Do solar farms and windmills harm birds? How many birds are killed each year compared to how many die from nuclear? The flippant “lets do renewables” ignores that plastering the landscape with windmills and solar panels has some significant effects on wildlife that would exponentially increase with more widespread deployment. How many birds have died in France as a result of nuclear power?

Perhaps the answer is to not put nuclear plants in seismic areas and instead improve storage and transmission technology so that nuclear can be used more. Putting a reactor on a fault line, in a tsunami zone isn’t necessarily a beat practice, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Solar farms and windmills are ugly and environmentally harmful.