Backtalk
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Amped Up
As a long-term energy-field professional, I was glad to see Mother Jones taking a more balanced view than that all can be solved with wind, solar, and conservation. How can we double electric usage and eliminate coal? Via an all-out nuclear power program. Nothing else can provide more than 700 gigawatts of capacity in the next 30 years. So, it is up to you and your readers: Demand a nuclear program or complain about global warming, oil profits, and fossil fools. Your choice.
john fognini
Bloonfield, Minnesota
Judith Lewis offers a good explication of nuclear power. However, her premise, that expanding nuclear infrastructure could be a potent force to avert the climate crisis, is false. Nuclear will not reverse the climate crisis, and investing in it is an enormous diversion from the one thing that could: massive systemic energy-efficiency programs to cut waste. A dollar invested in smart use of electric power will cut 14 times more greenhouse gases than a dollar put into building a new nuclear power plant. Solar panels and farms require power storage, but they do not require gun-toting security, federally administered insurance, billions of gallons of cooling water, or deadly waste.
mary olson
Southeast Regional Services
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
Bill McKibben's call for putting more environmental information into capitalism is a hidden call for climate taxes. There might be virtue in taxing greenhouse gas emissions, but hiding taxes behind feel-good phrases like "tariffs that encourage local economies" only obscures the real cost of environmental protection, higher-cost goods and services. If McKibben wants greenhouse gases controlled by taxing them, fine, but let's call a tax a tax and have an honest discussion about how much it will cost to contain climate change, rather than hide behind faux market language.
kenneth p. green
Resident scholar
American Enterprise Institute
You must be kidding. You tell us on your latest cover that we're screwed. Guess what, pal? It's the insane "Save the trees," "Don't touch the pristine land" attitude of people that read your rag that got us here.
gary alderin
Ellenton, Florida
It made me very sad to see Mother Jones throw Hugo Chávez into the category of "tyrant" based on such poor evidence ("Put a Tyrant in Your Tank"). Literacy programs, subsidized petroleum to allies, spreading Venezuela's influence...That's all it takes to be a tyrant nowadays? Last I checked, Chávez accepted the defeat of his constitutional amendment and is stepping down at the end of his second term. Demagogue and self-centered perhaps, but tyrant? This article belonged in the Wall Street Journal, not Mother Jones.
demian moreno
Berkeley, California
Constant Trouble
A salute to your penetrating piece on Haiti's loathsome Toto Constant, whom the Clinton administration referred to as the leader of a "gang of thugs." Still, even after he threatened the safety of a senior US embassy official, Constant was able to slip into the US. The Clinton administration refused to extradite him, maintaining that it didn't have confidence in the Haitian judicial process (which it had installed) to guarantee Constant a fair trial. Yet it had no reluctance in forcibly returning thousands of Haitian boat people to such a compromised system. We believe that was because Constant had been a cia asset all along.
larry birns
Director
Council on Hemispheric Relations
And You Call Yourselves Feminists
More access to pep (post-exposure prophylaxis treatment) for hiv is definitely needed. However, I was disappointed that Justine Sharrock did not include the need for pep for sexual assault victims. These victims do not automatically receive information about the availability of pep, let alone actual access to this potentially lifesaving treatment.
kristianne hinkamp
Victim's Outreach
Dallas, Texas
Political Trivia Question
In "Above the Law," Daphne Eviatar describes how kbr lawyers invoked the "political question doctrine" to dismiss lawsuits charging the company with recklessly disregarding its employees' safety in Iraq. Under the doctrine, courts refrain from resolving disputes that are better left to the political branches of government. Interestingly, the Bush administration has aggressively deployed this legal principle, repeatedly urging US courts to dismiss lawsuits against multinational corporations for human rights abuse because they have the potential to embarrass the host countries. The irony is that many lawyers and scholars believe the Supreme Court should have invoked the doctrine and refused to hear that little case in 2000, Bush v. Gore.
michael o'donnell
Chicago, Illinois
And yes, no need for coal, nuclear power...anything that can cause pollution...no more pollution, ever again. It is called Zero-Amp Technology. The inventor has 14 patents.
See more at www.worldviewopinion.com
Coal, gas, oil and atomic energy is destroying the planets livability and therefore the last forty-five years of ecological green revolution has brought into being the hi-tech tools to put in place wind, tidal, and solar power which transforms to electricity and is more power than can be used by society. No more blackouts. This non-pollution solution is given freely in natures kinder laws and provides work for all and forever more. Viva social liberation. End pollution wars, not endless wars for more pollution.
Dear Editor,
Canada is one of the world's biggest polluters. It is heartening to hear that the well-intentioned Alberta government is planning on spending $4 billion for carbon sequestration and public transit. But why is this money being spent on burying CO2 from coal power generation when there is no place to put it? The Leduc oil fields would have to be the major repository for it but where else could it go? It makes more sense to invest instead in alternative power generation for the Alberta Tar Sands project which is the single biggest contributor of greenhouse gasses in Canada, to the extent that American environmentalists, Barak Obama included, question the validity of importing "dirty oil" from Canada.
