There’s been a lot of the noise made about it’s development, but is green technology up to replacing all the energy being produced by fossil fuel? The answer, at least for the time being, is a resounding no. What we do have is a fantasy about how easy it will be to replace oil, coal and gas with wind, solar and fusion. Unfortunately, we have been kidding ourselves into believing that people and corporations, that only understand profit, will somehow; miraculously evolve into rational entities that understand and support policies that reduce their ability to enrich themselves because it might benefit the planet as a whole. If you think this way you are really going to enjoy the bridge I’m about to sell you, but more important we are never going to get our energy problems solved and if we continue to do nothing we will eventually destroy the planet.
One of the ways we can attack our energy problems is to overcome our fear of nuclear energy and begin to build more and smaller nuclear plants. Yes, we all know about Chernobyl and a couple of rather hot properties right here in the US, but the fact is, in the entire last century there have only been a couple of deaths due to nuclear energy, whereas there have been over 1500 deaths due to gas and oil explosions in this country alone, just in the last year and that’s not even counting how many million people died of the poison air produced by coal and oil.
Germany cut back on nuclear energy and ended up burning more coal, California is busy cutting back on nuclear and natural gas but is now generating more CO2 through the use of diesel.
But all is not lost. Fareed Zacharia speaks to a few technologies that will help us bridge the gap until we can produce enough safe energy to eliminate the use of fossil fuel entirely. None are perfect but they will all help reduce carbon emissions and they can all be implemented almost immediately.
First, convert coal firing power plants to natural gas. No, gas is not the perfect solution but it is safer than coal and readily available. This would save 50-60% of carbon emissions. A study of 29,000 power plants around the globe has shown that 5% of the dirty plants create 73% of the dirty emissions. That means that replacing 1500 coal-burning plants would make a giant cut in emissions.
Second, we should start building smaller nuclear power plants that are not under private control. People are terrified of nuclear energy but the problem with nuclear energy is that all the plants are under private corporate control, which means they must turn a profit and therefore are not maintained in a clean, safe manner. We need more nuclear but we need it to be under government control so that we have a better chance of it not blowing up in our faces.
The big deal about all this is that these measures would cut emissions now, not in thirty years. These things are instantly available, and we are fools to not employ them immediately.
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Not satisfied with supporting one big lie; the one where the Trump thing wins the presidency, the GOP has now built another big lie. It’s all about big corporations that pay no taxes having to pay their fair share of what they already owe and calling it a “tax raise.”
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It makes me nuts when people opine that Biden shouldn’t run in ’24. For one thing ’24 is too far off to be talking about, especially when we have an important election that will determine whether or not he will continue to help the country drag its sorry ass out of years of incompetent leadership. Mainly though Biden, despite his low rating has put together a hell of a record in only about a year and a half.
Just look at the:
COVID Recovery Act $1.9 trillion
Infrastructure & Jobs Bill $550 billion
Chips Manufacturing Bill $ 280 billion
Inflation Reduction Act $700 billion
That’s more money spent on the American people than all the GOP presidents going back to before WWII. But that’s not the whole barrel of fish. There’s also the fact that he got us out of Afghanistan with only 13 casualties, that he got the Veteran’s Health Bill passed, even after the GOP decided to oppose it out of pique, and he
killed terrorist leader Ayman al- Zawahiri. Not a bad eighteen months.
That’s in contrast to the sociopathic clown who still claims to have won an election in which he didn’t come close. In 4 years in office Trump got one bill passed and all it did was make the rich richer. So all you dumb shits out there who are jumping up and down at MAGA rallies for candidates who can’t walk and chew gum, keep voting the way you are now and you’ll stay barefoot and pregnant with no jobs and no abortion available.
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For those who think Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan was a problem for Joe Biden or somehow contrary to his wants, forget it. China has spent the last year or so acting out like a spoiled child, daring its parents to discipline it. This was Biden’s way of pointing out the Chinese excesses without giving China any real excuse for the hissy fit they had after the visit. It was also how we needed to put China in its place over the way they are pushing all limits in the South China Sea.
China hasn’t ruled Taiwan since Chiang Kai-shek took it over when he lost the civil war to the communists in 1949. It hasn’t been part of China for three quarters of a century and it never will be because the Chinese did not learn from their failed dictatorial treatment of Hong Kong.
The question is not, did Pelosi provoke the Chinese, but rather,, has China’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and its dishonest dealings with Taiwan and all the non-Chinese business communities around the world become too much of a problem to ignore?
One of the main areas in which China is proving to be an unacceptable player in the world game is its threat to remove itself from all cooperation on climate change. This is like the little kid who says he’s going to hold his breath until he gets what he wants. If China holds its breath long enough on this one it will suffocate, but so will the rest of the planet. Even to the most intransigent Chinese this has to look like a self-defeating strategy.
At some point China has to decide if Taiwan is really worth going to war over or if they are willing to live in a world where getting more land is really that important. China is already too big to be really governable. But their leaders still exist on the 18th Century mentality that believes what is important is accumulating more – of everything. This is one on which Putin is also stuck. Maybe if these backward leaders could wrap their heads around a concept where developing what one has to its most functional degree is what’s important rather than just getting bigger and less functional, the world would be a better place to live.
Maybe Xi should examine what Putin will be gaining even if he does finally win in Ukraine, which right now is highly unlikely. If that happens, Putin will have gained a completely destroyed nation that will require more resources than Russia can supply to be anything but a smoking pile of rubble. That’s what Taiwan will look like if China wins it in a war. Is it worth it?