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Originally Posted by Daradon
I just mean if international standards are created and enforced. Kinda tying it into being able to buy 12 tube socks for 2 dollars. The only reason we can get them so cheap is because it's built with slave labour. Perhaps it's time for us to realize we don't have to have a new phone every 2 years or a new TV every 6, or eat so much meat or buy so many socks. Just take better care of the ones we have. We are in effect avoiding our responsibilities. So eventually the same thing might go for energy, the reason it is so cheap is because we are avoiding our environmental responsibilities right now.
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International standards are a pipedream. China is adding coal power like crazy. They had to shut down numerous plants in Bejing to help with the smog problem, but in the long-run they are still going with MORE coal. Dirty coal. Not the coal we burn in NA. How exactly is any international standard going to force them to at LEAST do better with the freakin' plants they have?
We can make changes in NA. We SHOULD make changes. But each country will control their own 'fate'....and if you believe that GHGs affect the whole planet even if they are being pumped into the atmosphere 3,000 miles from where we live, well we might be screwed. Because I don't see China doing something better.
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As far as nuclear power goes, I think a lot of the realistic thinking environmentalists to believe this is a route that needs to be explored. It's mostly the alarmists and reactionary ones that want it completely gone. I do think there is a future for it. We need to build even better safe guards, and finally figure out what to do wit the waste, a problem that in the 50's they thought we'd have solved by now, but I think it should be part of the plan.
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Well if you look at most nuclear disasters, there were some pretty obvious problems involved. Japan? Lack of a secondary power source. So we can do better.
It also helps if we put the plants in a safe and remote part of the country.
Canada is going for 7 nuclear plants in 2012 to 6 plants in 2020, so I'm not sure what we will have to do to get that to 10? 15? Because while NG is great, it is even more a stop-gap solution than nuclear is. We should focus on getting our power generation to emit 75% less GHGs by 2050. Nuclear will do that.