If we try to provide our energy needs with nuclear plants, any simple probability formula dictates there will be the occasional "mishap." Some will be confined to the workplace, like the recent coal mine explosion that killed 29 miners digging "clean coal." These accidents will kill and sicken "just" nuclear plant employees .. workers. But sooner or later there'll be a Big One -- along the lines of the BP blowout... where the impossible, becomes reality. And, since such a catastrophic accident had been deemed "impossible" in order to get a green light, any emergency response will be inadequate -- assuming there even can be an adequate response to a rolling, roiling cloud of super-hot radiation spreading over a major city and its suburbs.
I have no idea. Do
you? I doubt it. I
have no idea how we're going to do it: how we're going to keep
expanding as a species while at the same time plugging former Third
Worlders into the grid we in the West have had all to ourselves until
now. I have no idea.
All I'm saying is that the patent medicine men of old-energy have been busy relabeling their miracle cure-alls to allay concerns over their safety and efficacy. Their cures are now"New! Improved, More effective," and recommended by 9 out of ten Goldman Sachs executives. But, above all folks, "They're Safe." For ails us they recommend liberal applications of coal tar, oil sands, Textron and occasional doses of radiation.
The rest of the world needs to join us up here at 60,000 feet for a look-see. Because we need to noodle together over some really hard stuff:
- - Do we consume less?
- - Do we grow less?
- - Do we have fewer children and not by choice but law?
- - Or should we invest together, as species, in a gigantic, white-knuckles, times-running-short, Manhattan Project-style push to develop and deploy truly clean, sustainable and ample sources of energy?
That's the only question worthy of our attention.
Darwin awaits our answer.
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