There’s no such thing as “away”

At the November 2010 TEDx:GPGP (Great Pacific Garbage Patch), Van Jones spoke on “[t]he economic injustice of plastic”. Jones is an attorney and activist and was the “Special Advisor [to President Obama] for Green Jobs”. He is also the author of “The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems” (subject of mixed reviews but endorsed by prominent environmental personalities). Activism begets controversy and Jones is not immune. Regardless of the controversies, he makes good points. While it seems to me that his ideas as presented are short on substance, ideas still have to start somewhere and merely talking about them raises awareness of an issue. Jones approaches the problem of plastic pollution from a perspective of social justice. The worst of plastics – most toxic and carcinogenic – are also the cheapest. The poorest have no choice to buy anything else. The manufacture of plastics certainly does not take place in the wealthier neighborhoods, rather, in places where the poorest can afford to live. Jones also claims that plastics at the point of disposal affect the poorest because “too often that [plastic] bottle is going to be put on a boat… go all the way across the ocean at some expense…wind up in a developing country, often China…[where] that bottle winds up getting burned” ... releasing harmful chemicals. And Jones calls attention to “Cancer Alley”, that region in Louisiana which reportedly has a higher than average cancer rate among residents, which also happens to be the “petrochemical corridor”. Now, even if that bottle or any plastics are actually recycled, the next generation is not going to be another container; more likely they will be secondary products such as textiles and plastic lumber for park furniture or wheel stops, none of which are “recyclable” and only temporarily divert from the landfills we are trying to avoid. Jones says

Well, the root of this problem, in my view, is the idea of disposability itself….In order to trash the planet, you have to trash people…we are at a moment where the coming together of social justice as an idea, and ecology as an idea,we can finally now see that they are really, at the end of the day, one idea.”
And his idea:
We don’t have disposable anything. We don’t have disposable resources. We don’t have disposable species. And we don’t have disposable people either. We don’t have a throwaway planet.
Jones hammers gently that disposability is something we believe in, but we don’t realize the cost in human capital that goes with that (“25% of the people incarcerated in the world are incarcerated in the U.S”). --much more follows--

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Secret polls in America: Cheap oil versus Middle East democracy?

What follows is not real data; it is only my hunch. What would the result be if Americans could vote, using a secret ballot, on the following option: Would they rather have widespread democracy in the Middle East or cheap oil at home? Would they rather support continued US coddling of corrupt Middle East leaders who keep order with violent crackdowns or would they prefer that the people of these countries have freedom of speech and free elections? Let's assume the price of a gallon of gas would go up an additional 50 cents if the people of Middle Eastern countries (e.g., Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iraq) kicked out all the remaining brutal dictators and changed over to meaningful self-rule--some meaningful form of democracy. Would Americans vote for their pocketbook or for high ideals? I suspect that the result would be something like this:

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Why Sensationalize an Already Sensational Event?

Scientific American reports, Radiation leaking from Japan's quake-hit nuclear plant as part of the devastation in Japan from the record setting earthquake. Sure, four out of five nuclear facilities immediately shut down safely. But of one unit at the fifth, they say

The blast raised fears of a meltdown at the facility north of Tokyo as officials scrambled to contain what could be the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl explosion in 1986 that shocked the world.

Uh, yeah. Actually, this looks more like the Three Mile Island "disaster" to me. Chernobyl used a reactor technology that was considered too unstable outside of the Manhattan project or the U.S.S.R. that involved a big pile of carbon graphite to regulate the reaction. Graphite burns. Chernobyl burned. Chernobyl also exploded wide open. People stood miles away touristically looking directly into the reactor core, and then dying from the gamma ray exposure. The G.E. reactors in Japan are water filled steel containers. They don't burn.They didn't burst. The reactor was idled within hours. The quake broke the outer concrete containment structure (but not the inner steel one) and also interrupted all three safety backup systems. So the reactor overheated before they got it under control, and they had to vent some probably radioactive steam to prevent the inner containment from also rupturing. I say "probably radioactive" because the cooling water certainly contains tritium (Hydrogen-3) and traces of other isotopes. But so far there are no reports of measurable radiation beyond the reactor premises. I'm sure there will be. Personally, I take this as a sign that we really need to move beyond the 1970's style Cold War reactors to the 1990's style ones now being specified in Europe. These are designed to fail safe even if all the active safety systems fail. Sure, they cost a little more to build. But they are pretty much proof against flood, earthquake, and bomb attacks short of nuclear warheads releasing radiation. I have also advocated building next generation fast neutron reactors that can use depleted uranium, thorium, and most current generation reactors waste as fuel. A past post of mine: Whatever Became of Thorium? These reactors are also inherently safer, because they are using less volatile fuel. This should be an opportunity to discuss the future safer implementation of this inevitable successor to coal power, rather than to propagate, "Gee whiz, isn't noocular power dangerous?"

Continue ReadingWhy Sensationalize an Already Sensational Event?