good. let's take france is a good example of a country that is using nuclear (thus using its brains) as a way to generate electriciy to try to minimize its dependency on fossil fuels, i.e., oil/ng/coal. i agree with that policy 100%. everyone i know in the oil/ng industry has told me they also think using ng to burn as a way to generate electricity in the usa is a waste of a fuel that should be used to heat homes/buildings and as a starting material for the chemical industry. all my oil/ng friends have told me nuclear is the way to go for electricity. i agree with them, and thus i suppose i agree with france too (on nuclear power).
so why don't/can't we do a rational thing as france is doing, but do it in the usa? i think you know the reasons, before you posed the premised question. it is natural, i think, for a lot of people in the usa to feel empowered, overly empowered beyond their knowledge or experience sometimes perhaps, to bind together to oppose just about anything they don't want to happen regardless of what industry or environmental (or fill in a group here) "experts" might recommend. i remember a quote from from back in the early 1980s from milton friedman where he wrote, "unexamined repetition works wonders." i wonder sometimes what the followers of spartacus were thinking when they, so empowered and confident in their own ability against the romans, overrode the judgment of their leader spartacus and were completely defeated. so whether it is drilling off fl/ca, drilling in alaska, nuclear, coal, wind, etc., there is always going to be some group that gets enough power to keep congress and the government from allowing the energy industry to do something.
as an aside i was not being defensive. if you examine your question, you will see it is based on a premise that is not necessarily true, i.e., that the REST of the world can do something that the usa can't. your question, "howcome the rest of the world can develop energy resources responsibly and without ecological disasters, whether nuclear, oil, or gas, both on- and off-shore, and we cannot do so here?" 'have you stopped beating your wife?' is a parallel type question based on a premise that is not necessarily true. as you know i am not asking you a question. i am just giving an example of a potentially false premised question. larry kudlow is the prince of this type of question. |
