If you want to be a part of a meaningful environmental movement, learn about energy

Last week in London members of Greenpeace attempted to shut down several dozen BP stations in protest of their handling of the oil spill. Consequently, commuters couldn’t get gas and there were traffic jams and upset citizens, but I would venture to say that BP didn’t bat an eye. So, I wonder what the goal of their actions really was? If you want to send a message to a corporation, why would you choose to focus on punishing the consumer rather than going straight to the source? And what was achieved? Nothing, really.

I feel hugely disappointed that so many educated “environmentalists” can’t come up with anything better than running amuck when it comes to solutions to the energy crisis. In fact, these days, Greenpeace isn’t really for anything. They are, however, against almost everything. When was environmentalism reduced to bad behavior and whining? We are all adults here, right?

So after some serious contemplation I started to wonder how much the average person actually knows about energy. How it is produced, what resources it requires, and the long-term environmental impact of different energy sources. Then I started asking people, and as it turns out we are collectively lacking basic knowledge about our own consumption. This is especially bad when you consider that 25% of the world’s population uses 75% of the resources, and we American’s are not on the sympathy-deserving side of that equation. So, energy-we take it for granted, we use it all up and we destroy the environment. Then we complain about it and run amuck and never make any changes-really?

Another disconnect in our understanding of energy is with regards to renewable sources. These provide less than 1% of our energy in this country. This is not because they are not getting funding, subsidies and lots of public support- they get more of those things than any other energy source. Renewables don’t make that much energy, because renewables simply, by nature, don’t make that much energy. That’s right. I said it. Wind turbines only produce electricity when it’s windy and solar panels when it’s sunny. And despite the added complications of constant flux, even if they were consistent, renewables still don’t make enough energy to put a dent in our consumption.

Coal and nuclear are consistent, which is why we use them for base load power. Wind and solar are novelty energy sources. You would never use them to power, say New York City. It would be a disaster. Rolling blackouts. Not good. You can only use something that won’t stop working no matter what. Again it boils down to coal and nuclear. So coal kills 24,000 Americans annually, nuclear energy has never killed an American. That fact alone should make the decision easy, but there is more. Coal is destroying our environment and nuclear releases zero emissions.
Nuclear gets better and better the more you know about it. For instance, what used to be called “waste” is now called fuel. Reprocessing allows us to recycle nuclear fuel, reducing the amount and radioactivity of real waste, which is easily stored on site because it is super small. Nuclear materials are dense, so they don’t take up much space. In fact your entire lifetime energy waste if you only consumed nuclear energy would fit in a drinking glass. That seems much more reasonable than the tons and tons of CO2 that every America releases into the atmosphere annually.

And Three Mile Island was proof that even our oldest plants can successfully contain a meltdown. It’s good to know, but since that accident security and training at nuclear plants has increased exponentially, so there’s not much of a chance of it happening again. Not to mention that new nuclear technologies are sleek and small, with even more intrinsic safety measures.

Are you reconsidering what you thought were the “facts” about energy yet? Well, if not I would consider learning more about energy in general. If we are ever going to overcome the surmounting environmental problems we are facing we are will to have to stop running amuck and complaining, and start actively supporting smart solutions. We may not have created this problem, but it’s ours now and it’s going to require drastic measures to conserve this planet.


-Suzanne Hobbs, 7/29/2010
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