With sun and wind so affordable and safe, why would Mark Carney or Doug Ford opt for expensive nuclear power that leaves us vulnerable?

If nuclear war were to break out, I'm confident (or at least pretty sure) that the mainstream media would cover it.

The climate crisis is another matter.

Although it also poses an existential threat to humankind, its more gradual timeline means it can be more easily ignored by the media, which clearly prefers to focus on the Epstein files, the Charlie Kirk murder, etc.

As a result, many Canadians are probably unaware of a couple of momentous developments on the climate front.

One is that the world's climate appears to be warming faster than scientists thought. We've already burned enough fossil fuels to push us past the must-hold threshold of 1.5 degrees of warming and appear heading toward three to four degrees -- rendering significant parts of the world effectively uninhabitable -- before the end of this century.

But back to Charlie Kirk.

The other big climate development is good news: due to technological breakthroughs, solar energy has dropped dramatically in price and is now much cheaper than fossil fuels. Long considered a luxury for chardonnay-sipping environmentalists, solar energy now has the potential to become the energy choice of beer-drinking workers concerned about the cost of living.

"The suddenness of this moment is startling," notes Bill McKibben in "Here Comes the Sun." "The solar cell was invented in 1954, and it took from then until 2022 to install the first terawatt (one trillion watts) worth of solar power on this planet. It took two years to get the second; the third will be quicker still."

Obviously, this is fantastic news.

Ahh, but there's a catch. The very thing that's exciting about solar energy -- its abundance and low cost -- also makes it of little interest to investors. Sun (and wind) are so freely available all around us that it's hard to hoard them and make big profits from them.

And in our business-dominated culture, that's a deal-breaker.

This presumably explains why, last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney, in revealing his five priority projects to be fast-tracked in the interest of nation-building, failed to choose a project aimed at harnessing the transformational energy potential of sun or wind.

Although Carney sold himself to Canadians last spring as a climate leader, his focus since becoming prime minister has been on pleasing business and investors.

This was reflected in his decision to select, as one of his fast-tracking priority projects, Ontario Premier Doug Ford's misguided plan to invest in new reactors for the Darlington nuclear power plant.

While nuclear power isn't climate-destroying like fossil fuels, it's got other really serious drawbacks: it's wildly expensive, potentially dangerous and comes with the unsolved problem of how to safely bury nuclear waste, which (let's not forget) remains radioactive for thousands of years.

Furthermore, the new reactors for Darlington will require enriched uranium from the U.S. -- uranium that could be withheld by a capricious U.S. president wanting to weaken Canada.

With sun and wind so affordable and safe, why would Carney or Ford opt for expensive nuclear power that leaves us vulnerable to presidential whims -- other than because investors are keen to make profits from it.

All this raises the question: why should profits for investors be given priority over affordable, clean energy for all?

If the Carney government wants to fast-track projects in the national interest, how about this: a youth climate corps.

Seth Klein, leader of the Climate Emergency Unit, urges Ottawa to set up a nationwide program offering every Canadian under 35 a job for two years implementing clean energy solutions, cutting carbon emissions and handling extreme weather across the country.

Now there's a transformational, nation-building idea. It would tackle youth unemployment and alienation and give us all a greater chance to live in a world not dominated by wildfires, floods and droughts.

That might not excite investors, but it would likely leave young Canadians feeling we're doing something to ensure they have a future.