Relying only on wind and solar

It was just a couple days ago I wrote about the fading American Dream. Now we hear the results of a study done at Northwestern University. The researchers combed through genealogy sites and recorded the occupations of fathers and sons both in American and Britain. America used to have much more class mobility than Britain. Not anymore, not since the mid 1970s.

Back in the 19th Century American was a frontier. Wanted to improve your circumstances? There was a big wide country to do it in. Around 1930 America created Social Security to take care of our elders. Meanwhile, Britain did something about its class stagnation and expanded education for the young, working class people.



Robert Stone, environmentalist, used to be against nuclear energy. He's changed his mind and has created the documentary Pandora's Promise showing environmentalists who have changed their minds about nuclear energy. Richard Harris of NPR discusses the movie.

The world population is expected to add another two billion people over the next couple decades. As places like China and India add people to the Middle Class, energy consumption is going to double or triple in that time. Stone says it is simply not possible to eliminate fossil fuels and double energy consumption while relying on only wind and solar. Nuclear must be in the mix. Modern reactors are a lot more safe than earlier models.

Stone's work misses two big issues. How do we spread the use of nuclear energy without spreading the use of nuclear weapons? How do we pay for them? Reactors are expensive.



I get a newsletter from my state Senator Glenn Anderson. He's definitely one of the good guys. Each newsletter has a link to a single survey question. Most of the time I don't bother because this is a self-selected survey and not at all scientific. But the most recent one caught my attention. The question was,

Should Michigan's Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act be amended to prohibit discrimination against individuals based on their sexual orientation?

So linked and promptly clicked yes. I was the 6th response. I kept the tab in my browser and now, a few days later, with 206 responses, it is 67% yes, 30% no. It isn't scientific, but it does give an indication of opinion of those who would bother to contact their senator on an issue. Alas, I no longer have a link to the question so you could tilt it even more in our favor.