Walk in the Sun

David Roberts over at Grist argues that we may need to choose between renewables and nuclear. This is a good summary of reasoning that I have been compiling for a post of my own. I will return later to add my own thoughts.

I saw a bombed aisle

I went home on Friday extremely frustrated by the idea that the U.S. would be engaged in any sort of military action in Libya. That wasn't any weak-kneed liberal anti-war philosophy. Rather, I didn't see the point, and wasn't sure what good we could do. Moreover, it seemed to me that the Egyptian "revolution" succeeded in large part because the West kept its distance.

As I sit here tonight, I not sure if I have changed my mind or not, but I'm still trying to figure this out. Why are we engaging in this battle now? Ghaddafi is the same man who was in charge before. (I know, his actions are despicable.) Will our action just give the Libyans a common enemy? Are we verifying Ghadaffi's crazy arguments that the rebellion was just a foreign plot against Libya? Does this undermine everything President Obama has done to recalibrate our relationship with the Arab world? What will the neighboring Egyptians think?

On the other hand, will Arabs on the street feel betrayed by all of America's talk about freedom if we sit this out, and let a dictator brutally destroy his own people?

What do we do if we outst Ghaddafi? Who is going to ensure a stable government at that point where there are no institutions to restore any normalcy?

Can we even know what is right?

A world so uncertain

Ain't no livin' in a perfect world.

I've seen this movie, and it don't end nice. Looks like trouble in paradise.

We've been walking on a thin line.

Knockin' 'em down

Grant Hill responds to Jalen Rose's unfortunate comments in ESPN's "The Fab Five" about Hill and Duke.

Spin the wheel and hope for the best

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. These few people are making an incredible sacrifice, which hopefully (but, it seems, not likely, given the ever-increasing inevitability of a meltdown) will not be in vain.

There's a shelter down at the veteran's hall

In case you forgot about Senator John McCain. Here he is, the mavericky one, on Barack Obama's view on nuclear power: 'well, it has to be safe, environment, blah, blah, blah."

Big ball men

The New York Times has gathered some experts to discuss nuclear safety.

Watch out now for the gamma rays

I don't understand how the "nuclear-power-will-solve-everything" crowd is going to rationalize this away.

I'm not out for the gotcha, the I-told-you-so, although I've been clear on this blog pretty much since it began that I am not a fan of the idea of nuclear energy as an environmentalists nirvana of clean energy or American energy independence. Despite my hopes for electric cars like the Volt, which drives beautifully and is a real achievement for GM, I have not been sold on them for a couple of reasons. Usually, you are trading the tail pipe for the smoke stack. The response that the GM insiders will give you - and I have had this conversation with them - that Florida is a great market for the Volt because a relatively large percentage of our energy is "clean" - and that means nuclear - is not sufficient in my mind, in no small part (but not mostly, as it turns out) because of what we are seeing right now.

A great friend of mine, the most environmentally-minded person I know, a good, fair-minded person who proudly wears his environmentalism on his sleeve, who has built a second career around reducing carbon emissions, has been a strong advocate of nuclear power. He and I have argued on many occasions and at great length about nuclear energy as a major piece in the puzzle to turn back the clock on global climate change; I acknowledge that his view is also consistent with the environmental consensus at the moment, and that it's difficult to argue that nuclear power has no role to play. So, as the nuclear crisis in Japan has unfolded, I have emailed him the stories from the New York Times and elsewhere, not to argue or dig at him, but because I simply don't think that the arguments in favor of worldwide dependence on nuclear power are realistic or, similarly to those Japanese containment vessels, can hold water in light of what we are seeing. That's not reactionary; it's consistent with what I have always believed. I understand the foundation of my friend's passion - we will reach a point of no return on atmospheric CO2 and global warming, and the consequence of that is dire. The problem is real, and fossil fuels are the most visible culprit (I will leave aside the greenhouse gas emissions associated with a meat-based diet). As vocal as I have been in my rejection of the pro-nuclear bandwagon, I have been more vocal in my concerns about oil and coal. I have driven a hybrid for five years now; that's not because I am an apologist for oil. I have consistently written about the evils of mountaintop removal and the dangers not just from the smokestack but also from coal ash and the toxic and radioactive byproducts of burning coal. To be clear, I am in no way advocating greater reliance on fossil fuels (despite what Jim Fallows would argue about the "clean" future of dirty coal).

Nevertheless, and despite the fact that I acknowledge the current limitations of renewable, clean sources of energy, my friend's absolutist response in defense of nuclear energy and his view of a simple dichotomy of fossil vs. fission, has been terribly troubling to me.

