Susan, thank you so much for posting this and thanks to salyavin too for having some good discussion about it. I have been both anti nuclear and anti GMO but comments here are making me think, see another side of the issues, always a good process.
OTOH, there are as you say, terrible compromises to made. It's as if one option is 95% horrific and the other is 96% horrific. These are the kind of choices that gave executive monkeys ulcers in long ago research by Brady and Porter. There are some in both spiritual and scientific communities who think that extinction of the human race is simply part of a larger cycle of evolution, a blip in the ever expanding universe. Humbling. ________________________________ From: Susan <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, August 5, 2013 10:09 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: For Rick and others: Pro nuclear power documentary --- In [email protected], "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@...> wrote: > These pro nuclear environmentalists make me laugh, I think they > come from a place where we absolutely *have* to keep consuming > power at the insane rate we have for the last hundred years and > that cutting back on consumption isn't a plausible option. The docu mentions this problem. It seems that the pro-nuclear environmentalists have become rather practical. First, they don't believe that cutting back is an option - that to think that our own Western populations will cut back is a pipe dream. It might be smart and the right thing to do, but it won't happen. And seond, for us to expect the developing nations to not have what we have - cars, unlimited energy - it not "fair" and also is not happening. China and India and Brazil are moving full steam ahead and will use whatever energy source is around. Second, they feel that given that our demands for energy will not be dropping, we cannot just count on water, wind and solar sources. Anything that helps is good, but those systems simply will not solve the problem anytime soon. We are running out of time, and to wait for other types of energy is wishful thinking for now. snip > But the real disaster is waste, I have heard of these fast breeder > reactors but I'm not even sure they have been demonstrated to work very well > and they do still create a small amount of waste and it > becomes much more toxic than the 11,000,000 barrels of stuff we > have lying around the UK waiting to be buried. snip Many of the same big environmentalists who have switched and are now pro nuclear are also now pro GMO food. Same idea: the world is going to run out food, and the way we raise food and animals for slaughter is incredibly polluting. We need to raise lots of food using less land and fewer chemicals. GMO's do that. I hate that idea. It feels like a terrible compromise to say that while we see the problems in nuclear or GMO food, we must go for a lesser evil or our planet is cooked. I am on the fence with both issues, but my mind is open to the possibility that huge compromises may need to be made. I believe we are on the brink of disaster with global climate change, and it might already be too late for anything to make a difference. The window of opportunity might be gone. Maybe chaos and then a collapse of most civilizations will bring things to a halt and that is the way to go. I just don't know. But we have major difficulties ahead and continuing to think that we all have to reduce our energy demands and eat organic is ignoring reality. >
