‘For All Mankind’ goes nuclear nicely
Ron Moore discusses his show’s storyline about climate change and solutions’ costs.
“A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion ...”
“A contract to mine massive deposits of Helium-3 on the moon ... an ideal resource for nuclear fusion ...”
“Scientist James Hansen testified that global warming has slowed due to the widespread shift from fossil fuels ...”
Those are snippets of 1980s newscasts from Season 3 of “For All Mankind,” the Apple TV+ show that imagines a history where the Soviet Union reaches the moon before the United States. It’s an amazing show — one of my favorites recently — and its latest season, which wrapped up recently, includes a fascinating narrative dealing with energy, climate change and the politics of fossil fuel job losses.
Not being able to help myself, I got in touch with “For All Mankind” co-creator Ron Moore, who was also the mind behind TV hits “Battlestar Galactica” and “Outlander” and a key “Star Trek” franchise writer in the ’90s.
I wanted to know why he made nuclear power a key plot point — especially after the real-life news that California Gov. Gavin Newsom is willing to lend Pacific Gas & Electric Co. $1.4 billion to keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant running.
I was also curious how Moore views the value of space exploration in an era of climate crisis — and how optimistic or pessimistic he feels about resolving that crisis, as someone who’s spent a lot of time envisioning dystopian and utopian futures.
Spoilers ahead, although I’ll try to keep them relatively minor for those of you who haven’t yet had the pleasure of watching “For All Mankind.” My conversation with Moore has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Give me the background on this storyline where nuclear fusion technology has been developed successfully, and NASA has invested heavily in solar power and batteries — and as a result, electric cars are getting traction in the 1980s, and fossil fuels are
starting to die out in the 1990s. Why did you make this part of “For All Mankind”?
It’s kind of the DNA of the show — what are the consequences of an expanded U.S. space program? What if we had done all these more ambitious projects that NASA had on the drawing boards back in the ’60s and ’70s? Then we started talking about the real-world impacts of a greater infusion of funding into basic science research. A lot of research into solar power in particular came out of the space program.
If there had been a big investment in science and technology, maybe we would have gotten off fossil fuels faster. If there had been a big impulse to invest and do research, maybe we
would have gotten to nuclear fusion. There would be more electric cars, and bigger investments in solar, and there would be a positive impact on climate change.
Do you worry about promoting the idea that only a technological breakthrough, such as nuclear fusion, could solve climate change? Scientists have been working on fusion for a century, with limited success so far. Meanwhile we’ve already got technologies, including solar and wind power, that can get us most of the way to eliminating fossil fuels.
That’s a fair point of view, although I’m not sure that’s everything the show is saying. I don’t think it’s saying there’s a magic wand to wave to get rid of our problems. We are trying to ask, what is a demonstrable way to show that things can be different, if society valued certain things more than we do now? If we really cared about certain investments — if we really cared about trying to make a difference — we could achieve great things. That’s the angle we’re coming from.
Back in Season 2, you established that the Three Mile Island partial nuclear meltdown never happened, thanks to technological advancements from NASA. As a result, there’s much less public concern over nuclear power in the world of “For All Mankind.” That’s an interesting thought experiment, given the ongoing debate over the fate of California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant and similar facilities.
Three Mile Island happened around the time the movie “The China Syndrome” came out. Those two incidents really changed public perception negatively toward nuclear power.
Absent that, we thought, maybe nuclear power never quite got the same bad stink on it. It would still face a lot of the same technical and political challenges about what you do with the waste material. But maybe if those things had not combined to turn the public so strongly against it, we would be in a different place.
Season 3 also features a backlash from fossil fuel communities, which are seeing their jobs disappear as clean energy grows. It’s got similarities to what’s happening in real life, only three decades earlier. Did you intend for that story to parallel the current economic and political realities?
We felt like to give it a realistic portrayal of how this would work, there would be a backlash against clean energy just like there is now. We wanted to say that going down this path of renewables and solar and nuclear fusion is not costfree. There will be an impact on people’s lives. There will be communities that are impacted very negatively, and there will be pushback, and there will be anger. There will be conspiracy theories. So we wanted to say, “This is a better path, but it’s not a cost-free path.”
Another storyline that feels ripped from the headlines is the U.S. and Russia racing to mine lithium on the moon. And then you’ve got a scene where the NASA administrator back on Earth is bragging about his brand-new electric car, only it can’t go farther than 60 miles without recharging — and the charging station at NASA is clunky.
I went to my high school reunion, and I come from a small town in Central California. I drove from the Bay Area and took my electric car, and I was like, uh, “Am I going to be able to charge this thing when I get there?”
There were actually chargers at a gas station in Chowchilla, Calif. I was amazed — couldn’t believe it. I plugged in my car, went to the Starbucks across the street, came back — and it just kept charging. It took an hour and a half. And I was like, “Really?”
Bigger picture, there’s controversy over the U.S.
government and private investors spending money on space exploration at all, given the climate crisis and the need to fund solutions — like more and better electric car chargers. At the same time, you’ve got Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos pitching human space colonies as a kind of insurance policy against ecological collapse here on Earth. Which side of those debates do you fall on?
I come from a place of idealism and romance. I’m a “Star Trek” fan in my bones, so a lot of this comes from that, and from my sense of the human spirit of adventure, of wanting to see what’s over the horizon. Inspiring young people around the world is a worthy endeavor. It’s hard to put a dollar value on dreams.
But for that idealism to be viable, there has to be a benefit. And I think NASA’s
demonstrated there are benefits to the space program. We know about climate change in large part because of satellite technology. The space program does tell us a lot about Earth science. And the technological exploration of solar panels, of how to make electric cars — a lot of that benefited from the space program.
I’ve also always had trouble with the idea of, “We’re spending all this money on space. Why don’t we spend it back here on Earth?” Every dollar that is spent in the space program is spent on Earth. I think it’s a much better use of our tax dollars than buying another aircraft carrier. What we spend on the space program is a relatively small fraction of the federal budget, and it benefits humanity at large.
Looking out at our future on Earth, with climate change getting worse — do you think we’ve got a shot at avoiding the worst outcomes, and even making life better?
I’m basically an optimist. I’m always looking for the silver lining. I look toward, “How are we going to turn the corner?” As opposed to, “We’re never going to turn the corner.” I’m hoping we will eventually be forced into doing certain things we thought were impossible, like curbing emissions, and changing our habits, and the way our energy is used, and transportation. We don’t really have a choice other than to figure it out.
This article was originally published in Boiling Point, a weekly email newsletter about climate change and the environment in California and the American West. Go to