Emily Cunningham’s Recent Comments

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  I also had trouble following the logic...

  ..in this piece.  The four cited cases don't go together and don't make for a good argument.  But, I didn't see anywhere in the piece where the authors' note environmentalists are "failing to acknowledge their many victories" as you say they do, Dave.  

  I have a problem with this too:
  

  
  For another, just who are these reactionary, progress-inhibiting progressives? It's telling that not a single person or statement is cited.
  

  
  John Sellers, Barbara Dudley, and Paul Krugman are given as examples of this type of progressive. On Which of these four is not like the other? posted 3 years, 3 months ago 6 Responses

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  More reasons why nuclear won't work

  As Dave pointed to earlier, this interview with Jeremy Rifkin is excellent and quite illuminating, especially on the question of nuclear power. He makes one of the most damning cases against nuclear power that I've come across.

  Rifkin is very clear that nuclear power won't serve us well even as a bridge out of fossil fuels:
  

  
  Why not use nuclear power as a bridge out of fossil fuels, as some environmentalists are now arguing?

  It makes no sense. The key is we've got 103 nuclear plants out there. They're amortizing out in the next 20 years. If you just wanted to rebuild them -- 20 percent of our energy out there is nuclear. If you wanted to double it to 40 percent, you would still not make much of a dent in terms of fossil fuel substitution. You'd have to really triple it. You're talking about $600 billion to a trillion right at the get-go over 30 years.
  

  
  Coming up with that kind of cash is a big problem not to mention what to do with all the nuclear waste:
  

  
  America's broke. We've got massive consumer debt. Massive government debt. Massive trade deficits. Where would we come up with that kind of money? Secondly, the cost of a nuclear power plant at $2 billion is 50 percent more than a coal-fired power plant, and it's much more expensive than a natural-gas-fired power plant, and so if you were going to go to nuclear, you'd have to have a discussion with the public -- eventually we will have this discussion, because Blair, Bush and Putin all want nuclear, but they've not had this discussion. The discussion is: Who's going to pay for it? The taxpayer will have to pay for it with deep, deep subsidies, or the consumer, or both, and I don't think the public's going to be willing to take that price. And the other reasons are I think its equally a no-go: We don't know how to get rid of the waste. No governor wants it transported across their state.
  

  
  Oh, and then there's the whole problem of running out of uranium:
  

  
  The uranium deficit is pretty critical. The studies by the Atomic Energy Commission and others, suggest that at a modern scenario we run out in 2025, and we have a deficit. At a brisk scenario, which doesn't even mean doubling nuclear power, we run out within 12 to 15 years. Uranium is finite, just like fossil fuel.
  

  
  Rifin brings home his case with a simple equation:  more nuclear plants = more targets for terrorist attacks
  

  
  And then, of course, the big reason I would suggest is that it's a soft target: We don't want Iran to have nuclear power, but we're willing now to export nuclear power and build hundreds and thousands of nuclear power plants with uranium and transit all over the world? It's insane. In an era of Islamic extremist terrorism, this is pathology to do this.

  The Australian government, last year, you may remember, just in the nick of time, arrested 18 Islamic terrorists who were planning to destroy the only nuclear power plant in Sydney. And the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission did a study just before 9/11. It hasn't changed much, I don't think. In a sample study of simulated attacks, over half the nuclear power plants in the sample flunked. ... This is more esoteric, but I think your readers will appreciate this: These technologies -- uranium-based nuclear, coal, gas, fossil fuels -- they're old, centralized, elite 20th-century technology. They do not fit the kind of open source, flat distributive world that a younger generation is moving into in the 21st century.
  

  
  Word.  Give it up for Jeremy, everybody.
  On How to tell future generations about nuclear waste posted 3 years, 3 months ago 40 Responses

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  More reasons why nuclear won't work

  As Dave pointed to earlier, this interview with Jeremy Rifkin is excellent and quite illuminating, especially on the question of nuclear power. He makes one of the most damning cases against nuclear power that I've come across.

  Rifkin is very clear that nuclear power won't serve us well even as a bridge out of fossil fuels:
  

  
  Why not use nuclear power as a bridge out of fossil fuels, as some environmentalists are now arguing?

  It makes no sense. The key is we've got 103 nuclear plants out there. They're amortizing out in the next 20 years. If you just wanted to rebuild them -- 20 percent of our energy out there is nuclear. If you wanted to double it to 40 percent, you would still not make much of a dent in terms of fossil fuel substitution. You'd have to really triple it. You're talking about $600 billion to a trillion right at the get-go over 30 years.
  

  
  Coming up with that kind of cash is a big problem not to mention what to do with all the nuclear waste:
  

  
  America's broke. We've got massive consumer debt. Massive government debt. Massive trade deficits. Where would we come up with that kind of money? Secondly, the cost of a nuclear power plant at $2 billion is 50 percent more than a coal-fired power plant, and it's much more expensive than a natural-gas-fired power plant, and so if you were going to go to nuclear, you'd have to have a discussion with the public -- eventually we will have this discussion, because Blair, Bush and Putin all want nuclear, but they've not had this discussion. The discussion is: Who's going to pay for it? The taxpayer will have to pay for it with deep, deep subsidies, or the consumer, or both, and I don't think the public's going to be willing to take that price. And the other reasons are I think its equally a no-go: We don't know how to get rid of the waste. No governor wants it transported across their state.
  

  
  Oh, and then there's the whole problem of running out of uranium:
  

  
  The uranium deficit is pretty critical. The studies by the Atomic Energy Commission and others, suggest that at a modern scenario we run out in 2025, and we have a deficit. At a brisk scenario, which doesn't even mean doubling nuclear power, we run out within 12 to 15 years. Uranium is finite, just like fossil fuel.
  

  
  Rifin brings home his case with a simple equation:  more nuclear plants = more targets for terrorist attacks
  

  
  And then, of course, the big reason I would suggest is that it's a soft target: We don't want Iran to have nuclear power, but we're willing now to export nuclear power and build hundreds and thousands of nuclear power plants with uranium and transit all over the world? It's insane. In an era of Islamic extremist terrorism, this is pathology to do this.

  The Australian government, last year, you may remember, just in the nick of time, arrested 18 Islamic terrorists who were planning to destroy the only nuclear power plant in Sydney. And the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission did a study just before 9/11. It hasn't changed much, I don't think. In a sample study of simulated attacks, over half the nuclear power plants in the sample flunked. ... This is more esoteric, but I think your readers will appreciate this: These technologies -- uranium-based nuclear, coal, gas, fossil fuels -- they're old, centralized, elite 20th-century technology. They do not fit the kind of open source, flat distributive world that a younger generation is moving into in the 21st century.
  

  
  Word.  Give it up for Jeremy, everybody.
  On Nuclear power is complicated, dangerous, and definitely not the answer posted 3 years, 3 months ago 40 Responses

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  How to do a bajillion things on the internet

  This page points to over "200 applications" that can help you do Web 2.0 kind of stuff.  Very useful.  According to the site, its the "now the 9th most popular page ever at del.icio.us!"

  Here's a sampling of what you can learn about:
  

  • Collaborate on documents, web pages, spreadsheets, searches

  • Set up an online calendar

  • Share with other people: photographs, webpages, bookmarks

  • Create networks of relationships with others

  • Collect and store material that I find online
    
  On Sun and Google go green by accident posted 4 years ago 1 Response

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  Things I did not know

  Chain stores are good for the environment, child labor is good for economic development, and globalization is "doing more for world prosperity and peace than any government ever has."  

  Am I alone here, or is this news to anyone else?On Could chain stores actually be good for the environment? posted 4 years ago 19 Responses