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There is no easy way to say this, but the
environment has begun its decline. The truth hurts a lot, as is the pain
suffered and the greater pain will increase as we progress into the future.
We as a people find ourselves bowing to a few who control the world’s
utilities which are powered by the fossil fuel industry - coal, petroleum
and natural gas as well nuclear whose radioactive waste will eventually leak
great amounts of deadly isotopes into our air, water and soil. We’ve
’tipped’ because we have not acted quick enough to develop alternative power
sources that work with nature rather than against it. For every year we
continue to pollute the air with fossil fuels and those radioactive for a
much longer term, will take that much longer for us to reverse the trend for
cleaner air, water and soil in which things grow. If mankind becomes
extinct, eventually the Earth will return - but now empty. Scary but very
real thought, isn’t it. By the way, those fossil fuel and nuclear
billionaires and their heirs will disappear along with the rest of us a few
decades after the Earth is decimated. They too will be miserable up to the
point of their own demise - of great blood guilt on their hands, in their
minds and in their souls.
There was a time
when the world was being industrialize that fossil fuels were needed to
power this world - alternative clean technologies simply didn’t exist during
that time. However, our knowledge has vastly improved since then, so there
simply has been no excuse for not developing and implementing clean
technologies on a much broader scale. But to do this on a world basis does
have an economic cost - one that will more than pay for itself in the future
- play their cards right, and the very industries that pollute our
atmosphere can greatly profit from embracing clean technologies. In North
America, coal operations are going through ‘downsizing’ according to West
Virginia billionaire Jim Justice who owns coal extraction operations as well
other businesses - according to some suppliers, the wealthy billionaire has
not been paying his bills. “You're
in a time when the world economies are really struggling, our economy is
really struggling, utilities are converting to natural gas, and you may be
witnessing the death of the coal industry," according to Justice. Of the120
mines Justice owns, only twenty-one are said to be active. Justice has been
busy selling off his mine interests to overseas buyers like Russia’s Mechel
- a Russian steel firm. As
to converting to natural gas, the benefits may be only temporary according
to geologists who have been predicting a sixty year supply at current usage
to coal’s one-hundred twelve years. Neither is a very long period of time
and what happens when all supplies are exhausted? As to petroleum, according
to some estimates we have less than a half century left - the days of easy
oil extraction have ended, and like all fossil fuels, as the commodity runs
out, the price continues to rise!
In Hanford, Oregon there lies a nuclear waste
dump built to contain radioactive spent liquid material built around 1943 -
it is said to be the most contaminated site in the USA. The facility and its
containment systems were only designed to hold contaminants for twenty years
giving government scientists time to decide the best way to safely dispose
of the dangerous radioactive material by the mid-1960’s - its still there
and no answers have been found. Its understandable that most areas don’t
want to be radioactive waste sites and that most material is being stored on
the grounds of nuclear reactors. Like the situation at Hanford, the waste
storage tanks have a limited life, meaning crisis looms in the future.
Initially touted as a clean technology when compared with fossil fuels,
nuclear has its own toxic tailpipe. We now have been given notice that the
problems of long-term storage of nuclear waste is not the only problem with
nuclear energy - but unexpected accidents both by natural and manmade
incidents can cause havoc as well. The latest incident to grab world
attention was the damage caused to the Fukushima Power Plant on March 11th,
2011, (one of fifteen largest in the world) caused by a 9.0 earthquake
followed by a giant tsunami that followed allowed leakage of radioactive
material that was measured around the world - the site was to be
decommissioned in 2011, however, the powers that be granted a ten-year
extension. Manmade nuclear power plants are no match for mother nature.
However, we can’t say we have not been warned - remember the Chernobyl plant
meltdown on April 26th, 1986 which sent radioactive material over
much of Russia and Europe, as well the near-incident of Three Mile Island in
the United States.
The truth is both fossil and nuclear fuels will
lead to problems our children and grandchildren will need to deal with - if
they can? We are now at the beginnings of climate change, and we face the
knowledge that fossil fuels are not only feeding the problems, but even when
depleted will leave plenty of problems behind - including the highly
destructive ones like continuing to store spent nuclear waste. Automotive
manufacturers are no longer embracing petroleum as they once were - the
handwriting is already on the wall. Unless they design cars that can be
powered by electricity, the day is not too far off when people will no
longer be able to fuel their cars much less buy them as long as they depend
on the fossil-fueled combustion engine.
