Our planet will survive, it’s in no danger. It’s the current life on it, particularly the higher, more complex forms, including us, for whom the bell is tolling.

To the point, I see current renewables as a temporary fix. Grid battery storage for windfarms, solar, and tidal generation is a dead end, as are battery powered vehicles, etc, without a massive leap in battery technology to obviate the current need for rare earths. Mining those is already destroying, polluting, and despoiling previously unravaged parts of the planet.

Nuclear fusion is the only long term way out, assuming we survive for long enough. At the moment, it still requires more power to get a fusion reaction going than it produces itself, but much progress has and is being made. It’s an area of research that needs a lot more resource thrown at it. Don’t hold your breath for now though.

But I will also throw in the almost sinful thought about traditional nuclear fission power. Not uranium based though. Thorium reactors. Not dangerous, not polluting, can’t melt down, can be made almost portable size (at least with a large truck, for now), and no hideous very long term waste management problems. And there’s lots of easily obtained thorium about. Check them out. A very viable stop gap until practical fusion arrives (and it will).

Interesting post. It's good to be reminded no energy source is completely 'clean' but I still can't get over the fact that nuclear waste will be radioactive for thousands and thousands of years. How is it possible to guarantee safe storage of nuclear waste for that long?

Renewable energies are not cheap enough yet. Most of them are growing on subsides or to avoid fines. But it is important for technology development, the hope is that we will have a breakthrough before climate change goes to hell.
Nuclear is a good option, it polutes less than coal mine or the current standard of oil spillage.
But see, the coal mine kills people in a small town of poor people that do not matter, and not on your yard if an accident happens. So it feels safer. More people died per power generated of coal than the same from nuclear. But is analogus to car/plane accident, you know that plane is safer, but a plane accident is a huge headline.

Wind/solar/batteries biodigestors, mini hydroeletrics, geothermal, all can be done and used and they are evolving, but the cost NOW is still higher than coal, oil and gas

Several wind farms were constructed in my area. A lot of them are not producing enough power to turn a profit from electrical production alone, thanks to lowering costs of natural gas, industries moving away from the area, and energy conservation efforts. They are only still in operation thanks to government subsidies.

One issue with the article talks about solar panels and the sun going down. Well the simple solution is to just store the energy from the sun and when it doesn't shine you use the saved energy. It might not be viable all the time or in some places on Earth, but it's no reason to scratch solar energy.

Another issue is costs, but costs will always be at their greatest when you first start. Solar energy cost is falling. [news.energysage.com] [solar-estimate.org] [utilitydive.com] [greentechmedia.com] [news.mit.edu] [pv-magazine.com] [businessinsider.com] (<--- look at the huge decline in solar costs in the graph - this one actually shows nuclear is more costly than solar and actually the most costly)

Have you ever heard of any solar energy disasters on any level you hear oil or nuclear disasters? I think there has been one accident with a solar plant and some panels and pipes burned. This author is telling us that nuclear has never killed anyone? What about the most recent Fukushima and all the material it let out in the ocean? Not exactly something they can get concrete numbers on deaths from anyway. [large.stanford.edu]

Needing big amounts of land isn't a problem either. Most of the land in the U.S. isn't even used. Outside of the big cities, there is tons of land. There are other countries that have done it and have no problem. The author is worried about killing large birds, but does he care about what logging does to entire habitats for animals? Or what about oil spills? Or any other industrial activity that kills plenty of animals or takes away their habitat? I don't buy the idea he is peddling about the land.

He also talks about the cost. What is the cost of the defense budget every year that is required for the U.S. to have resource wars, and what about the cost of the loss of human life? The innocent people killed in these wars? The sanctions put on countries like Venezuela by the U.S. that kills Venezuela's citizens because Venezuela (country with the largest oil reserves in the world - more than Saudi Arabia) doesn't want to obey the U.S.?

Here's more on the author of that article:

Exposing the misinformation of Michael Shellenberger and 'Environmental Progress'
[wiseinternational.org]

Michael Shellenberger’s pro-nuclear lobby group ‘Environmental Progress’
[nuclear.foe.org.au]

A radioactive wolf in green clothing: Dissecting the latest pro-nuclear spin
[independentaustralia.net]

The Breakthrough Institute's Inconvenient History with Al Gore
[ethics.harvard.edu]

“Environmental Progress”and Michael Shellenberger -spreading nuclear lies and quack science
[nuclearinformation.wordpress.com]

Even alternative energy only slows down the crisis though, but it's better than nothing. Maybe something actually sustainable will come along. Maybe growing hemp should be incorporated into alternative renewable energy where solar panels can be made of hemp instead of oil. I don't know if we would need oil in the production of these hemp solar panels though, but it would seem we would need it for the machines that help produce the solar panels on a larger scale. You see the issue? Everything seems to need oil in production of the energy that we use. Also, with some alternative energies, if it takes more energy to create than we get out of it, that's also a problem. It's one of the reasons why companies will stop past a certain point of drilling for oil. There is still oil in the Earth, but a lot of it is too deep for us to economically make it worth it.

Al Bartlett gives a good lecture on energy:

Nuclear is also one of the most expensive electrical generation. Solar is the least expensive new electrical generation and then wind. "Japan's economy, trade, and industry ministry recently (as of 2016) estimated the total cost of dealing with the Fukushima disaster at ¥21.5 trillion (US$187 billion), almost twice the previous estimate of ¥11 trillion (US$96 billion)." I believe the estimated clean up has increased even more now.

If only we could drill past the Earth’s crust and deposit nuclear waste in the mantle. That’s my amateur idea.

countries like germany will rue the day they decided to abandon nuclear power.