President Barack Obama's nuclear nightmare is not that there will be a Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, or Fukushima in the United States during his presidency. He certainly is not worried that his encouraging the building of more nuclear plants will bring disaster in the future. I know, because the President sent me a letter.
This is the letter I sent to President Barack Obama, handwritten, by snail mail:
Dear President Obama,
Please don't wait for an earthquake.
Please order all U.S. nuclear reactors to be shut down as soon as is safely possible.
Sincerely,
William P. Meyers
This is the reply I received:
Dear William:
Thank you for writing. I have heard from many Americans who have been affected by natural disasters, and I appreciate hearing from you.
My administration is working every day to ensure our country stands ready to respond to any disaster or emergency. Our goal is a more resilient Nation, one in which individuals, communities, and our economy can adapt to changing conditions, as well as withstand and rapidly recover from a disruption of any kind. I encourage Americans who are directly impacted by natural disasters to visit www.fema.gov for up-to-date information and to access current response and recovery information.
Thank you again for writing.
Sincerely,
Barack Obama
Link to image of Barack Obama letter to William P. Meyers
In other words, he instructed his staff to duck the issue. The Obama administration is not just one in a long line of administrations that is desecrating American soil with nuclear power plants. By aligning the Democratic Party with the nuclear power industry, he has restarted the building of nuclear plants. What Obama fears is not a lack of support from people like me, but a lack of support from the corporate security state.
Failing to protect workers, extending a counterproductive foreign war, and rolling up his sleeves to help oil and nuclear power corporations destroy the environment, these are the legacies of the Obama administration.
The only real hope within the electoral system is the Green Party. The Green Party of California is launching a registration drive and fundraising drive right now. I'll admit we are weak, but that is because you have wasted your time and donations on the Democratic Party. If those of you who see the solutions to our problems join us, we will be strong. Together we will stop and reverse the damage to the environment. We will create a strong and just economy. We will withdraw from the imperialist system and enjoy the benefits of a peacetime economy.
And we will definately close down all nuclear plants and store all nuclear material in the safest manner scientists can devise.
Note: Nuclear mishaps occur more frequently than most people realize. See List of Civilian Nuclear Accidents
Showing posts with label nuclear reactors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nuclear reactors. Show all posts
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Fearing a Ten or Eleven
If the late Japanese earthquake had been a 8.0 (on the Richter scale), there would have been almost no damage in northern coastal Japan. The sea walls would have stopped the tsunami, saving thousands of people from drowning. The waters would not have washed over the nuclear power plant backup generators, leading to overheating to the edge of catastrophe. But the quake measured in at 9.0, which is 10 times as powerful as 8.0. A Ten would be another 10 times as powerful, or 100 times as powerful as an Eight.
Human fear comes in a lesser variety of magnitudes. The emotional intensity of fear from social embarrassment can be greater than the fear created by a real, potential death situation. Fear guides more human action than most people will admit. Because of our limited emotional range, we tend to exaggerate small risks and minimize larger risks.
Somewhere out there is a Ten. Somewhere out there is an Eleven, even. A scenario of apocalyptic proportions. Strangely, it is hard to prepare for a Ten or Eleven. Hence we have stopped preparing for a nuclear war. If an atomic weapon goes off over a city, survival in that city is purely an accident, and probably an unhappy one.
Instead, depending on our personalities and cultures, we might fear immigrants, germs, vaccinations, foods containing wheat or peanuts, ideas, or a harsh word from some local community member.
Some fear, however, is rational. That is, our emotions and our pragmatic responses line up with real danger pretty well. We avoid hot things and electrified things. Most of us don't drive too fast, most of the time. We don't jump off high spots, and we don't drink from containers marked poison.
Social and economic fears occupy a middling ground that tell us much about a person's character. Some of us think nothing of telling a boss to "take this job and shove it," others never leave a job unless they are fired. Some feel safe dressed conservatively, others go out of their way to dress strangely. Some are savers, some spendthrifts. Mostly these choices are not life endangering, but those who are overly afraid of society can be crippled, while those who are socially fearless may also find themselves friendless.
The recent recession looked like it might develop into a Nine or Ten, but in retrospect it was a warning shot, an Eight. This illustrates the danger of generalization, because the recession affected some Americans (and global citizens) not at all, while for some it was economically catastrophic, resulting in bankruptcy, or even death.
