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Evil companies that aren't WalMart
- Thread starter hbarcat
- Start date
As far as supplementing our energy use, the same people who are crying about the pollution and supposed climate change caused by burning fossil fuels blocked the construction of nuclear power plants in this country for decades.
Yes, there is the issue of storing the waste, I understand that. Of course, a lot of proposed waste storage plans have been scuttled by environmentalists as well!
But nuclear fission has less impact on the environment than anything other than solar or wind power, and even that is debatable.
There are countries in Europe that get most of their electricity from nuclear power plants. Thanks to the 70's and 80's version of environmentalism, we get most of ours from coal, oil, and natural gas.
Before you blame big oil for our dependence on fossil fuels, you might start by blaming the short sighted environmentalists who put our country way behind on the best alternate source of energy.
Hey, don't get me started on ComEd and their evil plans to turn the world into a nuclear wasteland. . .
It's not even just the environmentalists either....When I lived in California, no one wanted the wind turbine "farms" in their area. No one wanted the solar farms either. Everyone wanted the end product, but no one wanted the production of it to intrude into their space.
Yep. NIMBYs. Not In My Back Yard. They, and the environmentalists, are probably the biggest reasons we are so far behind the rest of the world. It's not corporate greed, more like individual greed.
Hey, we're getting off track. This is supposed to be about evil companies screwing over people, not evil people screwing over companies. 
Hey, we're getting off track. This is supposed to be about evil companies screwing over people, not evil people screwing over companies.
****it. This is America, the land where everyone is screwed.....
I know I'm late to this debate, but I have a couple of points to add on different alternatives:
Windmills: The energy output of windmills actually is very dependent on the location's average wind speed, the topography of the land, and the available land space. Therefore, this is not always the best alternative for some areas. There have also been issues with complaints about noise and visual pollution (I'm not kidding heh). Also, great advances have been made in this technology..that were independent of slowed progress due to greed, imo. One example is the scalloping of the blades to create greater lift that was recently thought of by a scientist after looking at the fins of a whale (biomimetics is sweet).
Nuclear: So many issues with this, yet an amazing technology. Fusion is the future of the research into this (look up ITER), and may provide fewer environmental problems with greater energy output.
Alternatives to transport fuel: Ah, the biggest debate ever that no one seems to realize. I think this is the one area that effectively encompasses all the problems associated with oil vs. alternatives and "green energy". In this category, biofuels/biodiesel are the alternatives that have been touted as the best things. However, what most don't realize is that the current state of technology is far from ideal. Most biofuels (I'm including biodiesel in this) are "first-generation" technology that countries are adopting and creating policies for. The problem with this was seen in the end of 2007/beginning of 2008, where these policies affected the prices of crops, since the feedstocks for these fuels is...crops. This had a huge impact on the market and on least developed countries, where the rise in food prices were devestating socially, economically, and politically. Other negative considerations of this technology include increased emissions of NOx (although CO2 emissions were reduced, especially in the cases of biodiesels), increased prices (which can be reduced by subsidies to encourage greater adoption), and increased carbon sinks. Moratoriums were actually called for by the WFP's president at one point. The only country that has been able to successfully adopt bioethanol is Brazil, which started shifting to this fuel in the 1970s and used subsidies and other incentives to promote it (and therefore, other countries cannot make the shift in the same exact way with the same results because of the change in circumstances). However, 2nd-generation technologies have now been shown to give promise.
The whole point of this long, winded post (which btw, was not really directed at the poster I quoted)? The development and adoption of alternative energy technology is a very complex matter, and saying something to the extent of "oil companies are evil and try to stop green alternatives from happening" is overly simplifying the whole situation. New technologies always have problems associated with them and therefore it takes a long time for them to become widely used. I actually think the future of energy production will involve diverse sources of energy for each region to create an optimal situation.
My two cents.
Also I'm really sorry for adding to the de-rail...
Anyone want to help a chem eng get a job in the energy production field?..
Yep. It's real easy to view 'big oil' as something like the Emperor or Darth Vader, and biofuel or wind power as the Rebel Alliance.
Unfortunately, when you really apply logic, and cogitate for a bit, you come to realize, as Emerald_gasH said above, replacement of transport fuel is a very complex issue, and will likely come from many different sources, some of which may not even exist yet.
The Federal Reserve Bank.
Nothing federal about it... its totally privately owned.
Stupid bilderburgh group...
Nothing federal about it... its totally privately owned.
Stupid bilderburgh group...
after my post to indicate that I was making a joke.GIbson, the whole guitar hero thing and just I've had bad customer service experiences. Also some of the routing and hardware on my sg has been questionable.
Right now; FNAC.
They put external hard disks that are not working properly back into the shelves after people have returned them.
Guess who is the sucker who came home with a malfunctioning 500 GB external hard disk
They put external hard disks that are not working properly back into the shelves after people have returned them.
Guess who is the sucker who came home with a malfunctioning 500 GB external hard disk
First of all you don't replace all those hydrocarbon products, which is why oil needs to be conserved NOW and we need to power transportation and homes using sustainable power sources on an individual basis (Ie: Solar Power supplemented, by nuclear, geo thermal wind and water).
Oil is not a renewable resource it was created over the course of millions of years when prehistoric schools of krill and other marine life where sealed away and compressed...any oil that appears to be "new" is just moving around under the surface....The earth somehow bleeding oil for us to harvest is possibly the dumbest thing I've heard in this entire argument, no offense.
Also the oil companies are not evil for drilling and producing oil (we need it at the time being) but what they are evil for is massive price inflation..."With all these SUVs we can't make enough gasoline, we need to start charging more..." Where does that extra money go? Right into CEO pockets.
Assuming that we phase out fossil fuels in favor of solar, nuclear, geothermal, wind, water and other alternatives, does that necessarily mean the companies that sell these energy sources are evil when they begin making billions of dollars a year?
I can see this same conversation taking place 40 years from now:
"The electric companies are screwing us with solar power rates."
"The biofuels industry is conspiring with the transportation industry to kill new technology."
"Massive wind farms are ruining the environment and impacting wildlife."
"Nuclear power can never be made safe, no matter what the technology."
