If cheap viable fusion power were to become reality, that would indeed be amazing.
Many of humanity’s problems could be solved – apart maybe from our inherent collective stupidity and destructiveness along with our ability to weaponize almost any technological advance. Thing is, fusion power has been “ten years in the future” for decades now. We (collectively) can keep working for and hoping for the big breakthrough but we shouldn’t put all our R&D resources in just this. That would be a bit like selling your house and all other assets to buy lottery tickets in the hope of winning the big one and getting everything back a thousand-fold. It's not like "we're almost there, just one last big push and we have the prize." There are still BIG problems in the way of general realization and the outcome remains very uncertain.
Nonetheless, it’s definitely worth investing in the option.
Nuclear
fission power, too, is great in terms of stopping or slowing global warming. Zero greenhouse gases and no other ‘normal’ air pollution either. That’s why Lovelock has always (rather controversially) been in favor of nuclear fission power. However: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima… And much worse disasters are quite conceivable; anyone who says “nuclear power plants are much safer these days, so no problem” is overly optimistic. Plus the high-level radioactive waste that will remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Maybe a great way of neutralizing all that growing amount of terrible stuff will present itself in the next 100 years or so, but if not then even depositing it in old, deep and ‘stable’ mines is a roulette game. Plenty of time for Murphy’s Law to take effect there…
I did a little research about Green political parties and fusion. It does indeed look as if the Green Party of America opposes the development of nuclear fusion on principle. I think they are totally wrong on this aspect. The German Green Party (
Die Grünen), a much larger, more established and experienced political party, is not fundamentally opposed to fusion. In principle, it would be fully in favour. However, on the basis of some recent expert evaluations it
is highly critical of ITER because it believes that the Tokamak technology around which ITER revolves is something of a dead end and that ITER, while costing truly huge amounts of money, is highly unlikely to result in viable and sufficiently cheap fusion energy by 2050. Hence the Green Party believes that these funds would be much better spent on improved power grids, power storage facilities, energy (generation) efficiency, energy saving and a general shift towards sustainable and cleaner sources. Approaches that will make a significant and growing difference
right now, not possibly at some indefinite time in the future. Put in a nutshell, even if ITER or other fusion projects do at some point deliver the ‘holy grail’ of energy production, this will probably take so long that by then, in climate change terms, we may well already be irrevocably screwed. One may disagree with this standpoint, but please not on the grounds that “they realize that when [nuclear fusion] succeeds no one will care about their initiatives at all.” I don’t think that degree of cynicism is rooted in reality, in this case. Unless one can present recent concrete evidence to the contrary. Not
all people or parties in politics are driven by an open or concealed ‘my friends at Halliburton’ mindset…
“All energy is ultimately fusion energy from the sun.” Absolutely true (with the exception of geothermal energy) but a little irrelevant to the debate at hand.