Environmentalism

By Nathan Hansen
Contributing Writer

Conservatives can never let a good tragedy go to waste and the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan are no different. Talk radio hosts, FOX News, and the politicians are using Japan as an excuse to drop environmentalism, and build up our nuclear power infrastructure. And they don’t let hypocrisy, contradictions, or the lack of intelligence or logic get in their way.

First up is Rush Limbaugh’s attack on environmentalism and environmental protections. Now before you get all “global warming is a myth” on me, remember that environmentalism is about more than climate change. No one wants nitrates, high levels of artificial estrogen or testosterone, or cow manure from the local industrial dairy farm or beef cow operation running off into their ponds, streams, lakes, and rivers.

But according to Rush, since Japan was an environmentalist nation and did what it could to protect wildlife, plants, waterways, along with doing what it could to stop global warming, we should take the earthquake as a sign that caring about the environment does not matter. Because earthquakes are caused by man’s pollution or something like that.

The lack of intelligence in this argument is astounding. The fact that people listen and accept this faulty logic, reasoning, and excuse to let corporations, industry, and people do whatever they want to pollute and destroy the environment is maddening. By Rush’s own logic we should convert to Islam, recognize an Imam as our spiritual leader and proclaim a jihad since Muslim extremists were able to attack us on September 11, 2001 and harmed a “Christian nation.”

Tornadoes and hurricanes happen. Thunderstorms and hail happen and destroy crops and damage buildings and cars. Environmentalism does not say that if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions that bad weather will go away. But it does argue that it will prevent the weather from getting worse due to higher temperatures.

Earthquakes also happen, and right now there is no way for mankind to cause or prevent them. Arguing against environmental protections because Japan was hit by a devastating one makes no sense whatsoever and is just a cheap way to profit from the devastation, death, and misfortune of the 20,000 victims of the event.

From lunacy we go now to idiocy. When the earthquake and the tsunami hit Japan, several of the island nation’s nuclear power plants were damaged, and it was almost a week before Japan, and the entire world were convinced that a major disaster was not going to happen the reactors were not going to meltdown and release radiation and fallout over a widespread area.

Even though a major tragedy never happened with the Japanese reactors, radiation levels still spiked and fallout and radioactive steam was released into the air. The damage is also going to cost thousands of dollars at the least to repair. But that doesn’t deter the conservatives, we need to build up our own nuclear power infrastructure and build more reactors.

I support smart nuclear power, but what the conservatives are proposing in anything but smart.  Our reactor technology is still stuck in the cold war. Japan has no need for a Yucca mountain facility since they recycle and efficiently use up their fissile material until all that is left is a small non-reactive pellet of waste. They also spend millions of more dollars than we do on reactors that are safer, more resistant to the environment and are decades ahead of us.

And yet their system was not safe enough or technologically advanced enough to withstand their environmental dangers. Yet we want to build our own fleet of reactors that are marginally better than Three Mile Island or Chernobyl in terms of safety, and technology. Conservatives would cry socialism, communism, or fascism if we actually tried to build a relatively safe reactor in a relatively safe spot like Minnesota where environmental dangers are at a minimum.

It would take years of research into engineering and technology to create a reactor that would serve our needs and do it safely. This is not something we can do overnight, if we expect to do it well and do it in a way that protects our people and our environment. It is just ridiculous that conservatives, Republicans, and Tea Party people are using this tragedy to further their own political agendas, and frightening that they are ignoring the warnings and lessons of the tragedy as well.

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