Famine used to be the big worry of people and governments. Because the history of the United States is largely the history of converting near-wilderness to farmland, famine has not been an issue here. During the Cold War, when officials worried about Atomic War, the U.S. put together a food reserve system (which also helped keep farm commodity prices high). Now there is very little in the way of stored food or production reserves of food in the U.S. Yet almost no one worries about that. People on the West Coast and in China have been hoarding Iodine this last week, but they expect food to be available in the usual places the next time they shop, and for as far as they can see into the future. Because they do it every day, they forget that driving to the supermarket is more dangerous than almost anything else they do.
In the end, we all die. Yet we fear death not just for ourselves, but for our friends and loved ones. We grieve when someone we knows dies; we even grieve for our pets. Yet we must accept death, both our own and for others. To deny death is to deny reality, and that leads to all sorts of problems, including many people being trapped by their fears in religious cults that suck the life out of life.
Most of the risks we run are inherent in where we are born, geographically, economically and culturally. Being born in a refugee camp brings different risks than being born in a mansion of the possessors of the land where the refugees once lived. Most of the world's people are neither refugees nor millionaires. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is famous for saying "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," during the Great Depression, but then again he was from an incredibly wealthy family and had an nice salary as President of the United States on top of that.
We all figure out what is going on as best we can. Calm, wise people can prepare for the Fives, Sixes, and Sevens of life. With an Eight you hope you survive the initial shock, then deal with the hand that is dealt you as best you can. As to Nines, they are rare, and survival is mostly pure luck. When the Tens and Elevens come, one can only hope they are local, not global, and that they are in someone else's locality.
Human fear comes in a lesser variety of magnitudes. The emotional intensity of fear from social embarrassment can be greater than the fear created by a real, potential death situation. Fear guides more human action than most people will admit. Because of our limited emotional range, we tend to exaggerate small risks and minimize larger risks.
Somewhere out there is a Ten. Somewhere out there is an Eleven, even. A scenario of apocalyptic proportions. Strangely, it is hard to prepare for a Ten or Eleven. Hence we have stopped preparing for a nuclear war. If an atomic weapon goes off over a city, survival in that city is purely an accident, and probably an unhappy one.
Instead, depending on our personalities and cultures, we might fear immigrants, germs, vaccinations, foods containing wheat or peanuts, ideas, or a harsh word from some local community member.
Some fear, however, is rational. That is, our emotions and our pragmatic responses line up with real danger pretty well. We avoid hot things and electrified things. Most of us don't drive too fast, most of the time. We don't jump off high spots, and we don't drink from containers marked poison.
Social and economic fears occupy a middling ground that tell us much about a person's character. Some of us think nothing of telling a boss to "take this job and shove it," others never leave a job unless they are fired. Some feel safe dressed conservatively, others go out of their way to dress strangely. Some are savers, some spendthrifts. Mostly these choices are not life endangering, but those who are overly afraid of society can be crippled, while those who are socially fearless may also find themselves friendless.
The recent recession looked like it might develop into a Nine or Ten, but in retrospect it was a warning shot, an Eight. This illustrates the danger of generalization, because the recession affected some Americans (and global citizens) not at all, while for some it was economically catastrophic, resulting in bankruptcy, or even death.
Famine used to be the big worry of people and governments. Because the history of the United States is largely the history of converting near-wilderness to farmland, famine has not been an issue here. During the Cold War, when officials worried about Atomic War, the U.S. put together a food reserve system (which also helped keep farm commodity prices high). Now there is very little in the way of stored food or production reserves of food in the U.S. Yet almost no one worries about that. People on the West Coast and in China have been hoarding Iodine this last week, but they expect food to be available in the usual places the next time they shop, and for as far as they can see into the future. Because they do it every day, they forget that driving to the supermarket is more dangerous than almost anything else they do.
In the end, we all die. Yet we fear death not just for ourselves, but for our friends and loved ones. We grieve when someone we knows dies; we even grieve for our pets. Yet we must accept death, both our own and for others. To deny death is to deny reality, and that leads to all sorts of problems, including many people being trapped by their fears in religious cults that suck the life out of life.
