A Socialist Worker pamphlet by Martin Empson El Tony Blair now openly espouses nuclear power, spun as necessary to tackle both a looming energy crisis and climate change. Gordon Brown is set to support him.
In fact, the New Labour leadership has initiated a campaign of lies similar to that over Iraq and it is important that we counter them from the beginning.
Martin Empson's pamphlet is a contribution to this task, outlining the case against nuclear and looking at alternatives.
Starting with the terrible and lasting human costs of Chernobyl, it lists many past accidents and those waiting to happen.
It examines the huge financial cost of nuclear power, from uranium mining to the enormous bill for radioactive waste disposal, estimated in Britain at £70bn so far, and rising.
Nuclear is a more expensive energy source than renewables, which is why private companies will not invest in it without big government subsidies - meaning taxpayers and/or consumers ultimately foot the bill.
Another issue covered is the link between nuclear power generation and weapons manufacture. The process of uranium enrichment used in the former is also necessary to make bombs. This gives a huge military advantage to countries pursuing civil nuclear programmes.
Finally, New Labour's spin that nuclear is a carbon-free energy source essential in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is dismissed as wholly false.
When you take account of the entire life cycle, from uranium ore extraction, processing and transportation, the building and decommissioning of power stations, transportation, storage and disposal of waste, the amount of carbon emissions is huge.
As CND's current briefing 'Nuclear Power - not worth the risk' points out, Australia's largest uranium mine contributes 8 per cent to South Australia's CO2 emissions - before power generation even starts.
Empson says, rightly, that pushing nuclear will result in insufficient investment in his suggested main alternatives of renewable energy sources and efficiency. These could reduce gh emissions in Britain by around 60 per cent in decades, whereas the proposed doubling or nucicar power nere would reduce them by only 8 per cent - a figure that is actually disputed by most environmentalists as itself too optimistic.
One area not addressed in the pamphlet is the consequences of depletion of fossil fuel reserves.
Oil, for instance is due to peak as early as 2008. This means that at some point big business is likely to make a significant switch from its present mere greenwash to serious alternatives.
There are huge new markets to be expanded and captured in both renewables and in the production of new energy efficient consumer goods.
However, under market-led capitalism, where the aim is to boost sales and increase profits, apparent 'green' solutions can themselves have significant ecological and social consequences.
For instance, huge hydroelectric projects may destroy the livelihoods of local communities, or more 'eco friendly' cars can eat up land for biofuels, as well as their initial cuts in CO2s be cancelled out through increased sales.
Of course, since companies are still driven by the need to extract maximum profit from remaining fossil fuels, any switch to alternatives may come too late to halt irreversible and catastrophic global nealing.
This points to the urgent need to wrest ownership and control of the planet's resources from profit-hungry thing which the pamphlet endorses.
The discussion on transport - the fastest contributor to climate change through its increased CO2 emissions - proposes as alternative renationalisation to facilitate rational public planning. Among the beneficial consequences looked at is cutting down on the actual number of miles travelled, whether to work, school, leisure, shopping and so on.
This touches on alternative ways of life and consumption patterns. I would bracket such changes together with renewables and energy efficiency as also part of tackling emissions cuts.
They are, of course, linked to changes in production, where reduction in demand would mean initial safeguarding of jobs and retraining of workers in some sectors of the economy. Environmentalists and trades unionists need to work together over these issues.
In the past, opposition to nuclear power has brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets in protest, including young and old, environmentalists, trade unionists, the labour movement and the left.
Now New Labour spin is trying to claim that the failed and environmentally devastating policies on climate change pushed by Blair and Brown can be solved by using ecologically destructive nuclear power. Anti-nuclear and climate change campaigners need to join forces in rejecting this grotesque and dangerous lie.