink hydrogen” when nuclear is the energy source). Hydrogen can be made by electrolyzing water, a process that can run whenever you have surplus power. It serves multiple roles in a clean economy. Hydrogen gas (or derived fuels like ammonia) can store energy over long periods, something batteries struggle with. That means excess energy from a sunny summer day could be stored as hydrogen and used on a dark winter night – a form of seasonal storage to balance the grid. Hydrogen is also a direct fuel and feedstock for industries that are hard to electrify: think of steelmaking, aviation, long-haul shipping, chemicals. These are sectors where simply plugging in a battery won’t suffice; we need a green combustible fuel. Solar and wind can certainly make hydrogen too (that would be called “green hydrogen”), but again the issue is one of consistency and land use. A nuclear plant running 24/7 can produce a steady stream of hydrogen, effectively turning water into a clean fuel source at scale. This is why we emphasize hydrogen as essential to complement electrification. In Earthrise Accord’s model, nuclear reactors would not only feed the grid, but also feed electrolyzers to generate hydrogen in huge quantities (Ibid.). That hydrogen can be used to fuel vehicles, generate electricity via fuel cells or turbines when needed, and even be synthesized into carbon-neutral fuels for airplanes. Embracing hydrogen and nuclear together allows us to extend clean energy to every corner of the economy, including those parts that wind turbines and solar panels cannot directly reach.

  
  

• Climate Justice and Global Equity: A core value of Earthrise Accord is that the clean-energy transition must be a just transition – one that addresses the inequities of climate change and does not leave the developing world behind. Here again, an all-of-the-above approach is crucial. Many communities around the world still lack access to reliable electricity. Telling nations in Africa or South Asia that they must rely only on intermittent renewables could mean prolonging energy poverty, because a purely renewable grid requires sophisticated management and often, expensive storage that poorer countries cannot yet afford at scale. Moreover, these countries are often on the frontlines of climate impacts, so they need resilient energy systems. Earthrise Accord advocates for a model of energy leapfrogging: just as some regions skipped landlines for cell phones, we envision developing countries skipping coal and gas and going straight to a mix of clean solutions – including potentially modular nuclear reactors for dependable power, along with solar where it fits, plus clean fuels like hydrogen for cooking or transport. Climate justice also means holding the wealthy and polluting entities accountable. Our initiative talks about Energy Reparations: the idea that the fossil fuel industry – which knowingly profited while endangering the climate – should be made to fund the deployment of these clean technologies in the Global South (Ibid.). By exposing how fossil interests manipulated the energy narrative (for instance, funding anti-nuclear propaganda to protect their market (Nuclear Power and AI: The Climate Solution Green America Refuses to Understand), we aim to redirect the conversation toward solutions that truly serve humanity’s future, not the fossil fuel status quo. True climate justice, in our view, means giving every country the chance to lift its people out of poverty with clean energy rather than repeating the 19th-century path of coal, and doing so with support from those who built their wealth on carbon. This vision is ambitious, but it’s on the scale of what the climate crisis demands.

  
  

In articulating this, I want to make one thing very clear: Earthrise Accord is not “anti-renewable.” Far from it – we enthusiastically support solar and wind expansion as part of the solution. But we reject the false dichotomy that has been set up in some debates, as if one must choose either renewables or nuclear. The climate doesn’t care about our ideological preferences; it cares about emissions. And the blunt fact is we are running out of time to eliminate those emissions. Thus, we embrace renewables and nuclear, leveraging each where it makes most sense. Solar and wind are fantastic where they can be integrated – their costs have indeed come down and they should be deployed rapidly, especially in places with good sun or wind. But a resilient clean grid likely also needs always-on power, and nuclear is the scalable way to provide that without carbon. Likewise, battery storage is great for smoothing daily fluctuations, and we will build a lot of it, but for the deep backup and heavy-duty energy needs, nuclear with hydrogen storage offers a more feasible path. By being open to a broad toolkit, we increase our odds of success.