Most of the risks we run are inherent in where we are born, geographically, economically and culturally. Being born in a refugee camp brings different risks than being born in a mansion of the possessors of the land where the refugees once lived. Most of the world's people are neither refugees nor millionaires. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is famous for saying "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," during the Great Depression, but then again he was from an incredibly wealthy family and had an nice salary as President of the United States on top of that.
We all figure out what is going on as best we can. Calm, wise people can prepare for the Fives, Sixes, and Sevens of life. With an Eight you hope you survive the initial shock, then deal with the hand that is dealt you as best you can. As to Nines, they are rare, and survival is mostly pure luck. When the Tens and Elevens come, one can only hope they are local, not global, and that they are in someone else's locality.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Where Have All the Robots Gone? Or, Nuclear Crock Pots
Nuclear power plants were never a very good idea. Take an atomic bomb, marry it to a crock pot, and the progeny are nuclear power plants. Imagine a crock pot with over a million welds. Iit only takes one weld poorly done to recreate Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. That, of course, is just the danger of the ordinary operation of a nuclear fission reactor. Add an earthquake, a terrorist attack, or just the Homer Simpson that dwells in all human beings, and you have a little list of catastophic initiators.
Some new not very good ideas have been revealed by the incidents at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex. Like placing backup generators where they can be knocked out by flood waters. The worst, however, is storing "spent" uranium and plutonium fuel rods in big stacks next to each other in pools of water. Which reminds us that 60 years after nuclear reactors began to be built, there is no safe system in place to store the nuclear waste. But don't let that stop progress.
One problem in getting the reactors and the massed pools of used fuel rods under control is the susceptibility of humans to radiation poisoning. Which leads me to ask: where are the robots when you need them? Japan is the world leader in robotics. They have factories filled with robots and robotic pets in people's homes. So why no robots that can go and take a peak inside the storage pools and the reactor buildings? Why no robotic helicopters to help in a crisis? All that is need, really, to avert disaster is a nice clean pool filled with boron salts and water and a robot or two that can pluck out a few fuel rods and space them out at nice safe distances, preferably in such an emergency back up pool.
Strangely, atomic bombs are actually safer than nuclear power plants. They are designed so that the fissionable materials are kept far enough apart that they don't react with each other, not until the bomb is detonated.
I don't think nuclear power can be made safe. We just can't anticipate everything that can go wrong. With all due respect to nuclear engineers and scientists, your pride has gotten in the way of your analytic abilities. Sure you are clever, but you can't dodge Murphy's Law forever. The only safe uranium is unmined uranium.
On the other hand, let's hear a round of applause for the brave workers who are risking their lives trying to salvage the situation.
If you have not already done so, be sure to write President Obama and tell him to shut American reactors down. Don't use email, that won't make the point. Send a snail mail letter to:
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington D.C. 20500
If you pretend to be a "progressive Democrat," you should add the administration's continuing support for building new nuclear power plants in the U.S. to your list of reasons to stop delaying the inevitable. Change your voter registration to Green Party as soon as you can.
Some new not very good ideas have been revealed by the incidents at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex. Like placing backup generators where they can be knocked out by flood waters. The worst, however, is storing "spent" uranium and plutonium fuel rods in big stacks next to each other in pools of water. Which reminds us that 60 years after nuclear reactors began to be built, there is no safe system in place to store the nuclear waste. But don't let that stop progress.
One problem in getting the reactors and the massed pools of used fuel rods under control is the susceptibility of humans to radiation poisoning. Which leads me to ask: where are the robots when you need them? Japan is the world leader in robotics. They have factories filled with robots and robotic pets in people's homes. So why no robots that can go and take a peak inside the storage pools and the reactor buildings? Why no robotic helicopters to help in a crisis? All that is need, really, to avert disaster is a nice clean pool filled with boron salts and water and a robot or two that can pluck out a few fuel rods and space them out at nice safe distances, preferably in such an emergency back up pool.
Strangely, atomic bombs are actually safer than nuclear power plants. They are designed so that the fissionable materials are kept far enough apart that they don't react with each other, not until the bomb is detonated.
I don't think nuclear power can be made safe. We just can't anticipate everything that can go wrong. With all due respect to nuclear engineers and scientists, your pride has gotten in the way of your analytic abilities. Sure you are clever, but you can't dodge Murphy's Law forever. The only safe uranium is unmined uranium.
On the other hand, let's hear a round of applause for the brave workers who are risking their lives trying to salvage the situation.
