51 thoughts on “More sand”

1. The current anti-nuclear movement is the product of strange bedfellows. On the one hand there are the entrenched interests of the fossil fuel industries, coal of course, but with an increasing voice from the natural gas sector as well. These folks get a lot of help from the other partner in this couple, the modern environmental movement. Yeah, sure, you’ll occasionally hear something from the environmentalists about the evils of coal and carbon dioxide, but the solutions they propose don’t really challenge coal interests very effectively, and they will more often than not openly champion the cause of natural gas. Actually, Amory Lovins, éminence grise of the efficiency/conservation faction, openly champions the use of coal as well. It makes sense, really, doesn’t it? If you’re making good money selling something that’s causing a problem and you would like to go on making that money, the last thing you want is for someone to come along with a product untroubled by that problem, ready and able to take your market away. Much better to promote the virtues of conservation, of rationing, of’doing more with less’, of making do. And occasionally also throw up some alternative you are supposedly working toward, provided of course that the alternative in question cannot really replace the product you are selling.

   It’s a win-win situation then. You get to sell your product at even higher prices than before, your customers feel good about having to pay more for less, you have an army of proponents willing to push your case while purporting to do the opposite, and so long as you’ve created and heated up the public campaign against your real competition, you should be OK.

   It is a great shame that this massive con has blinded so many on the social-democratic side of things that they think they are fighting the corporate establichment they so despise while actually doing their dirty work for them.