North or south, this is all for short-term profits for corporations with a global reach. Where are the plans to mitigate this craziness?
Nuclear Dreams
We will have better luck investigating the wet dreams of the nuclear people. They have a desire to build Plutonium breeder reactors and their associated reactor core reprocessing plants.[41] Current light water reactors cause fission (the energy-producing reaction) of only 0.5% of the Uranium. The nuclear plants of which they dream would raise that, ideally, up to 70% (the text does not explicitly state whether or not it is Plutonium, Uranium, or a mixture); 140 times greater energy yield. They project forward to 2050, with nine billion people and each having an energy demand, on average, 150% of what we demand currently. They look to nuclear power to supply over 50% of energy needs in 2050.[19]
Think of the other kind of power, and wealth, that this represents. This can cloud many men's minds, drive them to commit many crimes, and it has. Fortunately, the scenario imagined above is strictly hallucinatory. But let us imagine it taking place and the heat burden it would produce, following Professor Nordell's line of reasoning. It would be much worse than current global warming trends.
False Choice
Today the global public is faced with a false choice, profitable for a few for a while, between nukes and hydrocarbons. The important, the "real" distinction is no-added-heat (solar and solar-derived: wind, wave, etc.) vs. added-heat (nukes and hydrocarbons).
In addition to adding heat, nukes and hydrocarbons have several other features in common. These materials and technologies lend themselves to easy monopolization and require a hierarchical corporate structure with an emphasis on security in order to carry out a complex series of events to make that energy usable. Because of these features, they are both labor and capital intensive.
On the other hand the global public majority has no control over the production and distribution of energy of this type. It is an enforced scarcity.
They cause untold misery in terms of illness and early death.[42] One Alberta doctor noted a high number of cases of the usually rare cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, likely due to the hydrocarbons and/or other materials needed for hydrocarbon extraction, in the project discussed above.
Solar and Solar-derived Energy
Solar and solar-derived need not have any of the above-cited drawbacks. Until very recently, we were told that solar wasn't "ready". Now we are told that solar, wind, and wave are "not enough". Really? It's time to splash our faces with cold water. Girls and boys, let us take off our blinders. Father Sun sends us 122 Petawatts per year (equivalent to 122 million American-sized nuclear power plants). Our puny industries produce only 0.005% as much. I think 6.7 billion people can figure out how to optimally use this excessively generous gift, don't you?
The science and engineering of solar/solar derived systems have advanced despite active hostility from the U.S. government, such that the price of photovoltaics has collapsed one-thousand-fold in forty years, only one of many examples. Very little government research money has gone, over the decades, to solar/solar-derived compared to nukes/hydrocarbons, the taxpayer subsidizing the energy corporations.[43]
Nevertheless, the energy capitalists have designs on solar and wind power also. They envision centralized facilities and huge grids at taxpayer expense with a hierarchical corporate structure.
But we do not have to settle for that. Nowadays there are small solar, small wind, and a wide variety of systems. There are also storage systems for solar energy despite continuing assertions to the contrary.
Psychological, Social, Economic and Political Conclusions
The type of technology we have determines much about our culture and even our inner thoughts and feelings. Thus we should determine what type of technology we develop based upon our understanding of our purpose and need. Ideally, our needs should be filled with as a low a labor and capital input as possible. If solar/wind are cheap and easy, which they will be, why should we spend more time laboring in a labor-intensive, dirty, dangerous industry and spend more time laboring to purchase (as rate-payer &/or tax-payer) expensive capital equipment and supplies that go up in radiation and smoke.