If you have not already done so, be sure to write President Obama and tell him to shut American reactors down. Don't use email, that won't make the point. Send a snail mail letter to:
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington D.C. 20500
If you pretend to be a "progressive Democrat," you should add the administration's continuing support for building new nuclear power plants in the U.S. to your list of reasons to stop delaying the inevitable. Change your voter registration to Green Party as soon as you can.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
No Nukes, No War, No Service
Ever since working as a paralegal on the WPPSS debacle I have been resolutely against the building and operating of nuclear power plants, including the development of fusion reactors (current reactors use nuclear fission). WPPSS, Washington Public Power Supply System, planned to build 5 nuclear power plants back in the 1970s and 80s. Fortunately they screwed up so badly that only 1 plant was actually built, although 2 others were started. The result was an economic disaster (and the consequent litigation, hence my employment). Between that, the Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl nuclear emission disasters you would have thought nuclear power plants would would be dead, finis, not on the table. But there are two powers in the universe greater than the atom: human stupidity and greed.
President Barack Obama has been a supporter of building more nuclear power plants in the United States. His excuse is the need to cut back on greenhouse gases. Campaign donations to the Democratic Party grease those skids too. So far even the Japanese disaster has not altered Obama's mind. I'm writing him a letter. Close the damned things down as soon as possible. Don't wait for an earthquake.
There will be a power shortage if the world turns off its nuclear plants. Some will want to burn more fossil fuels to make up the difference. I think people should turn off a lot of unnecessary stuff. Turn off the entire military establishment of every nation, for starts. Turn off all air conditioning. Limit heating in winter to what is really essential. Walk or bike to work.
We can't stop earthquakes or hurricanes, but we can stop war. The U.S. has been the worst military offender since it became the biggest military power after World War II. We do need a military. We need about 10,000 trained men to protect us from the Canadians, and another 10,000 to protect us from the Mexicans. Or we could just merge our three nations into one big happy family, and just keep a cadre of officers trained at the military academies in the remote case that we need to ramp up to protect us from some other nation.
My Democratic Party friends, rather than leaving the party because it is a war crimes organization (an organization that has repeatedly ordered war crimes to be committed) want to defend Barack Obama and crew against the Tea Party and Republican Party. No thanks. It will only take the Tea Party two to four years to destroy the American Economy as we know it if they come to power. That is not my favored scenario. I'd like to see the Green Party or its equivalent in charge of governance. But as far as getting rid of the military and nuclear power plants, letting the Tea Party unleash anarchy on the land is a better bet.
Meanwhile, I want to express my deepest sympathies for the people of Japan, particularly those harmed in the recent tragedy. Until 1850 the Japanese militarists were content to stay isolated on their islands and abuse their own peasants. After the U.S. invaded Okinawa and Japan, they decided they rather liked the American modern style and did their best to imitate our society. Despite imitation being flattery, this imitation eventually involved cutting into America's ability to rape and pillage Asia, so FDR ordered the crushing of Japan (which started well before Pearl Harbor, with U.S. attacks on Japanese and Chinese troops stationed). After World War II the Japanese gave up on military power but still aspired to industrial power, and had quite a run. The recent earthquake would have happened just the same no matter what the human course of history, and seaside villages would have been just as drowned. But the nuclear tragedy is a purely human tragedy, built of human stupidity and arrogance that many Japanese bought into. Hopefully when the dead are buried and memorialized the next step the Japanese people will take will be to close all their nuclear plants.
President Barack Obama has been a supporter of building more nuclear power plants in the United States. His excuse is the need to cut back on greenhouse gases. Campaign donations to the Democratic Party grease those skids too. So far even the Japanese disaster has not altered Obama's mind. I'm writing him a letter. Close the damned things down as soon as possible. Don't wait for an earthquake.
There will be a power shortage if the world turns off its nuclear plants. Some will want to burn more fossil fuels to make up the difference. I think people should turn off a lot of unnecessary stuff. Turn off the entire military establishment of every nation, for starts. Turn off all air conditioning. Limit heating in winter to what is really essential. Walk or bike to work.
We can't stop earthquakes or hurricanes, but we can stop war. The U.S. has been the worst military offender since it became the biggest military power after World War II. We do need a military. We need about 10,000 trained men to protect us from the Canadians, and another 10,000 to protect us from the Mexicans. Or we could just merge our three nations into one big happy family, and just keep a cadre of officers trained at the military academies in the remote case that we need to ramp up to protect us from some other nation.
