Environmental activism against nuclear energy was focused on the risk of Chernobyl-style accidents long before Chernobyl. Chernobyl vindicated anti-nuclear act

Environmental activism against nuclear energy was focused on the risk of Chernobyl-style accidents long before Chernobyl. Chernobyl vindicated anti-nuclear activists in a long-running argument about whether governments could be trusted to safely manage nuclear power. I was a kid in the 1980s, so I might not be remembering with perfect accuracy, but I remember hearing about global warming as a high-profile environmental issue sometime later, maybe the late 80s. Before then the environmental concerns you read about in newspapers and popular magazines were acid rain, nuclear contamination, nuclear winter (still in the Cold War), chemical pollution, deforestation, etc. Global warming might have been on scientists' radar screens, but it didn't hit the public consciousness until after the public had made up its mind about nuclear power.