In 1976 Patrick Moore described nuclear power plants as “the most dangerous devices that man has ever created … their construction and proliferation is the most irresponsible – in fact the most criminal act – ever to have taken place on this planet.”

But on Monday he went to press arguing that, in the context of the climate change crisis nuclear power should replace fossil fuels for electricity production on the basis that nuclear power emits “next to nothing” in carbon dioxide emissions. But Moore’s 1976 argument is as true now as then because nuclear power still produces dangerous extras – power stations which are inherently unsafe, toxic waste which takes millions of years to break down and for which no safe storage technology has yet been found and a road map to weapons proliferation.

The reality is we have the answers to dangerous climate change and while it involves a different kind of economy it can be done without creating another layer of nuclear generated problems for the world to have to deal with in coming years.

The first step is a price on carbon and emissions trading schemes implemented worldwide that include electricity production.

These mechanisms and the vision to invest in and develop renewable energy projects can deliver baseload power that is neither coal nor nuclear. It means a suite of very diverse power generators from household photovoltaic units to wind farms to big scale geothermal, biomass and wave power plants. Parts of the world are already generating 30% of their energy from wind and Australia has many perpetually windy sites.

Britain has just announced a massive expansion of offshore wind farms leases that will generate enough electricity to power all its houses by 2020. The UK has a renewable energy trading system similar to ours but its target is 10 per cent by 2010 compared with our miserable 9,500 GWH (less than 1 per cent) and the UK provides grants for innovative, more expensive technology.

New technology is also being developed here and elsewhere to store power for windless and sunless occasions and sources like hot rocks never close down, so the argument that renewables are no good for baseload is a furphy.

We need to step more lightly but be aggressive with energy efficiency and understand that energy is a precious resource which must be used more sparingly.

On a level carbon playing field renewable energy will always outperform nuclear on cost and sustainability. So why pursue another energy monster like nuclear which is not only dangerous, but must voraciously consume finite resources like uranium to exist? Doubling the number of reactors would still only bring global nuclear power to around 30%. Any more than that would exhaust known reserves of accessible high-grade uranium even before reactors reached their three-decade lifespan. Once the uranium-rich ores were depleted the energy required to extract the fuel would make nuclear power even more expensive.

Surely a key lesson of climate change is that we should not keep digging up and polluting the planet to suit our energy appetite? That would be taking us down another blind alley which must ultimately lead us back to where the real solutions lie. So let’s go there first.

The answer is not about doing without. The solutions involve being smarter, and more innovative. The nuclear option just adds one disaster to another. Humanity is facing a catastrophic climate change but it also has the answers. The test is whether or not we choose the right ones.