"Both utopia and oblivion are developing simultaneously," said renewable energy advocate Harry Braun, the guest on Wednesday's show. Braun believes if we could shift from fossil fuels to hydrogen, many of the Earth's most dire problems such as pollution would be alleviated.
"It's like the Manhattan Project," he said of his plan, a six trillion dollar program that would "turn oil companies into wind hydrogen companies," within the space of five years. Existing vehicles could be converted to run on hydrogen he said. But in order to get the ball rolling, Braun suggested people lobby the Senate into holding hearings about hydrogen.
A harsh critic of the nuclear power industry, Braun said the "plants are all corroding," and that they're accidents waiting to happen. "We shouldn't be re-licensing them, but shutting them down," he added. Referring to a 2002 incident at a Toledo nuclear plant where a meltdown was narrowly avoided, Braun said the whole country would be impacted if this had occurred. Citing the terrorist threat, he said that if the Indian Point reactor had been hit by Al-Qaeda, "it would have made 9-11 look like a picnic."