Can't Do Anything

Something I heard on the radio tonight really struck a nerve with me. It wasn't anything particular to the BBC, which I happened to be listening to, nor was it anything really that the BBC said. They were simply discussing various forms of alternative power generation, and they had an "expert" on who basically couldn't stand the thought of any kind of alternative power generation. He only rained on a few alternative power schemes, but that's probably only because they didn't have time to talk about all of them.

The ability of special interest advocates to paralyze public debate in this country is truly appalling. Nothing can ever be done because it always offends some exceedingly small constituency that remains adamantly opposed to whatever is being discussed.

We take it as a given that oil won't last forever. It's a finite resource, and sooner or later it's going to run out. Experts and ideologues can argue about when that day will come, but the bottom line is that oil isn't forever. And neither are the other great power generation fuels currently in use, coal and gas, and all of them have the undesirable side-effect of pumping carbon dioxide, among other things, into the air. So we should take it as given that eventually fossil fuels will run out, and when that happens, we'd best have some alternative power sources ready to roll or face a sudden collapse in our standard of living back to roughly the Neolithic Age.

Okay. So what about hydroelectric power? It's clean, it's reliable, it... Oh, wait, it causes widespread environmental damage and in any event there are few rivers left in America that could be gainfully dammed anyway. Okay, scratch that.

What about wind power? It's clean, and though it doesn't generate much power per installation, the plants can be quite widespread and maybe there's some hidden advantage in having a decentralized generation grid. Oh, wait, the blades make "whooshing" sounds that the neighbors object to, and bird lovers complain that birds are occasionally clubbed to death by the blades. Scratch that.

Okay, what about biofuels? Not clean, really, but at least more neutral with regard to CO2 than fossil fuels, and they reduce dependence on politically unreliable foreign oil. Oh, wait, it's immoral to take food out of someone's mouth and make it into fuel and in any event it's inefficient, and pay no attention to that Brazil behind the curtain!

Hmm. How are we on solar power? It's clean, quiet, non-polluting... Oh, wait, it's expensive and inefficient, it only works during the daytime so environmentally damaging batteries are required, and the panels themselves may pose toxic chemical risks when disposed of. Scratch that.

Cripes. This is getting hard! What about, uh, nuclear power? Huge generation capacity per plant, and zero contribution toward global warming! Oh, wait, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and the groovitude of being in the avant garde of the nuclear protest movement. Scratch that.

Maybe conservation will help. Maybe we can require that cars get some minimum fuel mileage, or that some percentage of cars be hybrids or entirely electric. Oh, wait, that's government intrusion on the workings of a free market and we wouldn't want to raise Adam Smith from his grave, would we?

What about improved mass transit? Dedesign our cities to make better use of mass transit, and encourage people to use it! Oh, wait, mass transit is a socialist experiment in social engineering. Scratch that.

So, ultimately, nothing can be done. All we can do is sit in our SUVs in traffic jams, burn Middle Eastern and Venezuelan oil, and wait for the end. That seems to be the only thing the "experts" can agree on. It's too bad we can't develop some technology that uses special-interest experts as a fuel source; I'd personally love to see an oil industry lawyer masquerading as a expert on the pitfalls of biofuels or a pop singer turned nuclear protester being forced to generate a few thousand watts. I'd love that a lot.