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Celebrated environmentalist and scientist James Lovelock shocked fellow greens this week by supporting nuclear energy, but says this country does not need it.
"You've got all the renewables in the world. You're singularly fortunate," he told National Radio today.
New Zealand had "a lot of wind" with a small enough population and
enough space for wind turbines.
"You've got geothermal, I should imagine, in enormous quantities," Professor Lovelock said.
"I would have thought that New Zealand could be the first place in the world, after Iceland that is, to get all of its energy from renewables."
Prof Lovelock is the author of the Gaia hypothesis -- the theory that the Earth keeps itself fit for life by the actions of living things themselves -- and was one of the first researchers to sound the alarm about the threat from the greenhouse effect.
He fears global warming is advancing so swiftly that to prevent it overwhelming civilisation, a massive expansion of nuclear power is needed.
- NZPA
Green guru backs nuclear power
Herald Feature: Conservation and Environment
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