Imagine a politician running on a political platform of "NO NEW CARS..."

...and rebuilding our cities so that most people don't need them.

That wouldn't fly, not even here on DU.

What would all those auto workers do?

How many people here would like to see the population density of their suburban neighborhoods doubled or tripled? Streets closed, parking lots in-filled with attractive energy-efficient high-density apartments and condos, public transportation expanded, etc.?

What we learned from Chernobyl is that humans going about their ordinary business are worse for the natural environment than the very worst sort of nuclear accident. So we have to change our ordinary business. What we now call economic "productivity" is, in fact, a direct measure of the damage we are doing to the earth's natural environments and our own human spirit.


Unfortunately there are now about 8 billion of us. So-called "renewable" energy can't support our population. We've become dependent on high density energy resources, mostly fossil fuels, for our food, water, and shelter. And it's not the poor people who are most dependent on fossil fuels, it's the affluent people.

We've worked ourselves into a terrible corner. Without these high density energy resources half of us wouldn't survive. If we don't quit fossil fuels soon global warming is going to kill even more of us.

I used to be a "live within our means" anti-nuclear activist, and a fairly radical one at that. I'm not any more. Aggressive renewable energy schemes in places like California, Denmark, and Germany have failed. The experiment has been done. These schemes will only prolong our dependence on fossil fuels, especially natural gas.

There's enough natural gas in the ground to destroy whatever is left of the natural environment as we know it. It's best we leave that gas in the ground, even that which supports our renewable energy fantasies.

I figure the U.S.A. could quit fossil fuels in fifteen years if we decided to do it with the same intensity we fought World War II. We have the resources and the technologies, including nuclear power, to do that.

First we have to recognize the problem.

Just before the U.S.A. entered World War II there were still many U.S. Americans who thought Hitler had some good ideas and Japan was too far away to worry about. That's where we are now.

I don't know what the wake-up call is going to be, but it's going to be horrible.