Substituting nuclear reactors for the coal and natural gas thermal generation of electricity and steam for the tar sands would eliminate much of the megatons of greenhouse gasses that would be produced over the (hopefully) long lifespan of the project and would go a long way toward fulfilling our Kyoto commitments. It would also serve to prove the viability of our own reactor technology, which will (again hopefully) be in great demand in the near future.
The old Inco mines in Sudbury could serve as a safe long-term site for such a purpose since it lies in the Canadian Shield which is one of the most geologically stable area of the world. The deep mineshafts there would be ideal for the recoverable storage of hazardous waste, since the rock is comprised of unfractured granite with little or no groundwater.
Instead of producing inferior medical marijuana, the Sudbury mineshafts could be the source of enough revenue to help eliminate our national debt. It would also eliminate the greatest hurdle to the production of clean, safe, non-polluting energy that the world will need to power the electric and hydrogen vehicles of the future. The alternative is melting glaciers, rising seas and famine. Give us nuclear energy before it is too late.
Sincerely,
Michael Sturdy
www.sturdyart.com
(Armstrong BC, 250-546-3613)
Energy costs…teen pregnancy…gas prices…401Ks tanking…gangs…pleading with oil sheiks
NOT A PROBLEM…NONE OF IT!!
Energy costs: First, Plug-In cars don’t do us much good without abundant affordable electricity. We could generate all that electricity we need but don’t. We erect barriers to doing it. The USA has over 12,000 miles of breezy, sometimes killer-windy coastline, “wind-swept plains”, and even a “Windy City”. The fact that regulations of my town won’t let me, the state won’t let my town, and congress isn’t encouraging generating electricity via wind must mean…no problem. We have a Sunshine state, Sunny California and Southwest, and immeasurable thousands of square miles to place solar panels.
The Bush-Cheney team has not put U.S. on an independence path via wind and solar generated electricity. Since that couldn’t be because their families’ millions are tied to the drill-for-oil/gas-at-any-cost lobby…there must not be a problem.
Importantly, wind & solar don’t have the 10-year lag that oil and gas do. We can address this now: we can build the solar panels/‘windmills’, create U.S. jobs, and tie the power to our grids; they’re here in-place. Existing distribution systems are the best way to move instead of each of us crawling-up on our roof.
Teen Pregnancy*: If that were a problem, surely our national legislature would enact measures to limit the problem. Availability of birth control for low income girls the way my neighbors and I in a nice suburb provided for our daughters might help.
Do you think the President and Mrs. Bush skipped that with their daughters? Since he, his administration, and supporters in Congress block efforts to widely provide it, one can only conclude…not a problem. (Really ‘not a problem for them’.) Also please see entry under Gang Violence*. We can address this now!
Gas Prices: Since they’ve been going through the roof for years, if that were a problem for citizens, the administration would have moved to have the U.S. auto industry produce electric cars to take advantage of wind & solar-generated electricity. It did not, ergo, there must not be a problem…for their limos.
Gang Violence*: This issue is, as mentioned above, related to Teen Pregnancy*. Without young low-income males growing up minus a responsible married on-site day-in and day-out father, we might not have the gang problem we do today. Unfortunately we do, so for the next 20-30 years we have to deal with it involving a lot of law-enforcement.
But…it’d be cheaper to try to develop a future fix. It’s not just to benefit the future gang-banger-lost-potential individuals. It's our kids and grandchildren who will have to deal with any, and this, our blessed land. Apparently this administration doesn’t see future problems…as has been the case in other areas of concern.
There is a way we can address the twin*issues now, at least for anyone looking further down the road then the next traffic accident. We can encourage education, positive economic futures, and discourage child-bearing without legal marriage with more than the empty words of ‘compassionate conservatives’.
We can do those things using both incentives and disincentives. Based on income, those might include free 1st year tuition to state colleges (academic or job-oriented) for every high-school graduate. 2nd year pays 75% with a 2.0 (“C”) average & 100% with 3.0 (“B”), if 3rd & 4th years 50% with a 2.0 and 75% with a 3.0. All of that is cheap compared to the madness of Iraq and will give us the kind of workforce the G.I. bill did after WW2 that created the greatest economy the world has ever seen. Guaranteed p.t. paid work on campuses or in community service capacities has to be included. Our system…our whole way-of-life, needs these kids to ‘make it’…not burden society!
As noted above, availability of Birth Control supplies would be a giant step forward. Believe it or not, cost-access-and basic knowledge are factors in low-income single-parent homes. Often we’re looking at multiple generations who have never managed their lives without taxpayer dollars. It’s not fixable in a year…or ten.
Disincentives might include no Welfare/Housing for any birth that doesn’t identify the father, economic or community service penalties for unmarried fathers, and jail/other for failing to perform on those penalties.
I’d put permanent posters in every middle and high school in the country that gets a single taxpayer dollar that starts out “BE WHAT YOU WANT TO BE! LIVE YOUR DREAM!...or have a life of poverty, 2nd class status, and other people tell you what to do FOREVER…your choice.” Kids need to hear it straight!