It's a dilemma I see so often today across all sides of every issue - near-religious obsession, such a commitment to an ideology that nothing can shake our view, no other perspective matters, all evidence is massaged to fit our existing predilection, all other risks and dangers are ignored, the practical needs or concerns of others get delegitimized, no matter how horrific the consequences. The humanitarian concerns of Palestinians are irrelevant due to our concern for the security of Israel. Health care reform is a failure because it inadequately strengthens abortion rights, or unfairly recognizes those same rights. Any tax is a form of socialism. Marriage rights for those unlike ourselves (or sometimes too much like ourselves for our comfort or honesty) somehow undermine the legitimacy of our own commitments. We see in polarities, rather than spectra, and this colorblindness paralyzes sound decisionmaking and rational discussion. We've become a nation of extremists, uncompromising devotionalists to various secular and spiritual dogma, evangelists for whatever cause celebre ignites our passion. We're all flat-earthers now. We worship at the alters of our own certainty, content in the knowledge that at the end of our horizon lies the end of all knowledge, and that within our experience grow the roots of all justice. We defend our Alamo at all cost.

And so, the problem at the Fukushima power plants is not a fundamental risk inherent in reliance on nuclear fusion for energy, or an acknowledgment that there are unknown unknowns for which we cannot account, known knowns for which we may or may not be able to account or which we may ignore at our peril, and known unknowns that may simply not be worth the risk. The pro-nuclear environmentalist crowd see doubters as simply heads-in-the-sand BANANA ("Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything") purists who are willing to sit back and let greenhouse gases destroy the planet, as if the only alternative to nuclear power is doing nothing to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel. They don't hear the argument that, not only is nuclear power risky, but it may be, in itself if taken to extremes, the equivalent of doing worse than nothing - taking a huge gamble that offers no benefit in the time frame needed for a solution, because, even setting aside every other argument, it simply cannot keep pace with the rate of growth in energy use. Yet whether our poison is pride or ego or blindness or rage or greed or hope or faith or despair, we seem unable to acknowledge or evaluate or balance inherent risk when it undermines or weights in against our passion.

Instead, my friend resorts to the argument that the problem is that the Fukushima plant is old, as if his plan all along had been to scrap every aging nuclear facility and start from scratch. He argues that the Japanese were stupid to build close to a fault line, as if all risk can be eliminated through careful planning, just like BP was able to eliminate the risk of an oil spill from its Gulf oil drilling, just like NASA has been able to eliminate the risk of any shuttle disasters. And most frustratingly, he argues that he'd much rather have to contend with leaking radiation during a carbon-free life than using fossil fuel based power plants, because only global warming matters (and really, at some level, he's right; it is the most critical issue of our generation). He's unmoved by the fact that the timing of building a sufficient number of nuclear power plants is inadequately slow (if even possible) relative to the needs for reducing climate change. He's uninterested (and yes, this is a bit of caricature, because I know where he's really coming from, but it's not a straw man) in the environmental costs of radiation exposure or - and this is critical - storage of greater volumes of nuclear waste. He's carefree toward the risks from accidents. He's confident that the terrorism risks imposed by more fissionable material is easily manageable. He has boundless faith in the ability to make nuclear reactors cheap, safe and easily regulated, in the U.S. and around the world. The dangers from nuclear meltdown in Japan are singular. They're not instructive of anything more than the particulars of the scenario, excused through its own uniqueness, its own folly, its own unreproducible facts. And anyway, it's all safer than the risks from fossil fuel.

Which may or may not be right, but which doesn't do anything at all to acknowledge the fact that you may be dealing with multiple unforeseen or intolerable risks, that the solutions to our environmental and energy needs may lie largely elsewhere. Just imagine the opportunity if as many resources were expended on solar energy as are spent on corporate-owned gas, oil, coal and nuclear interests (for example, the President's new budget just requested $36 billion in government-backed loan guarantees to cover up to 80% of the cost of building new nuclear reactors).

Our positions have become so unbending, so indestructible, that they cannot be shaken by an earthquake or a meltdown. All we need is a towel.

A towel, [the Guide] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow-heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it around your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

Train rolls by

The New York Times has an article today on the Florida high speed rail fiasco. It's worth a read, although it gives too much credence, I think, to the arguments against the bullet train.

It's your life

The State of Illinois has abolished the death penalty.

Low Country

More in the ongoing series of how the GOP loves the Jews.

In his kitchen there′s a corpse

TNC has a cute post on "The Hypocrite," a veggie burger with bacon on top. The bacon-vegetarianism conundrum seems to be a big topic of late. NPR did a story the other day on bacon as the gateway to sending scores of long-time vegetarians dashing permanently back to meat, as if, hell, they just never noticed bacon before. I call bull on that tale, but maybe that's just the Jew in me. Then again, maybe NPR will do a follow-up story on bacon as the gateway to giving up a kosher kitchen. Maybe I should go easy on them, however, since NPR appears to have a few issues of its own at the moment, being in the frying pan and all (though who knows, given the track record of the accusers, or the media's credulous reaction to them).

Anyway, it all reminded me of this, one of the better posts on vegetarianism that I have seen. An oldie but goodie.

On we roll

Some time ago I wrote about the bruhaha in Brooklyn between hipsters and Hasids about bike lanes. Well, it looks like Congressman Anthony Weiner has taken sides.

Cyclone

Just because.