This philosophy stands in contrast to what I would call the “renewables-only orthodoxy.” That orthodoxy, adhered to by many well-meaning activists, holds that admitting any need for nuclear or other non-renewable tech betrays the cause – as if it’s a contest of purity. Earthrise Accord’s critique of this position is straightforward: it is not working. Global emissions hit a record high again in 2023. The all-renewable approach, where adopted, has often led to compromises that extend fossil fuels (as seen in Germany and parts of the U.S.). By clinging to a narrow solution set, the mainstream movement inadvertently ends up aligned with fossil fuel interests – a harsh claim, but one I make with evidence. Just look at the messaging: whenever an environmental group blocks a nuclear project or shuts down an existing reactor, the immediate beneficiaries are coal and gas plants that run more and sell more fuel. In effect, fossil companies have “weaponized” the anti-nuclear sentiment to keep themselves indispensable (Ibid.). We saw this clearly in the 1970s and 1980s, and we see it now: for instance, natural gas lobbyists often quietly back anti-nuclear campaigns because they know every reactor closed means more gas to burn. I say this not to cast aspersions, but to urge my fellow environmentalists to re-examine whose agenda is really being served by an uncompromising stance against nuclear.

It’s time to dispel the myth that adding nuclear into our climate arsenal will somehow slow down progress on solar and wind. On the contrary, I foresee a synergy: a world where clean energy of all kinds is scaling as fast as possible. Where solar farms bloom on every suitable rooftop and field, and advanced reactors come online to supply round-the-clock power to industry and cities, and giant air-capture machines scrub the sky powered by those reactors, and electrolyzers spit out hydrogen to fuel airplanes and store winter heat. This is not a science fiction scenario – it is entirely achievable with technology either already available or well into development. What’s needed is the political will and public acceptance to make it happen. And that, in turn, requires that environmental leaders update their thinking and tell the whole truth: that renewable energy alone, while wonderful, cannot do the job by itself in the narrow timeframe we have. We need to add the power of the atom to the power of the sun and wind if we are to leave a livable planet to our children.

Conclusion: Embracing the Moral Imperative

My correspondence with Bill McKibben ended on friendly terms. I thanked him for his reply, and I meant it. Engaging in dialogue, even when we disagree, is how progress is made. In writing this reflection, I am keenly aware that I stand on the shoulders of giants like Bill – without the global climate movement he helped build, we might not even be discussing solutions, because climate change might still be a fringe issue. I count myself as an environmentalist, as he is, and I share the ultimate goal of a sustainable, just world powered by clean energy. Where we diverge is in the means to get there, and I firmly believe that embracing nuclear power (along with emergent tools like DAC and hydrogen) is now a moral imperative in the fight for climate justice (Earth Rise Manifesto: A Nuclear–DAC–Hydrogen Transition).

“Moral imperative” is strong language, but I choose it deliberately. We are no longer dealing with an academic debate or a simple policy preference – we are dealing with matters of life and death, of planetary fate. The children of today and generations tomorrow will live with the consequences of our energy decisions. If we allow temperatures to rise 3–4°C by stubbornly pursuing an inadequate solution set, we will have failed them profoundly. Conversely, if we deploy every climate solution we have – including those that challenge our old assumptions – we stand a chance of averting the worst and preserving a habitable Earth. Nuclear energy and hydrogen are essential pieces of that puzzle. They offer a way to decarbonize rapidly without sacrificing the reliability and scale that modern civilizations require.

As I conclude, I want to directly address my colleagues in the environmental community who remain skeptical of nuclear. I understand your fear; I once shared it. As a psychologist, I know that once an idea is ingrained (like “nuclear = bad”), it is very hard to shift, especially when it is tied to deeply held values about protecting life. But I urge you to look at the data anew and to listen to the voices of young climate activists, scientists, and even former anti-nuclear campaigners who are saying, “we got this wrong.” The enemy we all face is catastrophic climate disruption, and in confronting that enemy we need unity, not division over old battles. It’s time to end the circular firing squad among environmentalists and focus on phasing out the true danger – fossil fuels – as quickly as possible. That means using nuclear power where it makes sense, as fast as we responsibly can, not as a competitor to renewables but as a partner.

