Left or right side of the aisle, we’d probably all agree that we’re in trouble the day Paris Hilton makes the most sense on energy, and that day just might have come.
Here’s Ms. Hilton’s opening volley in her 2008 presidential platform:
“OK so here’s my energy policy: Barack wants to focus on new technologies to reduce foreign oil dependency and McCain wants offshore drilling. Well why don’t we do a hybrid of both candidates ideas? They can do limited offshore drilling with strict environmental oversight while creating tax incentives to get Detroit making hybrid and electric cars. That way the offshore drill carries us until the new technologies kick in which will then create new jobs and energy independence.
Energy crisis solved!”
What Ms. Hilton gets is that critical Village Square concept, “the power of AND.” Solving our energy problem will require lots of “ANDs”. Of course, there are holes in her platform beyond that, but since she’s such a dark horse, we’ll let them slide.
If you actually look at either candidate’s energy platform, they DO contain many ANDs. It is, instead, the bizarre quality of our public debate that artificially eliminates the ANDs. So… I say, let’s all try to add them back in and, in our own tiny corner of the national debate, not be outdone by Paris Hilton.
Gas prices today are not affected by whether we drill offshore, according to a report today on CNN. In actuality that hot political argument is just a “red herring.”
While John McCain is pressing for more nuclear and clean coal technology and Barack Obama focuses on taking on big oil companies making record profits, both candidates are following the time-honored political tradition of not pressing for citizens to do our part, for US to conserve. Apparently the conventional wisdom is that we don’t vote for a candidate who expects much from our end.
I caught Sunday’s Meet the Press with Al Gore and thought I should look at what he said up against last season’s draft recommendations on “America’s Energy Future.” While googling the transcript, I found the transcript AND MORE.
Here are three reviews of the interview:
Take 1: “Watching this pompous windbag - who produces CARBON Dioxide - makes me want to poke my eyes out. It would be less painful. What a self-righteous hypocrite!”
Take 2: “Somewhere in the darkest recesses of the RNC (or from Norquist’s or Rove’s office, your pick) the fax machine was working over time making sure that Tom Brokaw had the latest GOP talking points to discredit Al Gore for his appearance on Meet the Press.”
Take 3: “… for a change, we got a TV talk show for grown-ups, where a burning issue of our time was discussed without a single gotcha moment.”
Hard to believe they all watched the same interview.
That got me thinking that the way we human beings choose and process information we use… it’s like drawing circles around the particulars of a situation we choose to assimilate. A conservative who doesn’t believe in man-made climate change picks out the parts of the interview that fall in his circle of concern, the liberal sees a whole different picture in the inkblot.
Of course, that’s simply human. Where the whole mess starts to get buggy is when we refuse to step outside of our circles, when we only listen to people inside our circles, and when we twist facts to shoehorn things into our circles that simply don’t belong there.
So, yeah… draw those circles, but I challenge you to be prepared to step outside of them. Or, better still, I challenge you to enlarge them.
Who knows what you might stumble over in the process.
Anyone else annoyed and confused with the partisan yap-fest about what we can - and should - do about the high gas prices? Will drilling solve the problem or is there really nothing there? Are speculators raising the price of gas or is that a red herring?
I’m rolling up my sleeves and trying to delve into FACT beyond partisanship on the mucho dinero YOU have to pay for a tank of gas. Give me a few days and I’ll let you know what I’ve found out…
The nicest young man rang my doorbell in hopes of obtaining a
signature from me on a petition to make congress look at alternate
forms of energy (wind, solar, tidal) to reduce of dependance on fossil
fuels. He got so much more than he bargained for once I opened the door.
I stood in the doorway and gave him my best synopsis of all our energy
dinners (who knew i was listening so well?). I went over the facts I
had gleaned about nuclear energy being very clean energy. We discussed
the storage and transfer of energy and how solar, wind, and tidal
energy is strictly good for local use and doesn’t store or move over
long distances well. I also pointed out the LARGE land needed for wind
energy and how renewables don’t produce nearly enough power. And i
touched a bit on the fact that the his point was that we used too many
fossil fuels and foreign oil and that would not be helped by tidal,
wind, or solar power (unless a solar car is invented).
Really, I was a font of energy knowledge. I even amazed myself. Seems
that you can teach an old dog new tricks.
