Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Anecdotally Interesting #1: Friends of the Earth

Over and over we hear from the environmental movement how Big Oil is funding "climate deniers" and every other evil under the sun, because no one could disagree with CAGW unless they were corrupted by the evil of money. At the same time we are informed by the same people that Nuclear Power is the most horrible technology that exists. The idea that Big Oil should logically be funding much of the nuclerphobe movement is never addressed, which makes this story quite humorous.

Once upon a time there was a man named Robert Orville Anderson, he was apparently a very productive man; he founded the ARCO oil company and made a killing selling oil to all and sundry. Would that he had stayed focused on business! For there were dark clouds on the horizon of the oil industry: The atom was split, and it's energy was harnessed for productive purposes. But what to do about this? Obviously nuclear power would outcompete oil for energy generation, and that would reduce the demand for oil, reducing profits and squeezing the entire industry.

So what did Robert do? Well there were some people who split from the Sierra Club because they thought that it was insufficiently hardline on nuclear power, Mr. Anderson found them and gave them money to the tune of $200,000 to help them found the Friends of the Earth, an anti-nuclear environmental organization.

But I'm sure that FOTE is anti-nuclear based on facts and honest intentions, they could never be seduced by money.