My Democratic Party friends, rather than leaving the party because it is a war crimes organization (an organization that has repeatedly ordered war crimes to be committed) want to defend Barack Obama and crew against the Tea Party and Republican Party. No thanks. It will only take the Tea Party two to four years to destroy the American Economy as we know it if they come to power. That is not my favored scenario. I'd like to see the Green Party or its equivalent in charge of governance. But as far as getting rid of the military and nuclear power plants, letting the Tea Party unleash anarchy on the land is a better bet.
Meanwhile, I want to express my deepest sympathies for the people of Japan, particularly those harmed in the recent tragedy. Until 1850 the Japanese militarists were content to stay isolated on their islands and abuse their own peasants. After the U.S. invaded Okinawa and Japan, they decided they rather liked the American modern style and did their best to imitate our society. Despite imitation being flattery, this imitation eventually involved cutting into America's ability to rape and pillage Asia, so FDR ordered the crushing of Japan (which started well before Pearl Harbor, with U.S. attacks on Japanese and Chinese troops stationed). After World War II the Japanese gave up on military power but still aspired to industrial power, and had quite a run. The recent earthquake would have happened just the same no matter what the human course of history, and seaside villages would have been just as drowned. But the nuclear tragedy is a purely human tragedy, built of human stupidity and arrogance that many Japanese bought into. Hopefully when the dead are buried and memorialized the next step the Japanese people will take will be to close all their nuclear plants.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Polar Bears, Wheat Futures, and Nuclear Reactors
What could Polar Bears, Wheat Futures, and Nuclear Reactors have in common?
There are millions of things in the world that can be measured (quantified, in science speak). At any given time roughly half of all measured things will be headed lower and half headed higher. Sometimes when two sets of numbers are headed in the same direction there is a causal link. One thing influences the other, or both are influenced by a third cause.
So, as many an oil company executive has observed, if indeed global temperatures are rising and so is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that in itself does not prove that carbon dioxide emissions lead to global warming. Of course oil-industry types and anti-environmentalists often will not even admit that global temperatures are rising.
This summer the ice in the arctic melted on an unprecedented scale. Reports are that a number of scientists who were reserving judgement on global warming threw in the towel and are finally agreeing that we are not just seeing some normal fluctuations in climate. Global warming is real and its root cause is carbon dioxide emmissions from burning fossil fuels.
Polar bears, of course, are a large species of mammal that is seeing a dramatic impact from global warming. The melting ice means starving and drowning polar bears.
Wheat has become very expensive. Here the causes are more complex, but go back to global warming. The consequences are dire, as well. Already the increased price of wheat means that budgets, from family budgets to humanitarian aid budgets, can't buy as much wheat flour. Calory counts are heading lower, and where famine is already a problem some carefully constructed statistics would probably show that the mortality rate for humans is climbing.
Wheat production has fallen for two reasons. One is widespread drought in key wheat producing areas, including in the U.S. and Australia. Droughts come and go, but most climate scientists believe that global warming is making them worse. The other factor is ethanol (which is the same subtance found in alcoholic beverages). Rather than raising the mileage per gallon requirements of automobiles, the Federal Government in its wisdom has decided to subsidize ethanol production as a substitute for gasoline. Corn (maize) is used to make ethanol in the U.S. That new use competes with corn for fattening animals, and making corn bread, popcorn, high-fructose corn syrup, etc. The value of corn sold by farmers has zoomed upward. So farmers started planting more corn and less wheat. The demand for wheat did not decrease, so the price of wheat has climbed as well. Wheat futures are the buying and selling of wheat in advance of its physical availability; they tell us where prices are heading. Up.
Next year, reacting to higher prices, farmers might plant less corn and more wheat. But the amount of viable agricultural land is limited; both cannot go up at the same time.
Which brings us to nuclear reactors. These formerly discredited (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island) machines can produce energy without significantly contributing to global warming. Does that mean they are a good idea?
Suppose nuclear power meets all new demand for energy, and even picks up some of the slack from carbon-based fuels as oil production continues to decline. Suppose the problems of disposing of radioactive waste and protecting the plants from terrorists (and more likely and dangerous: incompetent engineers, builders, and operators) were solved. What would that get us?
