Friday 2 August 2013

Pipelines, Nuclear Waste, Lac Mégantic: All Symptoms of Energitis

The front pages of the newspapers and the headlines on the news programs make me very sad this morning. 

The tragedy of the train explosion at Lac Mégantic continues (What was in the rail cars anywayWho's going to pay? etc.) 

Quebec mayors are upset about the nuclear waste transiting the province from the nuclear facility at Chalk River (too unsafe to go by ship, why are we sending it overland to Georgia?)

And plans are announced for a new pipeline to St. John, New Brunswick to transport petroleum from the West.

The problem behind all this bad news is our need for more and more energy.  More gas to get from one place to another, more electricity to run everything, more houses, more roads, more traffic, momre everything.

The economist John Maynard Keynes famously said: "In the long run we are all dead."  But we have to start being really concerned about how that is going to happen: choking to death, poisoned by nuclear waste, or being flooded by violent storms and rising seas.

Time to cut back, for sure.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I look at all the crap that surrounds me and I could live happily without nine tenths of it. Cut back? Indeed.