Refreshingly pragmatic and nonpartisan, The Case for Nukes: How We Can Beat Global Warming and Create a Free, Open, and Magnificent Future (Polaris Books, 2023) by Robert Zubrin offers a sweeping history of energy technology advances. It also provides a taxonomy of the enemies of nuclear power, including Malthusians and “degrowth” advocates who would, ironically, limit the world’s only scalable clean energy technology in the name of protecting the environment. The book launches a compelling and detailed defense of one of humanity’s most promising yet misunderstood sources of energy. Policy makers across the political spectrum would be wise to heed Zubrin’s call to reform and liberalize what he calls the “regulatory whipsawing and strangulation of the nuclear industry.”

Zubrin pulls no punches, refusing to play games of political tribalism (i.e., opining that climate change “has become politicized to the point where opposing parties have chosen to either deny it or grossly exaggerate it”). While he presents nuclear energy’s potential to lower emissions as a huge positive, he also notes, “The existential threat facing humanity is not climate change. It is the ideologies of despair.”

Specifically, when people see the world as a zero-sum battle over scarce energy and limited resources, such desperation can curtail freedoms and even produce unthinkable atrocities. As Zubrin writes, “If the belief persists that there is only so much to go around, then the haves and the want-to-haves are going to have to duke it out, the only question being when.” He frames producing ample energy as not only an economic but also a moral imperative.