YIMBY lobbyists who think nuclear energy is a guaranteed vote winner might want to take a look at how the Australian Right's pro-nuclear stance was successfully used against it as part of the Centre Left Labor Party's campaign to gain overwhelming victory - ThreadSky

aphclarkson.bsky.social • 22 days ago

YIMBY lobbyists who think nuclear energy is a guaranteed vote winner might want to take a look at how the Australian Right's pro-nuclear stance was successfully used against it as part of the Centre Left Labor Party's campaign to gain overwhelming victory

Comments

roterote.bsky.social•22 days ago

I think you are forgetting that in Australia they actually mine Uranium so this is an entirely different situation where the climate concerns to communities are dramatically higher than the UK importing Uranium from abroad.

roterote.bsky.social•22 days ago

So it is less about Nuclear Energy losing votes, but far more no one wants a Uranium mine near them.

stephaniemac.bsky.social•21 days ago

Wasn’t there also an issue over water? Australia is already suffering from regular droughts and conventional nuclear plants are very thirsty.

aphclarkson.bsky.social•22 days ago

So much of the YIMBY agenda that sounds great in social media theory is likely to end up as political suicide in electoral practice

yakopov.me•22 days ago

Yeah, but it's the delayed effect of YIMBY policies (cheaper housing and energy) that is expected to be popular, not the policies themselves. Which is why it is important to start implementing them sooner rather than later, and why this government has been so far wasting its majority.

aphclarkson.bsky.social•22 days ago

The dominant centrist and centre-right strands of YIMBYism are in a state of denial when it comes to the level of state intervention needed to achieve a surge in house-building and affordable housing. Relying on deregulation and market forces alone is a recipe for failure

s3rp86.bsky.social•22 days ago

You have to play the YIMBY-ism with a local angle that works. Universally trying the same thing everywhere will never work

jsbarretto.com•22 days ago

Yup. People do want stuff built and they will be happy if you give them a stake in that. Explain the benefits, give them a new leisure centre, talk about jobs and night life and pubs. It's all framing.

jamescelisjones.bsky.social•22 days ago

The most accurate heuristic ever developed by man is that everyone doing anti-yimby posting on the internet already owns their own home

aphclarkson.bsky.social•22 days ago

I'm pro a lot of what the YIMBYs want. But I think the far too online mindset with which they lobby for it is a recipe for disastrously counter-productive outcomes.

They only have a sketchy grasp of the ABCs or retail politics

kasperjanssens.bsky.social•22 days ago

The real drama here is that we need a boatload of infrastructure for the electrification. We do not really need a lot of new tech. But nobody is doing the groundwork of explaining. We will need NPPs, offshore wind, solar where possible, storage,... It's always a social/politics problem in the end.

jamescelisjones.bsky.social•22 days ago

Agreed, the challenges we face are broadly political

realthomasbell.bsky.social•22 days ago

Isn’t YIMBYism explicitly a campaign against the normal vote winners? It’s a lot of trying to figure out how to make YIMBYist ideas palatable to homeowners in a democracy.

wrathofgodbot.bsky.social•22 days ago

Think tank class increasingly thinks they are the target voter

fornbirkibeinn.bsky.social•22 days ago

Or occasionally that only they are real.

wrathofgodbot.bsky.social•22 days ago

Whoch also means their brains are just porridge

telson.bsky.social•22 days ago

Very true.
It's electoral damage limitation when you have to do things which aren't popular.

realthomasbell.bsky.social•22 days ago

Not building is very popular! It’s why it’s become dominant.

telson.bsky.social•22 days ago

*No one likes builders making a noise and blocking the roads*, is a pretty robust assumption.

thepig993.bsky.social•22 days ago

Well there’s vote winners and there’s the right thing to do and to me YIMBYism and nuclear power sit in the latter

rhysneedham.bsky.social•22 days ago

It's different here since we don't have any reactors at all and there haven't really been any serious plans since about the 1970s. Indeed, I think it's actually illegal. It's not an expansion as proposed in Europe and North America, but a whole new industry from scratch.

aphclarkson.bsky.social•22 days ago

Which comes down to this
https://bsky.app/profile/s3rp86.bsky.social/post/3lobacvx2wk2a

rhysneedham.bsky.social•22 days ago

Not to mention that a lot of the policy seemed to be on the level of middle-aged men discussing it at a BBQ or yelling at the television, and given a bit of gloss by consultants. Or focus group stuff. Not entirely a comprehensive, well thought out, long-term policy.

Maybe lessons there, too.

dovlevin.bsky.social•22 days ago

Nuclear energy is a very special case where there are extreme public fears around world due to Chernobyl fukushima etc.. Building regular houses infrastructure factories etc. however leads to a zero chance of a Chernobyl & hence this is unrepresentative to Yimbyism as to their case

aphclarkson.bsky.social•22 days ago

The dominant centrist and centre-right strands of YIMBYism are in a state of denial when it comes to the level of state intervention needed to achieve a surge in house-building and afforfable housing. Relying on deregulation and market forces alone is a recipe for failure

tralfagar.bsky.social•22 days ago

Perhaps, but changing zoning costs the city basically nothing. Just letting people build would be incredibly cost efficient in terms of homes/government money.

dovlevin.bsky.social•22 days ago

Indeed- state built housing can be very helpful but costs (finite) money to governments which already need to pay pensions etc.. Changing zoning regulations can lead to more construction which can lead to more taxpayers & more money for many local governments

aphclarkson.bsky.social•22 days ago

That equation is frequently simplistic when not taking into account local social, economic, environmental and political conditions.

dovlevin.bsky.social•22 days ago

Not saying always the case- but budget appropriations for public housing by definition cost governments some money. Deregulation of private housing construction, unless done by Trump like idiots, does not in many cases do so.

dovlevin.bsky.social•22 days ago

State involvement may be needed eventually as well- but given that the few cases where there was actual significant deregulation of zoning (NZ, etc.) also see significant increase in housing starts indicate that worth doing the deregulation & see how far it takes us in solving housing problem.

jsbarretto.com•22 days ago

Nuclear is a weirdly local issue in the UK. There's not the same widespread hysteria as in other western nations. The oil lobby just never had much success over here on that front.

tomhayes.bsky.social•21 days ago

I am not so sure about that, though it did play a part. The biggest killer was Dutton's attack on flexible working/work from home and his threat to sack 20% of public sector workers. See this from ABC. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-04/did-peter-dutton-nuke-himself-with-female-voters-/105249444

jonathanmassaquoi.bsky.social•22 days ago

Uh, isn't the AR stance on nuclear less a YIMBY motivation and more about simply being anti-solar and other more modern renewable?

Isn't typical American YIMBYISM along the lines of "yes, let's build offshore wind and solar farms?" Also, Dutton was a moron with his "I'm Oz Trump."

telson.bsky.social•22 days ago

Nobody wants nuclear power stations in their backyards.

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