For those who find this a bit too obscure Fritz Haber [0] - one of the people heavily involved in the development of the fertiliser revolution - was also a leading mind in the German gas warfare effort.
Eh. Fertiliser was distressingly closely linked to a weapons program used for one of the archetypal mass murders.
If they didn't mean that, they accidentally made an excellent comparison. Humans will attempt to weaponise everything and generally succeed. List of technologies deployed in war to kill people include:
The key point here is just because people make bombs using nuclear tech really doesn't set it very far apart from everything else. Solar power will be used to support war and atrocities, somehow. Military men are inventive.
I actually was going with the nitrates because I thought Fritz would be too obscure and not in line with the pattern established above. The breakthrough from Fritz furthered the ability to create nitrates in mass and pack more nitrogen to molecules, thus making things more explosive.
I'm glad Fritz was brought up though because it really shows how complicated science is and why when doing it we have to think hard about the ethics. As I said before, it isn't hard to argue that Fritz saved more human lives than any other single person in the entire history, even if we make it a percentage. But he is also known as the father of chemical warfare (he developed and weaponized chlorine gas). It is easy to call him a hero. It is easy to call him a villain. Truth is much more complicated. And while we're talking about nuclear I think this conversation is extremely important. Cheap nuclear power plants (which would require significant research and funding, and a modification of bureaucracy) could change the world but the same technology has created some of the most destructive weapons we've ever seen.
> Solar power will be used to support war and atrocities, somehow.
Without these a lot of satellites wouldn't operate. The reason we have a Space Force isn't because Trump, it is because our space assets are so valuable that it was necessary to break them out of the Air Force (as has happened with other branches). This is where a significant amount of the intelligence comes from. Information is arguably one of the most valuable components in warfare, arguably more important than actual man power.
Yes, we all know that there are lots of things that can kill lots of humans, we could add cars, or fast food to the list. The difference is that hamburguers only explode in your arteries, not wipe an entire city burning everybody alive, and don't create billionary debt in the process for everybody and for decades.
So, can we forget whataboutism and keep moving on?
Banning all fire or all fertilizers is out of the discussion (we could make exceptions for arsonists or bomb makers, but this is not a problem). We can't do it without killing half of the human population by hunger or freezing and would not solve anything.
Yes, like chlorine gas, land mines, phosphorus weapons, sarin and tigers. You got it. Exactly like those. Those things are dangerous.
And this is why everybody thinks that planning to build a net of small containers of chlorine gas or sarin in every neighborhood, or having phosphorus weapons and land mines at our backyards and in our children's room, would be an incredibly stupid idea.
(FWIW it isn't hard to argue that fertilizer has saved more lives than any other technology. But nitrates are also how you make bombs...)