Why I Won’t March (for Climate)

Suzanne Hobbs Baker
Third Way
Published in
5 min readApr 28, 2017

I am an advocate for action on climate change, and that is why I am a nuclear energy supporter. A winding path led me to realize that these two positions are not at odds.

Large-scale ceramic sculptures inspired by ocean micro-organisms.

A little more than a decade ago, while studying sculpture, public art, and social practice, I became convinced that there was no larger threat to our planet and humanity than climate change. While taking a requisite biology course, the inspiration for my work, which had veered from topic to topic throughout art school, suddenly became laser-focused. I started making large-scale ceramic sculptures of tiny micro-organisms like cyanobacteria and diatoms. These creatures were responsible for transforming earth’s early atmosphere into an environment that would allow life to flourish. They’re also projected to be among the early casualties of ocean acidification — a phenomenon which we are now experiencing in full force.

Coral bleaching from ocean acidification.

Fast forward 10 years and I am still working every single day to stop climate change, now as a part of a creative team focused on clean energy policy solutions at a small think tank in Washington, DC. I’ve dedicated my career to understanding the intersection of climate science, energy technology solutions, and the social science that explains why it’s so hard to actually move forward with an adequate climate response. When so many of the barriers keeping us from acting on climate change are social and political, perhaps it was inevitable that I would end up working in policy.

The Third Way Clean Energy team with former Energy Secretary Moniz.

There is one specific social barrier that I have struggled with above all others for the decade: the outright rejection of nuclear energy as a climate solution by many in the climate community. I know the reasons are many and complex. Nuclear has earned a bad reputation. There are accidents. There is waste that still needs to be properly managed. There is a history of very poor public engagement, especially with indigenous communities, which needs to be reckoned with and changed. These are all legitimate reasons to question nuclear energy’s role, absolutely. But while you’re doing that, make sure to dig in and measure the environmental and human impacts of nuclear technology compared to other technologies. Learn about the potential for dramatically different advanced reactor designs. Most importantly, assess the risk in comparison to that of climate change. I’m one of countless environmentalists who have taken a hard look at these questions and determined that nuclear is a key tool that we must use if we are going to save our planet.

Blurry, fan-girl selfie of the author with Dr. James Hansen at COP21.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the former Obama Administration, and the UN Paris Agreement all concluded that we need nuclear, along with renewables and carbon capture and storage, to keep warming to a safe level. James Hansen, Ken Caldeira, and many other prominent climate scientists have laid their reputations on the line saying this is accurate. Almost all of the people who work seriously on this issue have come to realize that we cannot stop climate change without nuclear energy, but many of us still struggle to explain this reality. Currently 60% of the US’s carbon-free electricity comes from nuclear energy. There are around 60 startups in this country working to get even better, smaller, scalable, renewable-supporting advanced nuclear to the global market ASAP. It is a community full of passionate people who are explicitly working to stop climate change. But we are largely invisible in the climate conversation.

Working mere blocks away from the White House, I have marched more in the past 100 days than I ever imagined I would march in my life. I have marched for women, for immigrants, and for science. And despite working every single day on climate, I am not joining the climate march. That’s because the organizers seem to not care enough about climate to dig into the deep wealth of science on nuclear energy and climate change at all. I’ll say it again: Nuclear has challenges, both technical and social in nature. But if we truly care about climate change, we should be taking reasonable steps to manage nuclear’s challenges — in the same way we must learn to manage challenges posed by vital renewable technologies like wind and solar. The last thing we should be doing right now is carelessly discarding any of our most valuable climate tools.

The People’s Climate March Map with “Anti-Nuclear” section circled in red.

This march explicitly calls out nuclear, our country’s largest source of carbon-free energy, as a problem, rather than part of the solution. This ignores the community of people working to deliver clean energy to rural communities, to support the growth of renewables, and to improve the way the nuclear sector does business around the globe. It is clear that the march organizers have aimed to be very inclusive and socially responsible. Taking another look at nuclear as a climate solution would be an excellent next step in meeting those goals. At the very least they could refrain from attacking a growing community that fundamentally shares their aims to find socially just ways to stop climate change.

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