Just a few (possibly misconceptions) perceptions I've gotten around here lately, and I'm wondering if it's me or not. All answers welcome, all criticisms will be listened to.
In another diary I wrote a couple months back, I suggested that people take up gardening. Perhaps for the wrong reasons, according to some... but hey, do the reasons really matter if people are living more responsibly? Anyway, in it, I suggested that people grow, in addition to more mundane and orthodox vegetables, some of the exotic stuff that they might not want to live without. Coffee and tea were mentioned, as were some other things.
One person suggested that this was environmentally unsound. I disagree. Just as an example, which is better for the planet... that a person who loves coffee continue to drive a market for it to be shipped across oceans even as things deteriorate so badly that this might mean that happens in sailing ships? Or, that after seeing to their own basic needs with potatoes and corn, that person tries to grow some of their own in a tiny little greenhouse?
In summary:
1. Is it environmentally unsound to encourage people to, in addition to staple foods, grow their own exotic spices, fruits, or other food?
Secondly, another issue has been (painfully) brought to my attention, and I wonder if it's even on anyone's radar. Whether right or wrong, the theories about global warming seem to be influencing the public in the realms of media and politics. This is only natural, I would suppose... if true, where else would you see indications? And the same goes for most other environmental concerns, at that. However, it would seem to me that there is another political force at work here, and that no one even notices it. It is not a corporate board room, a PAC, a legislature, a news network, a political movement or anything else.
It is the home owner's association, or in some cases, property management for a condominium complex (if there's a blanket term for both, it eludes me).
For me, realization has been there awhile, but sort of below the surface. An article read about one or another bitching at a woman for hanging laundry on a clothesline in her backyard, or interfering with a solar installation. I think that it only struck me in the face, so to speak, just the other day when I got a nasty letter myself from property management here. (I rent a condo, landlord is usually sympathetic to me, and not them.) While I am generally antagonistic to some environmental concerns, and many here would not like my opinions... I'm no idiot either, and I try to keep my electric and gas bills to a minimum.
In the winter, I try to hold off turning on the heat as long as possible. In summer, I try to hold off turning on the AC as long as possible. Not that my neighbors do the same, mind you. I could hear the things rumbling out in the back yard as early as the middle of March (and no, I have no explanation for this... back then, I had to bring my plants in some nights because it would be below freezing occassionally).
Starting about then, we bought a box fan and put it in the upstairs bedroom window. Cool air was outside, at the same time we would be in the bedroom... and all we needed to do was suck it in. I haven't measured wattages yet, but there's no reason to... from the bills alone, it's quite obvious to me that the fan must be using only a fraction of the juice that the AC would.
I do not know why a fan in a window would be against the rules. I can guess, and anyone that wants to ignore my guess is free to do so. I suspect that poor people use fans, rich people use AC. And when I make it publically known that someone in one of the condos "is poor", I might encourage other poor people to move here or something.
And that's not the only personal beef I have with property management. They seem antagonistic to some of the plants I have planted (in planters), claiming that they're in "common areas" like the backyard immediately adjacent to only my own place and that of two neighbors. This despite everyone doing the same as I, even to the point of putting out plants of one sort or another. I suspect that if pushed on that point, they'll dig up rules disallowing only the type of plants (vegetables) I have planted, while allowing the others (those shitty houseplants that yuppies tend to prefer).
Even, that just months ago they dozed in the ramshackle tennis court that was here, and instead of allowing us a community garden for the residents, they just planted ugly grass. Hell, shocked they didn't pave it over, really.
So, in summary:
2. Is anyone even aware of how environmentally unfriendly HOAs are being and becoming, and what can even be done about it?
Note: I have strong libertarian tendencies myself, and the party line there is that these are contracts between homeowners and another party, and no one else's business. This sounds like bullshit to me. As such things gobble up increasingly large fractions of real estate throughout the country, it becomes impossible to find a place to live without them, and furthermore there is no way to cancel the contract. Not to mention the unconscionable laws that allow them to foreclose simply for not obeying petty rules...
Finally, I have some questions about nuclear power. Obviously, any return to using it to any significant degree has obstacles, never the least of which is how to do so safely. I do not want to wake up glowing a dull green glow because General Nuclear Inc. decided that it could cut costs by $2 a day and return that bounty to their shareholders. While generally exaggerated, nuclear waste itself is a serious issue, from an environmental, public health, and even weapons proliferation standpoint. Mining uranium can be as bad, or even worse in some ways, as mining coal.
Still, it's a given that any new nuclear power plants that would be built would be built with new designs, new materials, and by engineers that recognize all of the problems with the old ones.
No one can understand wariness of nuclear power better than I... if we were to try to switch over to it wholesale (and let's face it, with the appetite for energy that our society has, there'd be no other kind of switch) we have to be exceedingly carful. Insanely so. But why the holdup? We can be that careful with it. We can be that cautious.
In summary:
3. What are the objections to using nuclear power remain, and why are they non-negotiable?
Another question... why is it that when the world and our own nation are having extremely bad troubles over energy, and when any alternatives are, at best, still in the engineering stage, what biases you to pick one such alternative over another?
While it is true that we do not so much as have a proof of concept for fusion, little more can be said of solar or wind power. No one has managed to scale them up to the sizes that could make significant contributions to our energy needs, or even up to the efficiencies that would make them such. I'm sure that there will be argument here, and I apologize for it in advance... but one simply can't read an account of the daring person who tries to "live off the grid" without discovering that such people can't watch TV at the same time they vacuum the carpet, or cook something in the oven while drying laundry.
Now, this doesn't mean that solar and wind are by any means bad technology, at worst they're simply less ready than people would like in their wildest, most idealistic dreams. If it takes another two decades for them to reach this level of readiness, how is that different than fusion itself?
I am cynical by nature, but I often get the impression that this is calculated on some level. That given a choice between a powerful, dense, and clean energy source, and a weak, non-dense, and clean energy source, many environmentalists would choose the latter. I've even read as much, though I'll be damned if I can find the article on google... some former member of the Sierra Club (I believe) was afraid that while nuclear could be very clean, it would give people the idea that energy use was a right when he preferred that people started living in such a fashion that they simply got used to less.
Is this impression of mine unfounded? Am I mischaracterizing the relevant technologies here?
ITER has a projected cost of $10-20 billion. Let's assume they're full of shit and it costs every bit of twice as much as that. $40 billion even. Is anyone here even aware that we've put off building it for 20 years because we've been haggling on how much the international community will chip in on the project?
In short:
4. What have you got against fusion as a power source, why is it supposedly so much science-fictiony-er than solar that can meet our current and projected energy demands?