Anachronisms (Open Thread)
2 hours ago
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Screw Democracy, We Need Climate Change
I recently read this article (embedded in title) and it got me thinking, are we, as a population, too ignorant and too selfish to realize what we are doing to this planet? It seems so, considering the steps we are only now beginning to take, as a whole, towards better climates and stopping (and hopefully reversing) global warming. I think that the world's population has not reached the point that we need to suspend all choice for climate change. With Obama's energy bill for nuclear power, I believe that in itself is a large enough step to get us going in the right direction. I won't leave too much in this post, but what are your thoughts? Do you think that we are smart enough to realize what's going on, to step up and do something about it? And on another somewhat related side-note, what do you think is the best way of going about these changes?
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4 comments:
I certainly hope that something will be done. As for President Obama's energy bill for nuclear power, it's definitely a step...though I'm not sure whether it's in the right direction. The President's proposal today to open sections of US coastline to oil drilling, however, definitely can't be so good for the planet.
What do you mean by it's not in the right direction?
I would definitely agree with the oil part. We should not be drilling offshore. Mainly because we should not need it as well as environmental issues and so forth.
"What do you mean by it's not in the right direction?"
Given that we don't know how to safely dispose of nuclear waste, nuclear power might mean more harmful waste sitting around–not good for the planet. I suppose, though, that from a global warming standpoint, nuclear power is better than burning fossil fuels.
What's your definition of "safely dispose?" It seems we don't have any way of "safely disposing" of anything. Combustion products sit in the air, plastic sits in our landfills, never disintegrating. If by "safely disposing," you mean "removing it out of all human contact, then yes, we do have ways of safely disposing of nuclear waste. Scientists have done studies on burying it in sediment four miles under the sea bed, we currently have Yucca mountain (though not the best solution, in my opinion). We have ways of reprocessing the fuel by turning a good portion of it into plutonium and reusing it as fuel. And then the byproducts of that will decay in about 400 years, and the rest that doesn't isn't enough radiation (assuming it even gets out) to do harm.
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