At 04:41 AM 7/3/01, Jeroen wrote:
>- use water-saving toilets
>
>How much of such campaigns have there been in the US? Not all that many,
>I'm afraid.
Since about 1995, so-called "low-flow" toilets have been mandated by law in
the US. The problem is that they basically don't work. Though they
supposedly use about one-quarter to one-third the amount of water per flush
that a regular toilet does, most people have found that to get rid of . . .
ahem . . . solids, one must stand there and flush three or four times,
therefore using just as much water as the regular type, not to mention all
the extra time and effort wasted in waiting for the blasted thing to flush
and refill repeatedly before you can leave the bathroom and be sure you are
not leaving any "evidence" for the next person to find. Though it is
illegal to manufacture or install the regular toilets any more, there is a
thriving black market in them, supplied by used toilets that have been
removed from houses that are being demolished and by people bringing them
back from Canada, where they are still legal. Supposedly, some recent
models are better at performing their job without requiring so many
repeated flushes, but the average homeowner who bought a new toilet within
the past five years is unlikely to be in the mood to rush out and spend up
to $500US to replace it with another "low-flow" toilet that may or may not
work any better after it is installed in his house. Instead, he is going
to continue standing in the bathroom for five to ten minutes after every
use repeatedly flushing his politically-correct toilet while cursing the
environmentalists who influenced the lawmakers who passed the law that made
him install a defective product.
>These are all quite simple measures, but it definitely helps. And because
>we have had this drilled into our heads for decades, for many people those
>measures have become a normal part of their lives.
>
>>I'm not saying things are hopeless. I'm saying there is a solution that it
>>not politically correct. Why not dump political correctness and actually
>>put forth a workable plan? Why not accept nuclear power. It is safe and
>>clean.
>
>Or at least, that's what the nuclear energy lobby has been telling us for
>years. Unfortunately for them, the reports keep coming about increased
>cancer rates among people living close to nuclear facilities, radioactive
>waste seeping away in above-ground storage facilities, and life in rivers
>and oceans dying because of the coolant dumped into those rivers and oceans.
>
>I know the pro-nuclear lobby claims these reports are false, but I have a
>hard time believing it
Can you show us the studies that prove that these reports are true? How
robust are the results? Have the studies been peer-reviewed by independent
scientists (biased toward neither side) and published in top journals?
> -- especially since the lobby could lose huge amounts of money if they
> would acknowledge that those reports are in fact true. And it doesn't
> help that every time a pro-environment group points out a problem, the
> pro-nuclear lobby immediately claims that it's all nonsense and left-wing
> anti-nuke propaganda. That doesn't exactly boost faith in the honesty of
> the pro-nuclear lobby.
OTOH, any study that shows that mankind is not on the verge of destroying
the planet causes the environmentalist lobby to lose money. Are there any
truly independent researchers, and if so, what do they say?
-- Ronn! :)
