Jones Beene wrote:-
<<Thank you Sierra Club, et. al. ! for your very effective anti-nuclear
efforts and high-level arm-twisting over the past few decades. They worked!
You - with the help of a handful of Hollywood Bimbos like Jane Fondle,
have epitomized the 'law of unintended conseqences' and effectively
poisoned millions of Americans with coal burning (the cheapest
alternative) who might otherwise be breathing cleaner air with nuclear.
Even with the occasional TMI.>>
You must be joking. While not wishing to defend the Sierra club, which, like
so many things American, is too insular to be regarded well by the rest of
the world, it is not them who are in the slightest bit responsible for any
"poisoning". It is the people and governments and organisations who have for
decades ignored all the rest of the far, far larger and smarter and greater
environmental philosophy that even a local outfit like the Sierra club
sometimes espouses. From my own experience, another example of this
fallacious attribution of guilt happened when Friends of the Earth (far more
significant globally than the Sierra club) campaigned to get the lead
additives taken out of petrol because of scientific research which suggested
a link with reduced IQ's in children. This duly happened and it was not long
before some oddly motivated people were complaining that cars had less power
because of the reduced octane equivalent possible and that therefore they
used more fuel and caused more pollution and that therefore weren't the
environmentalists stupid for not realising this side effect? The plain fact
is that we demanded that the petrol companies provide lead free fuel and
that cars could run on it. We did not say how it should be done. That method
was decided by the petrol companies in the cheapest and most convenient way
for them. They were responsible for the "unintended consequences" as there
were contemporary methods of improving the octane equivalent without lead
additives. Similarly, it is ridiculous to state that coal was "the cheapest
alternative" unless one was using the accounting methods of the madhouse
(unfortunately most of the world is...) Environmentally sustainable
economics would have shown coal to be among the most expensive options. When
you realise that our current mess is caused by the fact that most people and
governments act as if we are living in an "empty world" with unlimited
resources whereas we are obviously approaching, or maybe have achieved, the
state of a "full world" with shrinking resources, then it just might be
time to start listening to the whole environmental message instead of
thinking that you can cherry pick one aspect and attack its validity with
crude one dimensional value judgments.
END of obligatory anti-environmentalist rant.
