We Just Don’t Pay Attention

– All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk. Ronald Reagan

– I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. Ronald Reagan

– When we think of the major threats to our national security, the first to come to mind are nuclear proliferation, rogue states and global terrorism. But another kind of threat lurks beyond our shores, one from nature, not humans – an avian flu pandemic.  Barack Obama

– As a nuclear power – as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon – the United States has a moral responsibility to act. Barack Obama

– Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. And so, what we’re going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles. Bill Gates

– Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.  Omar N. Bradley

This quote from by Dr. Phil Taverna,  Nuclear Energy Still a Better Alternative than Green Technologies, really bothers me.

“So Japan made a few mistakes. Engineers make mistakes all the time. But when you look back at Japan, their nuclear problems are very small compared to all the physical damage that has occurred caused by Mother Nature. And the death toll of the tsunami overshadows the death toll caused by the immediate nuclear upset. But since these folks are calm and respectful, they will get through it and they will make their nuclear program better than ever. They will repair the damage caused by the Tsunami and get on with their prosperous lives.” We have been told lies and vague facts to promote a source of energy that. The fact is our entire world is in danger of severe contamination and ruination from nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Nuclear power and weapons are a scourge upon the Earth.”   Is there one near you? Find out here.  

Don’t forget the sales job we have been served about how wonderful the natural gas energy boom is.  It is a sales job that does not want to hear that your water will be made unusable and your faucet might explode. 

The NY Times has done a 9 month series that exposes both sides of the quest for cheap energy.  Drilling Down: Articles in the Drilling Down series from The New York Times examine the risks of natural-gas drilling and efforts to regulate this rapidly growing industry

Hunt for Gas Hits Fragile Soil, and South Africans Fear Risks

Texas Sharon. Bluedaze: Drilling, is totally devoted to exposing the risks she has encountered, first hand.   Pipeline blast getting a new look

I am not advocating “Technophobia” as it is defined in WIKI.  I am imploring a more responsible use of the powerful technology the modern world has become totally dependent  upon.  The modern, technically advanced countries have lost touch with the planet we all occupy.  Technology has made us addicts, dependent on cheap abundant energy and infinite resources.  The immovable wall of reality is approaching very fast, and too few advanced countries are willing to deal with it.  Multinational corporations want to squeeze every drip of currency out of the remaining resources that they can, before we hit the wall.  If I was a conspiracy buff, I would unfold corporate logic to the next step and prepare a sustainable bunker for my favorite, wealthy people.  While the unprepared perish, the prepared will be left to figure out how to maintain their survival.  Personally, if I chose who to survive with, it would not be the most arrogant wasteful, user population, rich or not.

The bottom line is that the few resources this planet has to offer the human, plant and animal population, is being soiled at an alarming rate.  Air, water and tillable earth is being ruined, wasted or built upon at a rate that will starve out or poison earth’s life forms.
“Individuals Tending To Savagery” Anti-Technology Group Sent Bomb To Monterrey Technological Institute Professsors
I am not a Luddite  (a social movement of 19th-century English textile artisans who protested – often by destroying mechanised looms – against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and changing their way of life. The movement was named after General Ned Ludd or King Ludd, a mythical figure who, like Robin Hood, was reputed to live in Sherwood Forest.^[1])

I also do not totally advocate The Luddite fallacy is an opinion in development economics related to the belief that labour-saving technologies increase unemployment by reducing demand for labour. Besides job destruction, Luddites claimed that automation made the rich richer and the poor poorer. Economists have found that between 1980 and 2005, American jobs vulnerable to automation were lost, forcing workers into either low paying manual work or high paying technical work that is inherently difficult to automate. One study by MIT economists David Autor and David Dorn drew on evidence from the United States Department of Labor to show that automation caused sharp losses of middle class jobs, forcing a polarization of wages and greater income inequality. The phenomenon of polarization due to automation is not confined to the US, also occurring in 15 of 16 European countries for which data is available.^[4]

We can see the Luddites assertions in play today, mainly because of corporate misbehavior, even more than in the early 1900s. But, the Luddites may have been on to something.  Today in America, we have placed faith in the future of technology.  The selling points are tremendous; sanitation, clean water, fresh food, modern medicine and transportation.  All these treasures are taken for granted right now, because we have had generations to forget the basics.

• Neo-Luddism
• Chemophobia
• Dystopia
• “Darwin among the Machines“, Erewhon, and Samuel Butler
• Minimalism in Philosophy
• List of phobias
• NIMBY
• Technophobia is the fear or dislike of advanced technology or complex devices, especially computers.^[1] The term is generally used in the sense of an irrational fear, but others contend fears are justified. It is the opposite of technophilia.
• Technophilia
• Technostress
• The Uncanny Valley

• Ned Ludd
• Anarcho-primitivism
• CLODO
• Deep ecology
• Monkeywrenching
• Primitivism
• On the Origin of the “Influencing Machine” in Schizophrenia

I would not even know how to function without my computer right now.  But, when I go outside and look at my yard, I see the neglect caused by my distraction with electronic, indoor activities.  Most of my indoor work is necessary, like laundry and cooking.  But if you unplug my life, and all my batteries run down, I am like almost everyone else … lost!  Because I blog, I do much of my research online.  Without online resources, my research is confined to learning the names of my next door neighbors. Without flipping a switch, I will not have hot water or use a hairdryer.  I will have to hunt for charcoal to boil water on the porch, for my coffee.  I will fret about using the gas in my tank to run to the store … will the store have fresh food?  Not if there is no electricity.

Everything I have learned has a foundation of electricity.  When there is power interruption, it has always been quaint to camp out in the house and porch.  When I really think about it, my thinking and ability to solve basic mechanical problems has been handed over to electronic devices.  If I can’t call someone for help on my cell phone, I can look it up on the computer.  So, without electricity for an extended period of time, I am left to my own devices.  My gardening ability is a joke and would never feed me adequately.  I would have to totally rethink everything, all by myself.  Scary thought.  I have concluded that modern civilization has handed its collective brains over to electronic machines.  Enter the ROBOT conspiracy buffs.  Robots?  Artificial Intelligence?

Don’t forget, it all really began with the light bulb …