Air transport is even more unsustainable than road transport, and the
fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions
Chris
[log in to unmask] wrote:
>This is an appeal to ignore imaginary technical fixes such as nuclear
>energy and to concentrate on efforts to convince the public that
>whatever you do technologically, unestrained economic growth will
>render it useless.
>
>Although the website set up by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and
>myself (http://www.oprit.rug.nl/deenen) gives the facts about why
>nuclear power in no way satisfies the elementary criteria for a long
>term, not to mention sustainable, energy source for society, I feel
>called upon to also contribute to Crisis-forum on another, totally
>neglected, facet of the picture.
>
>That facet is the irrelevance of nuclear power to the problem of
>carbon dioxide emissions in modern western societies. That it is
>irrelevant to this problem comes from the fact that in our societies
>about half of this emission comes from road traffic, a load on the
>environment that is reaching the point where in and around our
>cities simply breathing is becoming a threat to the health of larger
>and larger segments of society. The introduction of nuclear power,
>even if it were be able to provide electrical energy, devoid of carbon
>dioxide emissions, on a very large and sustainable scale, that on a
>number of counts (see the website mentioned above) it certainly is
>not, would do absolutely nothing to reduce this load.
>
>Visionaries may imagine the replacement of our entire infra-
>structure with a nuclear power driven hydrogen economy. Such
>fantasies envisage an unimaginable shift in industrial activity that
>no instance on earth would even dream of financing. In the
>meanwhile the irrational growth of road traffic continues without
>limit, which it would do even if nuclear energy were to be reborn,
>making the whole idea of the Kyoto agreement totally unrealistic.
>
>
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