A Bleak Future

Today, the Rocky Mountain News has a guest editorial celebrating a vote by the Fort Collins city council opposing uranium mining in its vicinity. The goal of the activists isn't just to stop uranium mining near Fort Collins, it is to stop it everywhere:

We encourage other communities in Colorado to take a long and hard look when uranium mines are proposed in their areas...

On Dec. 4th, the city of Fort Collins made history by opposing this mine, but what it also did was help write a new history of Colorado. Instead of the history our generation inherited - one dotted with mines, endless pollution and endless Superfund clean-up costs - the next generation might inherit a cleaner, greener Colorado, one that protects both the economy and the environment.

We expect Mark Udall to jump on this bandwagon, not because it is good policy, but because he is reflexively anti-nuclear power.

No one in the environmental community, let alone Mark Udall, seems to realize that we will eventually outrun our ability to produce enough renewable power to meet our needs. Our population won't stop growing. If we want to break our dependence on fossil fuels, nuclear energy must have a place at the table.

If we, as a state and nation, cannot accept and act on that simple fact, our children and grandchildren will have a bleak future. Worse, it will be artificially and needlessly bleak. Doubtless there was a lot of back slapping and self congratulations in Fort Collins outside council chambers, but it was terribly misplaced.