Yep, I’m playing the Dr Seuss card. I read it to my kids tonight and of course it worked a treat, but I confess to being pretty distracted throughout as I was identifying with the cheerful Sam-I-Am far more than usual.
Let Sam be people who have grasped at least the basic technical, environmental, societal and economic benefits of nuclear energy. I hesitate to group them under the label of a movement – in Australia, at least. I have seen them referred to as “the nuclear lobby” in comment threads, and more dismissively as “boosters”… Invariably in discussions where opposing arguments from ideology fail in, or simply avoid, addressing the sort of rapidly mounting evidence and analysis which originally set Sam on his path.
Keep looking at it, that’s a good start.
I hardly need specify that all these opponents can be represented by The Narrator, but during reading I was specifically picturing establishment environmentalists. These are the people who are employed full-time by ENGOs and to this day maintain the decades-old rejection of every aspect of nuclear technology (I’m still trying to find an instance of specific support for radiation and isotopic medicine, if there’s an obvious page I somehow missed, please post about it). The unavoidable question for such professionals is, when presented with the evidence which has and does convince nuclear supporters, on what basis do they reject it – do they have better counter-evidence, or are they worried about breaching their contracts?
Do you like green eggs and ham?
I do not like them Sam-I-Am.
So then there’s the oddly-paletted breakfast meal itself. Sam insists it’s good, that it would be suitable in a variety of distinct environs and with a diverse range of company, but is bluntly rebuffed. Our angry Narrator dislikes green eggs and ham, and this is reason enough to dismiss them regardless of where and with whom. Importantly, Sam is obviously knowledgeable in their preparation, and despite what we might presume to be a statistically small number of bad-tasting or even rancid servings in the past, both eggs and the ham survive the climactic traffic-train-maritime disaster without harming anybody.
Maybe it’s this stark demonstration of the quality of modern green eggs and ham, or maybe The Narrator is just pretty hungry by this point, but when he ultimately acquiesces…
“Thank you, Sam-I-Am!”
The Actinide Age 