Along the parade route I had the chance to engage a woman who was holding one of the pro-nuclear power signs aloft and asked her why she thought that nuclear was a viable alternative to coal and natural gas, as opposed to the renewable energies of wind and solar that we were and are advocating. Somewhat surprisingly she drug out the often heard line here among conservatives that the contemporary No Nukes crowd were nothing more than a misinformed 60s and 70s political holdover, and that the technology had advanced to the point that nuclear power was not only completely safe, but the best option financially and the cleanest alternative for the environment, as proven by the number of reactors in Europe, where the Green movement really began. Now this was coming from a woman who otherwise identified herself with the Left, or what one may laughably call the Left in Australia, so I was more than a bit taken aback, and I asked her, if nuclear had somehow off of my radar become such a safe alternative, where did the members of her group and others advocating building more plants intend to store the waste by-product of fuels with radioactive half-lives of millions if not billions of years? Her answer began with the word, "Well . . . " and ended in silence.
I marched on, not thinking at all about the potential for a major seismic occurrence and what cataclysmic events might be set in motion for a nuclear power plant as a result, only about what I considered to be a non-negotiable and unquestionable roadblock to nuclear power ever being a safe alternative to carbon-based or preferably renewable energy fuel consumption, and I naively thought that such a considerable and to my mind virtually unassailable argument was enough.
I was told the other day about a friend, an otherwise intelligent artist who was spreading the story from an article he'd read in an '07 market research report about the carbon footprint of manufacturing a Toyota Prius and the subsequent carbon output needed to replace it's batteries at the end of their too short lifespan as being larger than the energy savings generated by the increased mileage of the hybrid vehicle over the whole of it's likely usable period on the road. The report suggested that in the end, a Hummer, or a Range Rover with its greater lifetime mileage was consequently, and perhaps counterintuitively better for the environment.
Now this report has been thoroughly debunked for the assumptions made in its argument, the errors in math, and any number of other aspects concerning the report, including the affiliations of the research company to those who have vested interests in their argument, but that didn't stop the story going 'round as if it were true.
Another very close friend pointed out the theory that the carbon energy producers and all the various interests who complete that chain have been operating on for years; that the truth of an argument is not the most important issue in terms of public opinion, rather it's the frequency that it's repeated, and if it's repeated often enough, if it's spread 'virally' in contemporary digital media terms, then it becomes true.
Use less energy, recycle whatever you can, invest in the development of renewable energy resources, support the pricing of carbon and emissions trading as a means of reducing our dependency on carbon-based energy, coal, oil, and natural gas . . . keep repeating those measures, and perhaps, someday, they'll be understood to be true . . . eventually.
In the meantime, I find it helpful to take every opportunity available to question those who have economic and personal agendas that have nothing to do with the truth about global climate change, as well as those who champion methods to generate alternative energy resources to carbon that have the potential to create repercussions harmful to our environment and our very lives. There are free and renewable resources at our disposal to exploit, if only we have the political will to quiet the dissonance of those with private interests and do what's best for the planet as well as for the people who inhabit it.
downandunder
