John Kerry, Biden's special envoy on climate was a leading anti-nuclear force [pdf]
thesciencecouncil.com
thesciencecouncil.com
So he is either: (1) awfully unqualified to tackle climate change and/or (2) doesn't actually care about climate change at all and will keep on fear mongering and virtue signaling according to party lines and his political ambitions
When China copied the CleanTech technologies and started mass manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines, they kept fueling the same PR agencies to keep pushing the same ideas. Similarly, the same PR infrastructure was used by the middle eastern and European powers to stop shale oil extraction in the U.S. because they saw U.S. energy independence as a threat.
Some U.S. interests, specially the shale oil front, don't want to associate with the CleanTech green stuff anymore, so they have started developing another narrative. You can see current draft of it as a Michael Moore documentary released earlier this year... where he talks about how green energy efforts actually harm the environment... but since there is not much money in nuclear, he conveniently omits any discussion of nuclear in it.
Some other U.S. interests still heavily rely too much on "climate change" to let it go. So, it'll be interesting to see how this develops.
"The anti-IFR forces were led by John Kerry. He was the principal speaker and the floor manager of the anti-forces. He spoke at length, with visual aids. He went through the litany of anti-nuclear assertions, articulately and confidently."
Note this PDF is: Copyright © 2011
Let's be clear though. Either you don't know his current views or you are misrepresenting them to serve your political ends.
"During a speech at MIT on January 9, 2017, Secretary of State John Kerry explained that he once did not believe nuclear was a viable solution and supported Bill Clinton in shutting down nuclear research. He went on to say that, given the challenge of climate change and the advances in nuclear proposed in Generation IV, that researchers should “go for it”."
or read for more background:
https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2017/01/09/john-kerry-mit-cl...
Just to be clear. I don't care one way or the other about Kerry and I would rather see renewable energy thrive without the use of nuclear, but if it were a choice between that and fossil fuels, I would advocate nuclear. I am more irritated that you posted a giant PDF with a tiny aside to justify a clearly outdated political claim on HN.
I very much respect that he publicly claimed to have changed his position. Still, given the climate situation we are in, the importance of his new position and the overwhelming consensus between specialists that we need a 0 carbon mix of renewables + storage + nuclear, he should not have been even considered for this job because of his track record on the subject.
Had we (US) adopted nuclear like France did decades ago we would be on track for most if not all carbon emission goals.
According to the charity watcher guidestar (and SCGI itself):
"SCGIs continuing updates and education about advanced nuclear power systems, nuclear waste solutions, and little-known nuclear projects around the world has helped nuclear-friendly members of Congress clarify the essential role of this technology in responding to climate change"
https://www.guidestar.org/profile/26-4258384
(Note, guidestar is just parroting back what SCGI told the IRS)
I don't care about Kerry in the slightest, but don't come here with a 120k word essay on nuclear energy from a lobbyist that has a 40 word aside about Kerry and try to claim you just happened to stumble upon some "politically neutral" damning evidence.
Please take the political stuff to some other forum.