Today I went to a debate at the Edinburgh book festival. It was called "Energy is Power" and was ostensibly about nuclear energy. The panel was made up of Tim Radford, the former Guardian science editor, a engineer who worked on wave power and an English lecturer from St Andrews. I chatted to some of them beforehand and they were very charming.
As for the debate, some minor differences about wind power apart the panel members seemed to agree on most things: that there was no alternative to renewables, that nuclear was a non-starter, that we should change our lifestyles, that capitalism and Americans were bad. The balance of panel members seemed a little, erm, unbalanced.
Tim Radford said that the Chinese would have been better off without the development of the last twenty years because this had led to Kentucky Fried Chicken (actually I was in Shanghai 20 years ago and they had Kentucky Fried Chicken then (just). Someone wondered what kind of low-carbon transport he had used to get there and he cheerfully admitted to a measure of hypocrisy. The English lecturer chap seemed to think that the Africans would be better off without development too.
Some time after this I lost the will to live and I'm afraid to say my mind wandered.