Nihil
Nihil's JournalPossibly that it is an excellent counter-argument to the "renewable energy is ugly" bollocks?
If the French (a very image- & culture-oriented nation) can find a solution that allows
their most famous landmark to move towards self-powering with renewables then the
old pro-fossil-fuel canard of "But they look all ugly-like" is shot down in flames.
I agree that some really serious posts do slip by with few recs (hell, for some, even
the view count is only in double digits) and I suspect that part of the reason for the
lack of recs on more than a few of them is simply concern exhaustion: the subject has
been shouted about here for literally YEARS with absolutely no progress in the real world.
At times it hits people that just what is the point of recommending the 985th post showing
how the US government is fucking up the ocean for money or how is India burning shit-tons
more coal each year or which toxic compound is currently top of China's atmospheric output
or how many more previously unknown species have gone extinct today or how insulated
from the effects of their exploitation are the 0.1%ers in London/New York/Zurich/Rome
or just how fucking dumb are the voters in Florida or how corrupt is the Harper government
or how many different IDs can a fossil fuel troll have before getting banned again or ... or ...
It is usually the E/E "regulars" (probably the same "double digit viewers" from the above)
that do the initial recs to a post, so, every now & then - when they have seen precisely how
little DUers in general (much less the wider world) actually cares about any of the things that
hit them so hard - there is an unavoidable "Fuck it" moment that means that you realise just
how futile your attempts to rec a repeat of the same critically important issues up for wider
viewing truly are: you are attempting to overpower the overwhelming ignorance, stupidity and
suicidal selfishness that surrounds us with a mouse-click, to claim the attention of couch
potatoes & facebook failures possessing the attention-span of a drunken gnat with a "+1"
to the rec count of something so far down the list of the so-called "Greatest Page" that they'd
never have scrolled down to find it, much preferring to rush off to post more "Awww!!! n/t" replies
to a photo of yet another kitten.
I rec'd this post in the hope that a post having an eye-catching thread title, a simple text
explanation & a few meaningful photos might break through that morass of triviality and put
to rest just one of the many lies about renewable energy that are thrown at us - that it is ugly
and visually damaging. YMMV.
No, we *need* to stop searching desperately for ways to continue Business As Usual ...
... and for ways to continue justifying the exact same behaviour that has got us into this fix.
Solar power is better than carbon neutral.
Wind power is better than carbon neutral.
The extraction & consumption (whether burned or converted) of fossil fuel resources
is never carbon neutral.
The use of "biofuel" can be better than carbon neutral but it can also be much worse
(e.g., when it destroys the environment "in order to save it"
.
"Forest residue" is not waste. It is currently used to continue the natural cycle.
Extracting it for combustion - even with "most" CO2 being captured (then lost) - is not
helping the environment as not only does it degrade the source region's carbon cycle,
it is providing fuel that would otherwise not be available ... i.e., supporting "growth" and
"profit" a.k.a. "Business As Usual".
"Field residue" is not waste. It contains nutrients to replenish the soil and continue the
ability for the land to support further crops without demanding artificial fertilisers (which
consume resources - fossil fuels - and generate CO2, destroying the environment field by field).
Extracting it for combustion - even with the figleaf of hypothetical "CCS" - supports nothing
other than "Business As Usual".
> We need to do something that produces not just lower emissions, even carbon-neutral
> technology is not sufficient. We need negative emissions.
We need to stop emissions from fossil fuels, not just push them behind a curtain of bullshit.
We need to accept that our current choices are not sustainable - even in the short term - and change them.
We need to stop destroying the environment in order to continue our lust for the myth of "profit".
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHome country: England
Member since: 2003 before July 6th
Number of posts: 13,508