Collaborative Proposal Creation
Create, improve and sponsor proposals in a respectful, fully bilingual environment. Grow proposals in the "Hothouse", for promotion to the "Workshop", to become official GPC policy.
Proposal text
Be it resolved that the Green Party of Canada long conflicted between the horror of nuclear weapons and the need to support reliable and clean nuclear power,
• will adopt a view of nuclear power that is consistent with the best scientific knowledge and practices, and
• will advocate for the continued development of nuclear power technologies, extraction technologies, nuclear waste disposal, and alternative nuclear fuels.
Type of Proposal
Public policy that the party would represent
Objective / Benefit
The GPC has a longstanding public position of preferring renewable power generation instead of nuclear power generation. Yet not one policy currently addresses the beneficial effects of nuclear power. All policy references to nuclear are to the prevention and control of nuclear weapons.
The objective of this policy is to establish a new policy that addresses the benefits of the use of nuclear power generation in a changing environment that urgently needs reliable power generation.
- Whereas the policies of the Green Party of Canada are to be based on scientific principles, and
- Whereas we now know how to build nuclear power plants that are far safer than our current operational designs, and
- Whereas nuclear power generation can be demonstrated,
- to be the least polluting of all electricity generation technologies, in terms of CO2 production per MW of capacity,
- to have the smallest footprint in terms of station size, acres per MW of installed capacity,
- to have the lowest volume of waste production in terms of tons per MW,
- to require the least input of scarce resources in terms of tons per MW,
- to have the best safety record of all generation facilities in terms of loss of human life per MW of installed capacity, and
- Whereas we do know what to do with spent nuclear fuel to ensure safety.
This policy will complement and expand the policies of the Green Party of Canada, making them more appropriate in an intellectually honest way.
If your proposal replaces an existing policy or policies, which one does it replace?
This is new policy. All existing policy addresses various aspects of the undesirability of nuclear weapons. It does not in any way reduce the relevance of those policies.
List any supporting evidence for your proposal
1. Jack Devanney, The Two Lies that killed nuclear:
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-two-lies-that-killed-nuclear
2. Jack Devanney, Why Nuclear Power Has Been a Flop:
3. Cleo Abram, The Big Lie About Nuclear Waste:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzQ3gFRj0Bc
4. Burning Nuclear waste:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u44skO-nMo
5. IEA on Nuclear Power:
https://www.iea.org/energy-system/electricity/nuclear-power
6. Our World in Data, Death Toll from Chernobyl and Fukushima:
https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima
7. Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, LNT:
https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/resources/health/linear-non-threshold-model/index.cfm
8. Original text of this proposal: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/j5bvh4dagagllrhus59h9/GPC-Nuclear.docx?rlkey=8ozj24vcajsvofrtgtpy9pt85&st=uvmsga8g&dl=0
Does this proposal affect any particular group and what efforts have been made to consult with the group or groups?
There are many in the party and outside, who consider Nuclear Power to be so dangerous as to be categorically denied as a solution to our future power needs. This policy reverses that perception of Nuclear Power. It is likely to alienate such people in their support of the party.
There is also likely to be an adverse reaction from the Global Greens, which would need to be carefully managed, though it is to be hoped that this motion will start a greens-wide reassessment of their positions on nuclear power.
Jurisdiction: Is this proposal under federal jurisdiction?
Yes
Please indicate the language the proposal is being submitted in.
English
This proposal is being evaluated
Posted on the Continuous Motion Development Vote tab for member review prior to the all-member vote.
Amendments (3)
-
Created at
24/05/2024 -
- 0
-
Created at
05/07/2024 -
- 0
-
Created at
10/07/2024 -
- 2
We're building a new kind of politics. One that is open, participatory, and people-powered
If you believe in what we're doing, please consider making a small donation to help us build it
Related images
Report inappropriate content
Is this content inappropriate?
Comment details
You are seeing a single comment
View all comments
To come at it from another angle: can you imagine what would happen if the Liberal party had to decide the most important facts about a topic based on the popular opinion of 100 experts in that topic?
This is completely opposed to how parties normally work. Normally the party members choose which facts are credible and pick experts who definitely agree that the credible facts are, in fact, facts. Doesn't matter if it's Liberal, Conservative, Republican or Democrat. The people _choose_ the facts, maybe even vote on them, then they pick popular experts who conform to the facts: Republicans pick Roy Spencer and Judith Curry to prove the science isn't settled; Democrats pick Michael Mann and Mark Z Jacobson, because while thousands of climate scientists agree AGW is real, the Right Choice is whoever is popular with Democrats.
Humans do cause climate change, of course, but that doesn't mean a typical person has good reasons to believe it. For example, if you believe it because 97% of experts agree, congratulations, that's a pretty good reason (although I investigated that very issue and the results are not necessarily as you expect[1]).
But if you believe it because all your friends think so and you hate those anti-science Republicans and "everyone knows it's true", those are very bad reasons, sorry.
Suppose you then watch many YouTube videos offering two dozen reasons why AGW is Definitely Real, and then you learn all 24 reasons and repeat them all over the place, and one of the reasons is "97% of climate scientists agree". Do you have good evidence now? No because the "97%" line is merely a bullet in your gun, something you shoot at conservatives to annoy them, it's not the real reason you believe what you believe. Even if you later decide that "97%" is the "best" argument, I would be very skeptical as to whether your belief in AGW is reasonable, drenched as it is in confirmation bias.
The problem is that this way of deciding the truth is basically like a MAGA Republican who hates those "woke deep-state Democrats" and whose friends all agree that climate change is natural (as everybody who took the red pill knows) so he watches lots of Rumble videos on the topic and memorizes 24 reasons why humans don't cause climate change and it hardly changed in the first place.
I actually have insider knowledge of where "97%" came from in Cook et al 2013. But on YouTube, someone told me that ACTUALLY Cook et al 2013 found a consensus over 99% but then for some reason (which I have forgotten, sorry) it just got reported as 97%. I left without saying another word, but that BS left an impression on me.
Political party members believe a lot of true things, because wrong methods often find correct conclusions. I oppose wrong methods, though. I don't know where your conclusion came from, so it's hard to judge. But I can promise you that I am VERY principled about what I believe.
[1] https://dpiepgrass.medium.com/scrutinizing-the-consensus-numbers-70faf9200a0c
Loading comments ...