I was rather irritated when I heard the president announce his plans for “a renewable energy economy,” meaning solar, wind, ethanol, etc., in his address to Congress. OK, stay with me on this one. Every State of the Union/address to Congress, sees a president echo the same mindless refrain of “harnessing new technology,” “alternative fuels,” “solar, wind, ethanol.”
Sound familiar? Maybe that’s because we’ve been hearing the same words spoken to us for the last 30 years! Politicians of every political stripe promise us “green-collar jobs,” and perpetual prosperity based on harnessing magical, mystical powers from corn, or some other such nonsense. This notion that solar, wind and ethanol technology will serve as a cure-all for our dependence on foreign oil, presupposes that America’s climate and terrain are uniform throughout different regions of the country. While the deserts of Nevada and Arizona are ripe for solar energy technology, other parts of the country most certainly are not. Can anyone truly say with a straight face that solar anything is the answer in Seattle? Or Binghamton?
If this country wants to have a mature, reality-based discussion on energy, then we need to overcome our phobia of all things nuclear. I know how difficult that is, as millions of Americans have a Pavlov’s dog-like reaction to the word. Solar good, nuclear bad is the sentiment of our time. People are scared of the word nuclear. And why shouldn’t they be? The contexts in which they’ve learned to associate the word have been rather downbeat — Iran, Iraq (Condoleezza Rice’s hallucinogenic mushroom clouds), North Korea, and of course who could forget that infamous photograph in our history textbooks of Japan post World War II?
What people need to understand is that not everything is an episode of “24.” Even if, God forbid, terrorists were to strike a nuclear power plant, the aftermath would not be as nearly dramatic or devastating as film and television would have us believe. We would not exactly see three-testicled squirrels scampering around.
Nuclear energy would help America in a myriad of ways. In addition to the jobs it would create in constructing the power plants, an entire industry could be created in the security sector of the economy, dedicated to protecting the power plants. For example, people with military/law enforcement backgrounds could be paid high five-, low six-figure sums for their consulting services to secure our nuclear plants, as well as patrolling them to keep them safe. Additionally, market psychology, (you know, your parents’ 401ks/retirement savings/college savings) would most certainly improve with this reality-based, job generating energy policy.
Six years ago we started a war to “bring freedom” to the Middle East. It’s time we ask for a refund.