Fukushima Disaster Leads Japan To Backpedal On Emissions Pledge 274
mdsolar writes with this excerpt from the New York Times: "Japan took a major step back on Friday from earlier pledges to slash its greenhouse gas emissions, saying a shutdown of its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster had made previous targets unattainable. The announcement cast a shadow over international talks underway in Warsaw aimed at fashioning a new global pact to address the threats of a changing climate. Under its new goal, Japan, one of the world's top polluters, would still seek to reduce its current emissions. But it would release 3 percent more greenhouse gases in 2020 than it did in 1990, rather than the 6 percent cut it originally promised or the 25 percent reduction it promised two years before the 2011 nuclear disaster."
LDP setting stage to restart reactors (Score:5, Interesting)
The back-pedalling on previous emission pledges and blaming it on idled reactors is all about convincing the domestic electorate to approve nuclear power. The LDP is responsible for putting Japan on the path of nuclear power dependency in the first place, and now that they are back in power they want this particularly bad idea resuscitated.
Japan has a long way to go before exhausting its latent solar, wind, geothermal and conservation potential. With plenty of industrial capacity to embark on leading the world in non-nuclear, non-fossil-fuel energy infrastructure, the LDPs obsession with nuclear is a clear sign of their lack of wisdom and cozy relationship with the like of Mitsubishi.
Re:Nuclear energy reduces greenhouse emissions (Score:4, Interesting)
It might surprise you, that some environmentalists are engineers. I did take one environmental course during my B. of Science studies, that was toughest course I did during my studies.
On that course I learned that there are alternatives, all alternatives have their own problems, but solutions exist.
Main alternative is reducing power consumption on consumer products, then comes renewable energy sources and hybrid power production.
Re:Nuclear energy reduces greenhouse emissions (Score:4, Interesting)
To the GP, yes. That is apparently the plan.
I think it is ethical to identify and mitigate "flagrantly wasteful" misuses of power and abuses of environmental resources. But beyond that, there are ethical and intellectual problems with some environmentalists
People need to realize a few things
The ideal amount of pollution is not "none". No pollution necessarily implies no resource usage.
To maintain a quality of life better than Ogg the caveman, we need to continue using resources to improve our comfort, safety, health, etc. Whether that is cutting down trees or burning coal, we need to continue doing both, because people want shelter, heat, and electricity.
To develop the quality of life we have now, we had to use resources and create pollution. People who advocate for sharp declines in pollution and resource use necessarily advocate stopping human progress.
Given how much suffering there is left in the world, suffering that requires our hard work, investment, and energy to address, people who ask us to stop resource consumption and power production are essentially anti-humanists. They, whether they know it or not, ask for more suffering, less comfort, and a reduced quality of life, for most people.
Perhaps there is a deeper underlying question to address.
What is the point of environmentalism? What is the goal of humanity?
Environmentalists often talk of "saving the earth". Sometimes, they say this in terms of "its the only one we have" and sometimes they are more honest and sinister when they explain that the Earth deserves to live long after humanity has died.
These latter type disgust me. We'll not discuss them further.
These former type are correct, but are missing the point.
While it is true that Earth is currently the only home we have, in my view it should be the goal of humanity to sustainably and indefinitely move beyond the earth to other worlds.
That is a significant undertaking; not everyone believes it is possible. I do.
We know that saving the earth is impossible. And our contributions to its demise are finally measurable, but are unlikely to be the fatal wound.
At some point, we will take a hit from a comet, meteor, alien race, etc, and it will end most or all human life on our home planet.
If we have not used our resources quickly and wisely enough BEFORE then to allow us to have permanently escaped the Earth, we have failed.
I think we should accelerate our usage of resources and production of energy, with a goal towards escaping this rock. Note that I said "a goal". Certainly making life better for people here who are here and alive today is ALSO a goal, and that also requires energy and resource consumption.
Obviously, building nuclear plants that are cleaner and longer lasting is a better way to do this than building more unscrubbed coal plants, but we need to accept that "more power production" is a necessary reality of the human condition, and get on with the show.
There are still people out there with no light and no heat. There are still people who die every year from flooding and basic sanitation issues.
Will you deny them new power plants when they develop enough to desire them?
It is horrendously myopic for people living the luxury of western lives to look around themselves, see that they are finally comfortable, and then demand that the world stop innovating and using resources to improve itself.
Finally, here's the bottom line about nuclear power safety: more people die _every year_ from petroleum drilling accidents than will ever get cancer from Fukushima emissions.
There has been ONE large scale nuclear incident with high loss of life, and it was in the despotic Soviet Union. How many people do you think died in the Soviet Union from coal mine collap