I totally agree with Jed, so let me tell you some of my experiences
while growing up, which many of you who are old enough will have
experienced as well. Where I lived in Pennsylvania 60 years ago, the
towns, which were small and separated from each other, were surrounded
by forests and still had many wild acres remaining between the homes. I
and my friends were able to use these wild areas to test bombs, set off
rockets and generally have fun doing things that would put us in jail
these days. As a result, my enthusiasm for science blossomed. Now the
towns are connected by ugly strip malls, the woods have become dense
subdivisions and any loud noise brings the police. It is no wonder that
young people are uninterested in science and turn to activities that
challenge the kind of society they have been given. The part of the
world where I grew up has now degenerated so much that I feel sick and
sad whenever I visit. The country is gradually being destroyed by people
who think that making a buck is the only important activity and the only
criteria for judging the environment in which we live. Even in Santa Fe,
where I live now, a constant battle must be fought between people who
value the unique beauty of the town and surroundings, and those who want
to build Wal-Marts. Unfortunately the Wal-Marts are winning because
appreciation of beauty is a recessive gene in the US population. Even
when lovers of beauty self-select and migrate to places like Santa Fe,
they still must fight to retain that which makes the environment
worthwhile, because one Wal-Mart or a similar building can cause a
blight that encourages more destruction. Each blight is justified by
what seems like a good reason at the time. Eventually the blights
accumulate and the environment dies, very much like a person dying of
cancer with a little loss of life at a time. No one notices until its
too late.
Ed
Jed Rothwell wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Personally, I also think it is deplorable that there are parents who
are oblivious to raising children that never have the chance to see
the miracle of a firefly. Truly tragic.
But wait a minute, Jed. There is an absurd aspect to what you're
saying! Let me put it differently: That's just plain ridiculous! You
tell us it's unhealthy to surround ourselves with an "artificial
environment" every minute of our lives.
Really???? Forget the moon. Let's stay on Earth. I put it to you that
most of us are ALWAYS in sight of (or at least being influenced by)
some man-made structure every second of the day. How many individuals
within Vortex-l have the privilege of being able to completely
extricate themselves from an "artificial environment" . . . It would
appear that in order to live up to your expectations we would have
find a way to walk away from our computers, the Internet, our cars &
transportation. Turn off the electricity.
This is a good example of the "slippery slope" logical fallacy. You have
taken a reasonable, conventional, well-understood idea to an unwarranted
extreme, to the point where it becomes a "red herring" fallacy --
something completely different from what I (obviously) had in mind.
People have worn clothes and eaten cooked food for hundreds of thousands
of years. There is no going back on that, and no survival without such
things. Yet at the same time most people have lived reasonably close to
nature, and our children have been exposed to things like clean running
water in streams, trees, places to run and play during the summer, dark
nights, clean air, fireflies and other benign wildlife. I think this is
the most healthy way for most people to live. It is much better than
living cheek-by-jowl with pachinko parlors, highways, concrete, and
spending all day shut indoors playing video games. That is what I am
trying to say. I doubt anyone here seriously disagrees.
As I said, if the solar towers produced 5,000 MW, instead of 200 MW, and
we could limit the number of towers to maybe 5 or 10 in populous state,
that would be reasonable. (Perhaps they could be made this large; I
would not know.) That would not dominate the landscape everywhere. They
would be no more disruptive than airports and large aircraft cruising
overhead.
But if every single view, in every direction becomes cluttered up with
wind turbines, solar towers, power lines, highways, or fast food joints
that would be extreme visual pollution. It would be a tragic loss.
Things like this matter more than people realize. Because we are so used
to seeing this kind of clutter everywhere, we have forgotten how
wonderful the world used to look. The painter Raphael Soyer grew up
painting cityscapes in New York City and the surrounding areas -- a rich
and vibrant landscape. After the 1950s, he saw that on every single
street, lane and byway, and every town and village on Long Island, was
cluttered with automobiles, either parked or stuck in traffic jams.
Streets which had been filled with pedestrians and marketplaces on
Saturday were surrendered to empty, dead, impassible lumps of steel. It
sucked the life out of our communities, and destroyed our landscapes. He
said you cannot paint outdoors anymore; the landscapes have all been
obliterated. People nowadays never saw the landscape any other way so
they have no idea what we have lost, and no notion that things might be
different, or better. Cars, visual pollution, noise and filth not only
destroy people's health, they gradually crush people's imaginations,
too. Jared Diamond described this kind of gradual withering away in the
book "Collapse."
- Jed
- Re: Mile-high Solar Towers: political ramifications Edmund Storms
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