The young man was very polite and listened very well. I don’t think I
changed his mind and i didn’t sign his petition. But it was one small
step for civility… all politics is local, all politics involves
beginning at our front doorstep and having a lively and civil
conversation.
He even wrote down the web address for tothevillagesquare.org. Perhaps
he is reading this blog entry today…
We’re out with our draft guiding concepts on nuclear energy from our third dinner. Find a full discussion of these concepts here.
You can find the draft guiding concepts from our first dinner here and our second dinner here.
Tell us what you think.
1.
Nuclear power is a significant source of zero to low greenhouse gas energy
that should remain part of a diversified energy mix.
2.
Nuclear is the only zero/low greenhouse gas energy source currently capable of providing the baseload (24/7) power required to meet a projected 35 to 40% increase in demand and/or the international goal of a 70% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.
3.
If we’re concerned with greenhouse gas emissions, choosing not to build new nuclear capacity is giving up a sure thing in favor of a hopeful bet.
4.
In comparing health effects and mortality rates, nuclear power is statistically safer than coal & natural gas.
5.
The long radioactive half-life of nuclear waste is not a measure of its danger.
6.
While it is true that nuclear waste is radioactive for 100,000 years, the risk decreases substantially in a tiny fraction of that time.
7.
Waste disposal is the fundamental technological challenge ahead.
8.
U.S. nuclear plants are unlikely targets for terrorist attacks given the absence of highly enriched uranium.
9.
With nuclear, subsidies are the rub.
10.
Defuse the debate by knowing whether you’re talking domestic nuclear issues or international nuclear issues.
11.
Building new nuclear plants is expensive, we just don’t know how expensive.
12.
Transparency,
transparency,
transparency.
13.
To maximize our ability to use nuclear energy intelligently (likely with reprocessing) we need to address the challenging international proliferation picture.
One of the most surprising facts I learned while studying nuclear power is just how much radiation we absorb in our daily lives and how miniscule the percentage of that total annual absorption you’d get even if you lived next to a nuclear power plant 24 hours a day, grew your food there and drank all your water from a well on your property (this describes “the Fencepost Man” - a theoretical person the EPA limits to 15 millirems annually). Below is a rundown of millirems associated in various aspects of our lives.A millirem “is a measure of the actual biological effects of radiation absorbed in human tissue.” To give you a sense of scale, 100,000 millirems within a short time might kill you, although the short time is a critical part of that lethality.
Associated with energy
Living within 50 miles of a coal-fired plant .03 millirem/year
Living within 50 miles of a nuclear plant .0009 millirem/year
15 millirems - EPA limit for the “Fencepost Man”
21 millirems - Average annual exposure of a uranium miner
180 to 240 millirems - Actual average exposure of nuclear power plant workers
5,000 millirems - Nuclear Regulatory Commission limit for exposure of nuclear plant workers
80,000 to 1.6 million millirems - Inside the reactor building at Chernobyl
240 millirems - Average annual background radiation we receive from sources like the below:
Roundtrip flight from New York to LA - 3 millirems
Natural gas in your home - 9 millirems
Chest x-ray - 10 millirems
Drinking water - 32 millirems
Cosmic radiation - 50 millirems
Xray technician – 500 millirems
Living for a year at Grand Central Station made of granite – 600 millirems
Living in northeastern Washington state - 1,700 millirems
2 packs of cigarettes a day 16,000 to 20,000 millirems/year (even then, the chemical aspect is probably what causes cancer, not the radiation)
Living in a particular city in Iran - 26,000 millirems (no evidence of health risks)
According to today’s New York Times “it has become clear in recent months that the nation’s effort to develop the technique is lagging badly.” The effort to use abundant and cheap coal in a cleaner gasified form and capture the resulting carbon may come too late to be useful in the push to decrease greenhouse gas emissions:
“Coal’s had a tough year,” said John Lavelle, head of a business at General Electric that makes equipment for processing coal into a form from which carbon can be captured. Many of these projects were derailed by the short-term pressure of rising construction costs. But scientists say the result, unless the situation can be turned around, will be a long-term disaster.
…only a handful of small projects survive, and the recent cancellations mean that most of this work has come to a halt, raising doubts that the technique can be ready any time in the next few decades. And without it, “we’re not going to have much of a chance for stabilizing the climate,” said John Thompson, who oversees work on the issue for the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group.
