What is the World Short of?
If you sit back and ponder “what do we really need more of in the world?” you’ll no doubt come up with “common sense” before long.
But if you limit your thoughts to physical resources there are a few things at the top of the list. Potable water and cheap and safe insect control are two biggies. But the number one thing we are short of is simply free energy.
Why energy? Because the Earth’s material resources are abundant, and are only a few watts (or joules) away. Fresh water? If you had enough energy you could distill any other source such as brackish or full salt water. Insect control? Most of the problems with insects are because people lack air conditioning. Of course, they also lack air-conditionable houses, but that is energy-limited as well.
But where can we get energy? Sure we can harvest sunlight … but that is not available at all latitudes and seasons, it requires a lot of equipment, and it disrupts the environment (you must cover large areas to gain economies of scale).
Oil, gas, and coal are resources that may or may not run out, but regardless they cost a lot and impact the environment in mining and waste disposal.
The only common-sense answer is nuclear energy. It is cheap, clean, and compact. All the furor about waste is a red herring — the final waste is very compact. For example, France’s final nuclear waste (after reprocessing) after 30 years of production is the size of a small room. And that’s after powering between 70% and 100% of the entire country with nuclear-generated power.
We can get past the Cold War fears of annihilation. We can get past the fictionalized horrors of meltdowns (as in The China Syndrome). Come back from the brink…it’s not that scary.
Gwyneth Craven’s “Power To Save The World” compares nuclear energy and coal. She started as a nuclear skeptic and through her interviews and learning she realized the benefits of nuclear power generation.
If you really want to save the world, either by helping people or by reducing carbon output in a quest to mitigate a perceived climate problem, you owe it to yourself and the world to check out the modern reality of nuclear energy.
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The problem with “common” sense is that in a populated world, everything truly “common” is either void or mediocre. Anything that is generic enough to represent adequately a large group of people, be it thought, or “sense”, is going to be so narrow that it is unlikely to be of high-value to anyone. Moreover, it’s the uncommon man or woman who shows us the way to something better: the Edison, the Mozart, the Galileo. It’s the uncommon thought, the uncommon sense that can transcend us. In fact, I’d argue that there is no such thing as common sense. Bring 5 people in a room and you get 5 different variations of “common” sense. What people often mean by common sense is: “this is the way I think things ought to be, and I think of myself as a reasonable person, therefore everyone should concede that my opinions are sensible and right”. Now that I think about it, I believe I shall be writing a book on “uncommon sense”; then I shall get my own TV show where I too shall cry in front of the camera nightly about my love for the country…