The EU thread

[HisMajestyBOB]

those plants should never have been sold, not been put up for decommissioning when they were. The result of Green dogmatic madness and one of the reasons why Green never should be in government.
25 years ago we exported energy, now we're just about managing.
Greenism -> 3rd worldism.

As for Russia: not a big fan of the position. Russia needs to be defeated, and ideally dismantled

Why would a green party want to increase a country's dependence on fossil fuels? 

Because the alternative is scary atoms!

[HVC]

I blame the simpsons

[Duque de Bragança]

those plants should never have been sold, not been put up for decommissioning when they were. The result of Green dogmatic madness and one of the reasons why Green never should be in government.
25 years ago we exported energy, now we're just about managing.
Greenism -> 3rd worldism.

As for Russia: not a big fan of the position. Russia needs to be defeated, and ideally dismantled

Why would a green party want to increase a country's dependence on fossil fuels? 

Virtue signaling. 

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Yes to the scary atoms
Yes to the virtue signaling
And yes to getting money from the Russians

[HisMajestyBOB]

What nuclear power should have done was just aerosolized the waste and spew it into the atmosphere, and call it Green Nuclear, like coal. Then no one would object.

[Sheilbh]

I think green politics in much of the world originates in anti-pollution and conservationist movements - and I think that strand is dominant in the West until very recently. In that context there's often a fear of the "big"/preference for the small, but also a slight move of  the promethean side of humanity. It emerges in the 60s-70s in response to the depredations of industrial society. Atomic power is the acme of that - there's a reason it's the symbol of that 50s optimism which then curdles into 70s pessimism about waste and what we're doing to the planet.

And all of that was legitimate. The waste was a problem (the UK is second only to the USSR in the amount of radioactive waste we just dumped into the sea), there were disasters and hubris - industrial society was kind of a disaster (and still is, just displaced). It's a bit like the absolutely justified origins of NIMBYism: slum clearances, desires to constrain urban sprawl, heritage conservation in the face of mid-century modern arrogance.

It just turns out that while we were able to fix a hundred little local issues - hugely imporving many people's lives through increased care about the environment - in terms of the big picture issue the answer is what we see in China: promethean, industrial, massive, developmentalist (and there's the real third worldism ). For a long time I think it's been axiomatic that green politics and fighting climate change go together. And I'm not sure they do.

I think it reflects where green politics comes from and the actual environmental challenge the world actually faces - or perhaps an inherent tension between the local and global elements of environmentalism (I'm struck by the impact of environmental politics in China).