Application of memetic engineering to the struggle for public acceptance

This paper summarizes the events that created this meme, and the reasons for its robust and contagious nature. A method is proposed for increasing nuclear power's public acceptance, not by attacking the 'nuclear-phobia' meme directly, but by employing its own ability to survive and replicate in an indirect campaign against itself. An analogy is made to genetic engineering ('memetic engineering'), from which strategies may be borrowed. One example is 'meme-splicing' - the insertion of a foreign, but compatible, pro-nuclear meme amongst existing memes known to possess favourable replication characteristics. In this context Global Climate Change is discussed, and in particular the international effort to raise awareness of nuclear power's potential contribution to this cause. (authors)