Fusion, finally

OPINION:

Fusion, the nuclear reaction that occurs inside the sun, has been achieved on Earth. By supplying humanity with limitless, clean energy, fusion would not simply be a game-changer; it could potentially transform the world. If that eventuality becomes reality, it won’t be owing to — but rather despite — globalist aspirations.

On Tuesday, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm confirmed that decades of effort to produce a fusion reaction has finally paid off. “This is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century,” she told a Washington news conference.

The breakthrough has come at the Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, where researchers have trained an array of lasers inward onto a capsule containing hydrogen. The atoms inside reached temperatures beyond those existing at the center of stars, transforming them into a plasma in which particles fuse together to create helium. Astoundingly, more energy is generated than is expended to produce it. It’s all carbon-free energy, and there is none of the radioactive residue of fission.   

Scientists acknowledge that their milestone achievement is only an initial step in a process that could still take decades to perfect. The day fusion energy is available for widespread use promises to mark the end of emissions-producing fossil fuels and the start of a clean energy era.

This is a proud American moment — except for one thing: A central Democratic principle is, in the words of Obamaite Rahm Emanuel, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.” Fear of climate change is just such a “serious crisis” and, consequently, it is integral to President Biden’s agenda. Mastering clean energy would halt human-caused global warming and undermine plans crafted by world leaders for a “great reset.”

“Progressives” scoff at the application of such a label to their ministrations, but there can be little doubt that widespread anxiety over the purported fossil-fuel emissions-climate change link has proved an effective force multiplier in their drive toward a less-free, more-regulated world. In August, Mr. Biden signed the misnamed $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act, which he called “the biggest climate bill in history.” Attending the United Nations’ COP27 climate summit in November, he quadrupled U.S. aid for international climate projects, to $11 billion.

Were the great leap forward in fusion suddenly to solve the existential threat to the planet attributed to human-caused global warming, energy alternatives promoted by Mr. Biden and his fellow climate change opportunists would be relegated to the sidelines of history, like horseshoe blacksmiths were when automobiles rolled into town.

As Greenpeace energy expert Jan Haverkamp has told The Independent: “We’ve never been in principle against any technology, but it is very clear, every time you start calculating, that the moment you introduce nuclear, the costs are going up and the speed of change is going down. That’s exactly what we can’t afford now as climate change is becoming ever more real.”

Climate doomsayers and nuclear naysayers can be counted on to cast aspersions at progress that threatens to shatter their reveries of a global “green” reset. For the rest of humanity, fusion arrives with the promise of a dream come true.