Policymakers, journalists, conservationists, and other educated elites in the fifties and sixties knew that nuclear was unlimited energy, and that unlimited energy meant unlimited food and water. We could use desalination to convert ocean water into freshwater. We could create fertilizer without fossil fuels, by splitting off nitrogen from the air, and hydrogen from water, and combining them. We could create transportation fuels without fossil fuels, by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to make an artificial hydrocarbon, or by using water to make pure hydrogen gas.