Earthrise Accord will continue to push this message, combining scientific argument with a call for justice. We will challenge misinformation at every turn – whether it comes from oil lobbyists or outdated green pamphlets – and we will advocate policies that reflect climate realism. This includes urging governments to streamline nuclear licensing for proven designs, to fund research in safer reactors and better waste management, and to incentivize clean hydrogen production. It also means calling out the hypocrisy of nations or organizations that claim climate leadership while rejecting one of the key solutions to climate change.

In the Apollo 8 photograph “Earthrise,” which captured our world as a beautiful, fragile orb above the lunar horizon, astronaut Bill Anders (no relation) famously helped humanity see our shared home in a new light. That image birthed a wave of environmental consciousness. Today, we need a similar shift in perspective regarding our energy choices. Earth is one home, and we are one people, and we need every clean energy option to ensure that home remains livable. Nuclear power is not the villain of our environmental story – in fact, it may well be a hero we’ve been unwisely casting aside. Reimagining nuclear as a force for good is part of the narrative change we seek at Earthrise Accord.

Bill McKibben ended his note to me by expressing hope that the renewable revolution would accelerate. I share that hope. But I also extend it: I hope the renewable revolution grows into a clean energy revolution – one that includes a renaissance in safe nuclear power, a boom in clean hydrogen, and the deployment of carbon capture to undo some of our past mistakes. Only with this broader vision can we achieve the scale of decarbonization required. I remain optimistic that minds can change, because mine did.

In the end, what we owe future generations is nothing less than the truth, uncolored by our former biases. The truth is that solar and wind alone are not enough, and the sooner we admit that, the sooner we can get on with building the energy system that is enough. The Earthrise Accord is our promise to fight for that holistic solution. I invite all who care about the planet – including you, Bill – to join us in embracing this cause. Together, let’s secure a world where the lights stay on without warming the Earth, where every community has access to clean, reliable energy, and where we can say we did everything in our power to turn the tide. Embracing nuclear power and hydrogen fuel is not about yielding on our environmental principles; it’s about fulfilling them in the truest sense – by ensuring climate justice and a flourishing Earth for all.

In the face of the climate crisis, we must be brave enough to update our beliefs and bold enough to use every solution. The future will not judge us on whether we stayed ideologically pure; it will judge us on whether we succeeded in preventing climate catastrophe. On that score, I am unapologetic: we need to put aside old dogmas and get to work – atoms, electrons, molecules and all – to let the Earth rise to a safer, brighter tomorrow.

Sources:

• McKibben’s perspective on nuclear vs. renewables (The Future Is Electric | Bill McKibben | The New York Review of Books)

• Earthrise Accord Manifesto on nuclear as a moral imperative (Earth Rise Manifesto: A Nuclear–DAC–Hydrogen Transition)

• Historical environmental opposition to nuclear shaped by fossil misinformation (Nuclear Power and AI: The Climate Solution Green America Refuses to Understand)

• Stewart Brand on the cost of anti-nuclear activism in emissions (Quote by Stewart Brand: “Unfortunately for the atmosphere, environmental...”)

• Greenpeace’s current stance against nuclear power ( Nuclear Energy - Greenpeace - Greenpeace )

• Indian Point closure leading to higher emissions in New York (A nuclear plant’s closure was hailed as a green win. Then emissions went up | Nuclear power | The Guardian)

• Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on the need for nuclear in a renewable revolution (We need to get serious about the renewable energy revolution—by including nuclear power - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)

• Greta Thunberg urging nuclear plants to stay open rather than burn coal (Greta Thunberg calls Germany using coal over nuclear a ‘bad idea’ – POLITICO)

• France’s decarbonization success with nuclear power (Nuclear Power and AI: The Climate Solution Green America Refuses to Understand)