#EnergyChat: Pandoras Promise with Robert Stone and Michael Shellenberger

#EnergyChat: Pandoras Promise with Robert Stone and Michael Shellenberger In this edition of #EnergyChat for TheEnergyCollective.com, Jesse Jenkins speaks with award-winning filmmaker Robert Stone, the director of the new documentary Pandora's Promise, which began showing in select cities last Friday after making a big splash at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Pandora's Promise poses a controversial questions: does nuclear power, the one energy technology we often fear most, have the potential to save our planet from a climate catastrophe, while providing the energy needed to lift billions of people in the developing world out of poverty? The film focuses on the personal stories of five long-time environmentalists who each began their journeys as anti-nuclear or nuclear skeptics only to find themselves challenging their prior beliefs and reevaluating their positions on nuclear energy as they engaged more with the risks posed by various energy technologies and the global energy challenges faced this century. It's a conversion process Stone hopes the film itself will spark in its audience, as the film attempts to confront several of the most common reasons nuclear power is so-often feared and viscerally opposed. We are also joined in this conversation by Michael Shellenberger, one of the films protagonists, and the president and co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute, an independent, progressive think tank known for its often unorthodox views on energy, climate change, and other issues.