A dangerous answer to climate change 
There are multiple answers in the quest for solutions to climate change. From conserving energy, more efficient ways to use energy to solar, wind and other renewable technologies - the world's people have some answers available to them
Unfortunately, the previous energy sceptics, like George Bush, and his Australian puppet Prime Minister, John Howard - have overnight become believers in global warming?
Nuclear power also just happens to be a very handy industry for covering up and in some muddled way, dealing with the mess that continues to be left behind by the nuclear weapons industry.
In the U.S.A. there seems to be a quaint arrangement, whereby the profits (such as they may be) of the nuclear power industry are privatised, while the costs (escalating every day) are paid by the tax payer.
A quaint arrangement indeed, for the land that is the temple of private enterprise - when it comes to nuclear power's income - well, the U.S. is a capitalist. But when it comes to nuclear power's costs in managing wastes, why, the U.S. is a socialist!
So noble and altruistic is the nuclear solution to climate change! While pursuing nuclear weapons development, including depleted uranium weapons, and while subsidising private nuclear companies, the Bush government poses as a newly converted supporter of the environment.
Even more nobly, perhaps, the Australian government, (and opposition) look with king Midas eyes at the uranium bonanza for their sponsors - and offer their friend George Bush, a place to dump all that waste that might not ever get to Yucky Mountain.
The sad thing is that the climate change problem is so urgent that it's hard for us to step back and realise that each of us, in our millions, really needs to change from this materialistic consumer lifestyle, and live more simply. This sounds like going back to the Stone Age - but no - it can be done with the very latest technologies.
But best with decentralised technologies. Helen Caldicott once said "If they could put a blanket around the sun, and sell holes, they would" She realised then that this over-developed world is attuned to the Big Fix, the Silver Bullet, the One Great Solution to our problems. These Big Fixes always involve a continuing cost to the user. In this mindset, getting useful stuff for free, like energy from sun and wind, seems almost immoral. Would we really rather pay now, and for generations beyond, for dirty, dangerous, militarily useful nuclear power?
Christina Macpherson www.antinuclear.net
KEYWORDS: nuclear decentralised Bush Australia energy renewable
Sign up for a Complimentary Member Account... Join the community! It's fast. And it'll allow you to take advantage of all this site's great features!
| < Emily Perez is dead... | Talk Radio's Middle Class Champion: A Podcast Interview With Thom Hartmann > |
