Gary Hoover wrote:
List-members, I submit that you will get far more from reading Stan Goff's overview of Kerry's "Energy Plan" at Counterpunch than from looking to any local media for information. Read Goff's article *not* as a critique of Kerry, but rather as a critique of how the "dismal science" of economics has utterly failed us as science, because it is rooted in pre-scientific monarchicalism and feudalism. Note also how the "energy economy" works. One read through this article will tell you more about what Linden Hills, Whittier or Phillips will be like in 5 or 10 years than anything the local press -- excluding the Pulse -- will tell you.
http://www.counterpunch.org/goff08132004.html
In my short time here I have evolved great respect for Gary and agree with many of his views. This message in particular resonated with me but I do want to take issue with some things.
I haven't yet been able to read the article in full detail but rather concentrated on the sections that immediately stood out, primarily at the end.
The article makes the excellent point that thermodynamics ultimately rules energy policy but I believe it's a little misleading in places. For example, solar is discredited by the article because it takes more energy to make a photocell than it produces. But this ignores the fact that the energy source is _external_ to the isolated system consisting of the earth. The second law doesn't apply in such an open system. In other words, with solar the earth is no longer an isolated system. Yes, photocells are inefficient and need more research applied to them. This shouldn't discourage their development. Their energy source is essentially limitless.
The article goes on to criticize solar using the age-old "cloudy day" argument. We have batteries for that. Yes, batteries lose energy but remember that we are getting it directly from the sun. When that resource is exhausted we can pretty much forget about living here anyway.
The same counterarguments apply to the critiques of wind and wave energy. They are all powered by the sun. Actually, all our energy sources are ultimately powered by the sun. The difference is in the time-to-extraction. It takes a lot longer for the sun to produce fossil fuels. If photocells could be made to extract large amounts of energy relatively quickly, then they become very viable.
With nuclear, I truly believe that a lot of the fears are unjustified. Yes, nuclear waste is radioactive. So is the stuff coming out of coal-fired plants and that contains arsenic and other nasty stuff to boot. The waste is _less_ radioactive than what went in. Of course it is concentrated in a small area which is what makes it more dangerous. Reactors exist to reprocess waste. The problem is that no more will ever be built because they end up producing weapons-grade material.
As for nuclear producing more pollution (through the refining process) than fossil fuels, I find this highly unlikely. If this were true, then by taking all the energy spent refining the uranium we could power more things with fossil fuels (those spent refining the ore) than we could by fissioning the refined ore. Essentially, we are saying that refining uranium takes more energy than is released in the fission process. I find this highly doubtful given that the energy density of nuclear fuel is proportional to the speed of light squared. I'm no nuclear scientist so if I'm off base, please speak up. Someone with real expertise ought to weigh in here.
Nuclear is not sustainable because uranium is a finite resource. But I believe it is a realistic short-term alternative to fossil fuels.
Which gets us to the issue of sustainability. I completely agree that we need sustainable systems. But getting there will require much research and development and that will take energy produced in non-sustainable ways. Once we accept that and conserve those fuels as much as possible we can start making progress. This is going to be a long process and unfortunately that's why we haven't moved on it yet.
Political organization and action has some effect, but remember that most political action is co-opted by powers whose self-interest is completely divorced from "we the people" or democracy.
I'd clarify this by saying that _partisan_ political action is not representative of the people. Unfortunately, that is the dominant mode of operation, especially today. It didn't used to be so bad. Many here probably remember how well our state legislature worked in a non-partisan way in the past.
I can name several local and national organizations that act collectively within our political system. They are successfully bringing about positive change because they act in a non-partisan manner. I have the utmost faith in the fundamentals of our political system. It's not perfect but it's one of the best out there right now. I believe that its implementation has deteriorated over time but that's as much our fault as it is the fault of any "special interest," including political parties. We _do_ have the power to change it. But we need each other to do it.
David Greene
Lowry Hill East
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