First off, here's LJ's handy FAQ on the html code for posting links. I learned that here, and it's served me well in many a forum. ("served me well" = "made me look smart")
As for wind, sure, those are issues the same way that highly toxic byproducts is a problem with the manufacture of materials for solar cells. The pragmatist in me, though, says we'll likely need to pay the price for all these options to head off catastrophic climate change in the next few decades (except for nuclear -- that's trading one long-term headache for an even longer one). So from that angle, this just looks like the best option in our portfolio.
But I didn't actually mean grid improvements when I referenced structural changes (though that is another one of the shorter-term pragmatic things that need doing). Besides decentralization of power production (as you say, a kind of physics trade-off) I'm talking about changing the scale we live at. For starters, we have to just use less power -- so conservation is probably as important a priority as getting any one new power source up and running.
But ultimately, its going to mean adapting our ways of life. When I say there's no silver bullet, I mean that there is no way to magically make sustainable a way of life that is simply unsustainable. As much as we want to convince ourselves otherwise (I actually read someone yesterday excited about a new cold fusion theory), there's just no power source that will continue to give us energy as cheaply and plentifully as we've gotten it from oil for the last 60-70 years; there's no new planet to mine for all the high-value minerals that we're rapidly depleting; there's no fertile new continent to discover to replace all of the priceless arable land we've destroyed and aquifers we've depleted.
We're hitting limits, even as we culturally demonize the very idea of limits. But our adaptations needn't seem harsh in the least. Would it be so bad to not spend hours of the day commuting, but living within walking distance of your workplace -- if that was in the context of an aesthetic residential area organized around a high-density town center? We've come so far from the civic art era of the last turn of the century that we've forgotten cities can be beautiful places to live.
Would it be unpleasant to get your food not wrapped in plastic from the sterile aisles of a supermarket, but from the hands of nearby farmers who produced it? Maybe to raise some of it yourself? Could you cope with eating only food that was in season where you live, and not from Brazil year-round? I could go on, but you get the point--and I'm not directing any of this at you personally, mind, it's what I'd like to say to everyone in our country. But I wanted to be sure you understood where I was coming from.
It hasn't even dawned on our nation at large just what a clusterf*ck our way of living is, not only for everyone else but for ourselves as well.
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branchandroot
Re: stayin' relevant
Date: 2009-03-25 01:07 pm (UTC)As for wind, sure, those are issues the same way that highly toxic byproducts is a problem with the manufacture of materials for solar cells. The pragmatist in me, though, says we'll likely need to pay the price for all these options to head off catastrophic climate change in the next few decades (except for nuclear -- that's trading one long-term headache for an even longer one). So from that angle, this just looks like the best option in our portfolio.
But I didn't actually mean grid improvements when I referenced structural changes (though that is another one of the shorter-term pragmatic things that need doing). Besides decentralization of power production (as you say, a kind of physics trade-off) I'm talking about changing the scale we live at. For starters, we have to just use less power -- so conservation is probably as important a priority as getting any one new power source up and running.
But ultimately, its going to mean adapting our ways of life. When I say there's no silver bullet, I mean that there is no way to magically make sustainable a way of life that is simply unsustainable. As much as we want to convince ourselves otherwise (I actually read someone yesterday excited about a new cold fusion theory), there's just no power source that will continue to give us energy as cheaply and plentifully as we've gotten it from oil for the last 60-70 years; there's no new planet to mine for all the high-value minerals that we're rapidly depleting; there's no fertile new continent to discover to replace all of the priceless arable land we've destroyed and aquifers we've depleted.
We're hitting limits, even as we culturally demonize the very idea of limits. But our adaptations needn't seem harsh in the least. Would it be so bad to not spend hours of the day commuting, but living within walking distance of your workplace -- if that was in the context of an aesthetic residential area organized around a high-density town center? We've come so far from the civic art era of the last turn of the century that we've forgotten cities can be beautiful places to live.
Would it be unpleasant to get your food not wrapped in plastic from the sterile aisles of a supermarket, but from the hands of nearby farmers who produced it? Maybe to raise some of it yourself? Could you cope with eating only food that was in season where you live, and not from Brazil year-round? I could go on, but you get the point--and I'm not directing any of this at you personally, mind, it's what I'd like to say to everyone in our country. But I wanted to be sure you understood where I was coming from.
It hasn't even dawned on our nation at large just what a clusterf*ck our way of living is, not only for everyone else but for ourselves as well.