Very little. With unlimited power and ever-intensifying agricultural efforts we would just do one more lap of the Malthusian spiral. A larger human population would mean more ecological destruction. More polution. And more people just a few calories a day from starvation. It would buy the earth's ancient life-culture a few decades at most.
I see only two viable paths. One is cutting way back. Cutting back on the number of children people have, so that in a generation or two the earth's biped population falls substantially. Cutting back on energy consumption in rich nations. Cutting back on jet-enabled tourism. Cutting back on automobiles. Cutting back on air-conditioning.
The other is moving energy-intensive processes off-planet. Put the nuclear reactors on the moon, make the toasters and flat-screen TV's and Priuses there, then slip them down the gravity well to earth for distribution.
Best of all, do both. Even with much production moved off-planet, I don't think this earth can support more than about 1 billion humans over the long run.
There are millions of things in the world that can be measured (quantified, in science speak). At any given time roughly half of all measured things will be headed lower and half headed higher. Sometimes when two sets of numbers are headed in the same direction there is a causal link. One thing influences the other, or both are influenced by a third cause.
So, as many an oil company executive has observed, if indeed global temperatures are rising and so is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that in itself does not prove that carbon dioxide emissions lead to global warming. Of course oil-industry types and anti-environmentalists often will not even admit that global temperatures are rising.
This summer the ice in the arctic melted on an unprecedented scale. Reports are that a number of scientists who were reserving judgement on global warming threw in the towel and are finally agreeing that we are not just seeing some normal fluctuations in climate. Global warming is real and its root cause is carbon dioxide emmissions from burning fossil fuels.
Polar bears, of course, are a large species of mammal that is seeing a dramatic impact from global warming. The melting ice means starving and drowning polar bears.
Wheat has become very expensive. Here the causes are more complex, but go back to global warming. The consequences are dire, as well. Already the increased price of wheat means that budgets, from family budgets to humanitarian aid budgets, can't buy as much wheat flour. Calory counts are heading lower, and where famine is already a problem some carefully constructed statistics would probably show that the mortality rate for humans is climbing.
Wheat production has fallen for two reasons. One is widespread drought in key wheat producing areas, including in the U.S. and Australia. Droughts come and go, but most climate scientists believe that global warming is making them worse. The other factor is ethanol (which is the same subtance found in alcoholic beverages). Rather than raising the mileage per gallon requirements of automobiles, the Federal Government in its wisdom has decided to subsidize ethanol production as a substitute for gasoline. Corn (maize) is used to make ethanol in the U.S. That new use competes with corn for fattening animals, and making corn bread, popcorn, high-fructose corn syrup, etc. The value of corn sold by farmers has zoomed upward. So farmers started planting more corn and less wheat. The demand for wheat did not decrease, so the price of wheat has climbed as well. Wheat futures are the buying and selling of wheat in advance of its physical availability; they tell us where prices are heading. Up.
Next year, reacting to higher prices, farmers might plant less corn and more wheat. But the amount of viable agricultural land is limited; both cannot go up at the same time.
Which brings us to nuclear reactors. These formerly discredited (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island) machines can produce energy without significantly contributing to global warming. Does that mean they are a good idea?
Suppose nuclear power meets all new demand for energy, and even picks up some of the slack from carbon-based fuels as oil production continues to decline. Suppose the problems of disposing of radioactive waste and protecting the plants from terrorists (and more likely and dangerous: incompetent engineers, builders, and operators) were solved. What would that get us?
Very little. With unlimited power and ever-intensifying agricultural efforts we would just do one more lap of the Malthusian spiral. A larger human population would mean more ecological destruction. More polution. And more people just a few calories a day from starvation. It would buy the earth's ancient life-culture a few decades at most.
I see only two viable paths. One is cutting way back. Cutting back on the number of children people have, so that in a generation or two the earth's biped population falls substantially. Cutting back on energy consumption in rich nations. Cutting back on jet-enabled tourism. Cutting back on automobiles. Cutting back on air-conditioning.
The other is moving energy-intensive processes off-planet. Put the nuclear reactors on the moon, make the toasters and flat-screen TV's and Priuses there, then slip them down the gravity well to earth for distribution.
Best of all, do both. Even with much production moved off-planet, I don't think this earth can support more than about 1 billion humans over the long run.
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