French President Macron met with Putin for six hours. Putin then issued a demarche on NATO and Ukraine. Macron then announced that France would be building 14 new nuclear reactors. Biden backed down from putting US troops in Ukraine saying that would mean "world war."
So what gives? There is a fragmentation with realists like Gary Hart (remember him?) promoting what the banner of this site has been proclaiming lo these many years: nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is the only way out for humanity. So the realists say well maybe pollution from hydrocarbons can be conquered without reducing the world's population.
Now they have not gone so whacky as myself and my crazy co-thinkers with ideas like greening the deserts, colonizing Mars, maglev rail, and biophysical defense treaties.... Yet. (Rolls Royce is planning to build nuclear propulsion systems and modular reactors that can power colonies on the moon and Mars...) All those years that I ate mostly unhealthy airport food yelling my fool head off about the need for nuclear power and the end of geopolitics may not have been for nothing.
Perhaps realists like the Macrons of this world will restore a modicum of sanity out of the nightmare of the age of Kissingerian nuclear terror otherwise known as MAD. I will keep shouting crazy things in my retirement from my easy chair. "Hey you kids, get some brains and start planning to colonize Mars..." Who knows maybe humanity is not yet ready to throw in the towel quite yet.
French President Emmanuel Macron at the GE Steam Power System main production site for its nuclear turbine systems | Jean-Francois Badias/AFP via Getty Images