[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Personally, I think being forced to view of a multi-mile high solar tower capable of generating power comparable to what a nuclear plant could produce would be truly inspirational.
One would be inspirational. One or two in each state would be a local tourist attraction. But if there were thousands and thousands of them, and they were as ubiquitous as McDonald's restaurants, they would be a terrible blight on the landscape. So is McDonald's! So are highways, traffic lights, power lines, cookie-cutter shopping malls, bright lights and auto dealerships. It isn't right to force everyone, everywhere to see this kind of depressing industrial infrastructure. It stunts children's imagination. We should respect the landscape, and not clutter up every hill, every valley, plain and seascape with man-made stuff.
I think we would need thousands of towers if each one was roughly as powerful as today's midsized generator plants -- as I gather they would be -- and we derived all energy from them, including energy for transportation. It would be far better to make low, small, compact generators like the nuclear power plants I saw in France from the train, which were hardly visible from a few kilometers away.
In the last 30 years, Japan has become the ultimate postmodern environmental man-made hell-hole, with infrastructure of one sort or another just about everywhere. I did not realize how bad it was until I went back a few years ago and revisited some of the places I used to stroll or ride a bicycle. *Everything* has been paved over and replaced with fast-food joints, convenience stores and parking lots. They cleaned up the air and water pollution, but apparently it never occurred to anyone that it would be good idea to leave some natural landscape or green spaces so the kids could see trees and grass and sky instead of overhead wires, concrete and pachinko parlors. I know middle-class Japanese urban children who have never seen a firefly, never mind seeing the stars at night. They have no clue what nature is, aside from what they have seen on TV, and therefore they do not have the slightest respect for it.
- Jed
