(FORTUNE Magazine) – Conservation is great, but you can no more get new energy from it than you can get new money by hiding what you have in the mattress. Most electricity comes from coal. Only 20% is nuclear. Windmills, solar, those things, provide less than l%. Maybe they could be quadrupled, but not in the foreseeable future. In the 1990s, when people see no other way to generate enough electricity for a thriving economy, they will conclude: Nuclear power is the way to go. Look, we have 35 years of experience with reactors domestically and in the Navy. Three Mile Island was bad, a costly major accident, but it showed that safety systems work. Sure, nuclear waste is an issue, but it is not a technical problem, it is a political and emotional one. Make the waste into glass, store it in steel jackets. As long as people don't sit on it, there's no harm. Technically, we could have the electricity we need from nuclear soon. Psychologically, it'll take a long time. People say that the environment is the issue of the 1990s. These things are overblown, really. Nothing is wrong with the theory that more CO2 and other gases cause warming. It can be proved in the laboratory. But if all that stuff is right, with the increases in the last century, shouldn't we be seeing at least a four- to six-degree rise? These predictions depend on computer simulations, not measurements. We don't really know if we have a problem or not. So why spend millions to correct it?