Friends who are in a different political camp from me¹ are often shocked to find that I’m very comfortable with the idea of nuclear energy. They are used to people who care at all about the environment also being reflexively anti-nuclear. I used to be – in the 80s it made sense, because we knew all about the costs and consequences of nuclear energy in terms of radioactive waste, and didn’t yet have a proper understanding of the costs and consequences of fossil fuels. I still think the ideal solution to our energy woes would be to put enough money and thought into it to (a) dramatically cut our energy use and (b) switch over to sustainable and much lower-impact (I nearly said ‘non-polluting’, but there ain’t no such animal) technologies like solar, wind, tidal, geothermal and so on. But I’m realistic enough to realise that we do like our lifestyles – me definitely included – and are likely to need large and increasing amounts of energy going forward. And until fusion gets here, fission might have to be an important piece of the puzzle.

Similarly, I think ethanol in fuel is a horrible idea. It’s very slightly more sustainable than fossil fuels, but it takes food off poor people’s plates as a sop to the consciences of rich people. Unacceptable.

And finally, I like motorsport. I like things that burn fossil fuels to go fast.

All of those things could just make me a bad, hypocritical environmentalist who lacks the courage of his convictions. But I like to think, at least, that caring about what kind of world and opportunities we leave for our descendants doesn’t have to mean reflexively, unthinkingly buying into a grab bag of solutions and approaches. It can, and should, mean using our very best scientific and reasoning skills to find approaches that really work.

1. It’s actually really hard to find an appropriate label for them. ‘Antienvironmentalists’ isn’t quite right, because although they’re against environmentalists they’re not against the actual environment itself (though they sometimes pretend to be for effect). ‘People who are all for progress’ isn’t right either, because it’s only the progress of industrialisation and technology, not human progress in relationships and so on… ‘Capitalists’ is close to it, but has a lot of other irrelevant connotations. Call it ‘people who insist that climate change is just the latest in a long line of government scare campaigns to make us compliant’, since that seems to be a pretty reliable marker…