Trade Offs, Parts, Clear Cuts etc.

Clear Cuts, Strip Mining, Nuclear Power

Planting some pine trees won’t bring back a lush indigenous forest. Mining uranium to use it to boil water to turn a steam turbine and then deal with waste that will persist in geological time, longer than anyone can truly comprehend, is not sustainable. But yet these are the very things that are being touted to “save” our way of life. So we can power our homes. So we can run our machines. So we can play distracting games. So we can watch distracting entertainment. So we can type, as I type now, on a computer made in another country with components that are extremely toxic to make. So I can drive to work in a car that is more polluting to make than to drive. So that the infrastructure of our way of life, be it conventional, alternative, even rural farming, can be maintained.

Can it?

Parts

The parts that make up so called Green Technologies must come from somewhere. If the parts aren’t “Green” then how can the whole be called “Green”? The Lithium to make the batteries for Hybrid cars is not reusable the way lead is in traditional car batteries. It’s a one way street. If the majority of the worlds Lithium is located on land surrounded by indigenous populations, what will happen? Will the environment these populations depend on be destroyed and the populations displaced all for the sake of building something “Green”? What is green? It’s a color and simultaneously a marketing term to make people feel good about contributing to business as usual. Once Industrial society figures out how to be healthy it can figure out the conundrum of being

 “Green”.

Trade Offs

We can power our homes with solar cells. Solar cells which are extremely toxic and energy intensive to make. And, ultimately, will produce less energy in their life time use than it took to make them. But the trade off is that someone somewhere will not have to rely on a grid generated power source using coal, oil, radiation or natural gas. That investment is made at the manufacturing site so it does not have to be made in a private home or a local power plant. The energy is still used up. The pollution is still generated. It just all happens somewhere else. The Earth still bears the brunt.

We can figure out better trade offs. Working to improve the manufacturing process to be less energy sucking and less polluting is one way. Working on using other forms of electrical generating devices such as wind turbines, private or otherwise, is another. Or, the best possible option, changing our habits and using much less electricity. Or, using none at all. Or, somewhere in between. Either way, habits need to be changed.

Fuel will cost too much to import.

Food will become more important than fuel.