It seems you cant swing a stick without hitting a global warming activist these days. Now, when I first started reading about this phenomenon, I was pretty skeptical. After all, it was only in the 1970s that scientists were warning of another ice age. So I read a book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjorn Lomborg. Bjorn is a mathematician and he digs into the available environmental data and starts to evaluate much of the published environmental literature. He finds that a significant amount of the public rhetoric voiced by the environmental movement isnt so well documented. He then starts to look at the trends in air pollution, contaminants, mortality rates, etc. What he finds is that on most environmental metrics, were much
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There is considerable debate on exactly how this will play out, how long it will take, and exactly who will benefit and who will lose. But what is clear is that there will be massive, global economic and geographic dislocation. Millions of people and families will have to leave the homes their ancestors have lived in for thousands of years due to drought, flooding or overheating (depending on where you live). There will be millions of lives lost. And frankly, the consequences could be much worse. We just dont exactly know yet.
Jared Diamond is brilliant. In "Collapse" he recounts how on Easter Island, the population depended on trees to build boats for fishing, prevent soil erosion, and reduce the surface wind, all of which was necessary to feed and sustain their society. Now, the Easter Islanders proceeded to cut down every single tree on the island in order to transport giant stone heads to their respective villages. And then their society collapsed and most of them died. One of his students asked him, "what do you think the islanders were thinking when they cut down the last tree?" …show more content…
Nuclear power is the most environmentally friendly source of energy of the main "base load" alternatives. Its incredibly safe. It has no carbon footprint. And the waste issue is completely solvable. On that topic, we need a combination of reprocessing (where a lot of the longer lived radioisotopes are recycled) and a long term storage facility. This is an area that the private utilities are drying to fund. Its just that the regulatory situation is such that if they spend $3-5 billion building one of these plants, there is still a risk that environmentalists will try to tie up the startup of the plant in the courts for years, driving them into bankruptcy. So, basically, the government doesnt need to fund these plants. But it does need to provide the utilities with a guarantee that if the plants are built according to the proper safety regulations and oversight, they will be allowed to
There is considerable debate on exactly how this will play out, how long it will take, and exactly who will benefit and who will lose. But what is clear is that there will be massive, global economic and geographic dislocation. Millions of people and families will have to leave the homes their ancestors have lived in for thousands of years due to drought, flooding or overheating (depending on where you live). There will be millions of lives lost. And frankly, the consequences could be much worse. We just dont exactly know yet.
Jared Diamond is brilliant. In "Collapse" he recounts how on Easter Island, the population depended on trees to build boats for fishing, prevent soil erosion, and reduce the surface wind, all of which was necessary to feed and sustain their society. Now, the Easter Islanders proceeded to cut down every single tree on the island in order to transport giant stone heads to their respective villages. And then their society collapsed and most of them died. One of his students asked him, "what do you think the islanders were thinking when they cut down the last tree?" …show more content…
Nuclear power is the most environmentally friendly source of energy of the main "base load" alternatives. Its incredibly safe. It has no carbon footprint. And the waste issue is completely solvable. On that topic, we need a combination of reprocessing (where a lot of the longer lived radioisotopes are recycled) and a long term storage facility. This is an area that the private utilities are drying to fund. Its just that the regulatory situation is such that if they spend $3-5 billion building one of these plants, there is still a risk that environmentalists will try to tie up the startup of the plant in the courts for years, driving them into bankruptcy. So, basically, the government doesnt need to fund these plants. But it does need to provide the utilities with a guarantee that if the plants are built according to the proper safety regulations and oversight, they will be allowed to