ABSTRACT
Egalitarian organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are overwhelmingly either actively hostile to nuclear power or at best indifferent towards nuclear power. Green support for renewable energy, by contrast, has been strong just as it was before the late 1980s, and is, besides support for energy conservation, their main preferred method of reducing energy-related pollution. Despite nuclear power being identified as a low carbon source of energy, many of its main supporters have been hierarchical individualists who are sceptical about taking radical action on climate change and sceptical about renewable energy sources. Those who are apparently keenest on tackling climate change – the egalitarians – appear to be, in the main, the least enthusiastic about nuclear power. The case of the UK nuclear power implementation is hampered by the primacy of individualism in the liberalised electricity market. Ironically a nuclear plant is only going forward because it is supported by Chinese and French state-run companies.
