....[And] restarting the U.S. nuclear program, [is] our best intermediate option. The French nuclear program, funded aggressively since the 1970s, accounts for more than 80% of French electricity. Nuclear energy presents issues with waste storage and safety assurance, but these problems can be solved, as the French have done, if we have the national will.
Only an integrated energy plan like this one can restore our economy and stem the flow of U.S. dollars into the coffers of foreign governments. If we don't move ahead with a sense of urgency, our country is destined to become a declining economic power in the world.
From here.
NVDL: An interesting theory. I agree with this Harvard professors [Bill George's] take on Nuclear Energy. Unfortunately it has massive financial overheads initially, and takes a decade to get off the ground. We just don't have that kind of time. Ideally China might be persuaded to build nuclear power stations instead of these coal monsters. But coal is going to be used the world over...in the end, coal is going to be the fossil fuel of choice despite its poisonous and polluting nature.
Let me ask you this: What do you rather want? The lights on or clear blue skies?
Unfortunately we are very far away from national consensus on energy or anything else. One of the reasons for this is based on our culture of hyperindividualism. And the mass use of recreational substances and behaviours that are ultimately geared towards 'feeling good'. That's also not going to change anywhere near enough to 'soon enough'. If we want to make all these changes, we need a fundamental cultural and political shift. Good luck with that. People simply don't (and won't) change based on any intellectual reasoning. It will - and is going to take - a collective gun to the head. This is already underway. In terms of war, and the degradation (through violent and economic destruction) of the suburbs.
Remember that war and conflict is probably the most energy intensive of all human behaviour. That's where we're heading at a time that we can afford it the least, and this presents a massive threat to infrastructure. What I am talking about is a decay in ordinary behaviour which will begin to impact on ordinary services to suburbia - electricity, sewage, garbage collections and all the rest. We just don't realise this because it's not right-now imminent. It may be 2 years imminent, or 2 months imminent. The point is, once the disorder begins, it will feed on itself. We will only be able to address oil issues properly and effectively while our systems function. When these systems fail, anarchy and chaos will reign. Disorder will take over.
To put that into perspective, remember that overpopulation and our large scale food processes that require a lot of energy to function to feed those populations will fail. Simply put: when energy shortages hit, so will food shortages. That translates to human shortages. Human beings dying in large numbers. This may be through war, or hand to hand combat while squabbling and looting over scraps, or both. The point is we can choose to avert a lot of this discomfort by changing behaviour now, or we can jump into the River of Our Collective Fate by vascillating, and remaining lazily intrasigent. My money is in the latter.
We are still dreamily invested in all our expectations and an entitled sense that this project will all go on. Why? Because it's all we know. So it's a failure of our imagination - and that failure is due to all the marketing and advertising we've been sold over the last years, that has indoctrinated us with the notion that as individuals we get to be who we want by simply buying what we want, by simply making a choice to consume (and this consumption is based on who we think we are). This applies to everything from toothbrushes and cars. Ironically, the opposite is also true. We can make a choice to avoid what we don't want, who we don't mean to be. Unfortunately, advertising and the media are pretty weak on that score because it doesn't earn them (or us) any money. Thus we have a reigning insanity. Hence, I am not optimistic about our prospects.
I have asked this question many times. What will the wiping out of the middle class actually mean? The reason I ask the question is because high oil prices unavoidably result in the end of suburbia, and suburban living (ie. the middle class). This means they lose their jobs, their homes,their stuff. All the services associated with suburbia will also diappear (the mall, fast food, commutes etc). And how will all these people fend for themselves when suburbia collapses? And by fend I'm really asking 'feed'? The answer is competitive violence, and conflict that will probably appear to be 'xenophobia' or 'criminality'. People will fight each other, and associate with one another in groups (for security, for resources, for shelter) based on race and religion or some other common collective interest. In fact, the disintegration of suburbia will simply be how the contraction of our world of convenience manifests in our new destiny. Get used to HYPER-localism. And start plugging into a bunch of people, because the individual is about to become obsolete as a power broking entity.
Meanwhile in South Africa an average of 2 ATMs (cash machines) are blown up every day. 50 people are murdered every day. That's already a high level of of disorder that is set to worsen as the oil trouble gets worse. And in this sense SA is a test case for middle class communities and how they are set to disappear.
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