Back in the 1950s, when I was just a small boy, there was already a lot of talk about how the world would soon run out of oil. My grade-school class at Whittier Elementary was shown dramatic films of cars stopped dead and ships rusting at their moorings, while the announcer's ominous voice warned us the dreadful day of reckoning was, at most, 20 years away.

At the same time our technology brought forth a bright new hope — nuclear power — which was advertised as being able to create such electricity "too cheap to meter."

It's true there was some trepidation about the atom. After all, it had just blown up two cities in Japan and threatened to rain annihilation down upon us 20 minutes after a secret button is pressed. Yet it had also quickly ended World War II and was efficiently powering ships and submarines. All around the world, plants generating this electricity "too cheap to meter" were being built.

With the collapse of communism still more than a generation away, the pubescent environmental movement was desperately searching for targets about which to invoke the principle of gloom and doom, looking for converts from the ranks of the idealists, the do-gooders and the gullible. Thus, the destruction of the nuclear energy industry became job one.

They were not without allies. The existing energy establishment wasn't too happy about a competitor that could, with one gram of uranium, replace 10,000 tons of coal without discharging noxious effluents. An enormous investment in carbon combustion was at risk.

The attack was slow and awkward at first, but then an unavoidable consequence inherent in technology provided all the ammunition they needed to destroy the industry — something broke. The minor incident at Three Mile Island (no one was killed or injured, and a small amount of radiation was released) was portrayed as a major disaster, more dangerous than all the extractive energy endeavors that had killed tens of thousands of workers over the years.

Of course there was the unfortunate event at Chernobyl, but this happened after nuclear power was already pretty much dead in America. It is important to note that this was a failure not of nuclear technology but of communism designing and operating its facilities according to ideology rather than sound scientific principles.

The environmentalists then went on to suppress all avenues of disposal for the waste products of atomic reactions, a feat exploited by cynical, upwardly mobile politicians. The bogus West Desert Wilderness Act is an excellent example, being created for the sole purpose of blocking a low-level waste repository on sovereign tribal lands.

Nuclear energy is the one and only technology with the proven capacity to eliminate our reliance on imported oil. If it had been fully developed instead of irrationally suppressed, we wouldn't need to be burning polluting substances to heat our homes or to travel.

Without imports, the dictators and despots who hate America would no longer be collecting our cash to use against us. The radical Muslims would have had far less reason to attack us since their main grievance is the presence of the infidel on their holy lands.

The war in Iraq is about oil — the very same oil upon which our country is now dependent. The environmental cabal, in its endless lust to force its world view on America, created the conditions that made conflict and war inevitable. This state of affairs will continue as long as real energy independence is suppressed.

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Rainer Huck is a candidate for Salt Lake City mayor.