Even if one ignores ’climate change’, one cannot
ignore depletion of fossil fuel within the century no more than can they
ignore the problems of increasing amounts of radioactive contamination
leaking from aging vessels which were never designed to last centuries.
Fracking into shale is an act of desperation as well the mining of oil sands
to deplete the last drop of petroleum and natural gas. With both, we’ve
opened ‘Pandora’s Box’ and are already seeing the negative effects of
polluted fresh ground waters as has offshore drilling accidents as the one
that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico which has poisoned the waters for
wildlife, but of the chemical oil dispersants which have also added to the
witch’s brew!
There is something else the fossil fuel
industries are not willing to tell you, if you have not been told enough -
the drilling, mining and tapping is beginning to show itself as a major
manmade source of sinkholes throughout the world! Whenever a solid or liquid
is removed, it leaves a cavity filled with air or a trapped vacuum. Anything
heavy enough that lies on top of this cavity eventually collapses, anything
stored in it eventually leeches outward. Back in 2013, a fifteen acre
sinkhole has opened up where a company called Texas Brine owns an abandoned
underground salt dome. So much material had been removed that the land above
became unstable and collapsed into the hole. Around it, families have lost
their homes and have been sent checks by the company that says its the
largest brine producer in the United States - indeed a scary thought. The
company now is trying to ’buy-out’ the landowners around the hole. The
pollutants around the sinkhole have already started to contaminate nearby
waterways as well are the cause of manmade earthquakes. But the situation in
Louisiana is not an isolated incident - reports around the world report of
similar circumstances where fracking takes place. Now there is Shell Oil
Company which insists on drilling in the Artic Ocean where its already been
given warnings that attempts to continuing drilling has led to
mini-disasters and promises a huge one which will be many times more
difficult to cap when something goes wrong - and it will! Shell has already
submitted it really has no contingency plans to stop a leak when it happens.
Former landfills have also proven not to be a
good place to build residential neighborhoods on - especially those filled
with toxic chemicals, metals and heaven forbid, nuclear waste! There have
been three fictional films (and most likely more) that deal with manmade
catastrophes based on scientific theories - ‘The China Syndrome’ and ’The
Day After Tomorrow’ and ’2012’ which are now out on DVD. ‘The China
Syndrome’ takes place when a nuclear plant subcontractor falsifies reports
of a nuclear plant’s safety missing a defect in the process which causes a
leak in a containment storage facility. A little after a week the film is
theatrically released, fiction becomes reality with the Three Mile Island
nuclear accident. ’The Day After’ is a film about a large ice shelf in the
Antarctic breaking loose due to climate change. Meanwhile as the ice melts
in polar regions scientists discover the cold temperatures of the melting
ice disrupts the Atlantic Current conveyer belt causing many weather related
disasters. In ‘2012‘, the story is told of Earth crust displacement which
causes massive sinkholes to develop due to rising temperatures in the
Earth’s core. However, there are some similarities dealing with manmade
sinkholes. Life imitates fiction.
…so much for the negatives of fossil and nuclear
fuel…
Alternative Energy is a popular name given to
sciences that work with nature rather than against it and are renewable.
Most of us tree huggers see it as a promise to power this Earth responsibly
while others regard it as a toy - good only for powering small calculators
and pretty windmills that blow in the wind. There are even some methods that
remain in dark corners, forced there by fossil fuel and nuclear
conglomerates who fear that the technology would be very costly to their
bottom lines - seems these people will go to any length to stifle the
development even to the destruction of the world itself. Apparently its
currently against the law to manufacture and sell magnetic power generators.
Many who work on apparatus such as this are made afraid by the power
industry hoodlums who will do whatever it takes to quell the technology -
those who manage to get their message through usually get threatened into
obscurity or meet with an untimely accident including death - Stanley Meyer
was murdered by powers who were against his water-powered car - oil
interests are suspected in his untimely demise after he refused to be paid
off. Inventors of alterative power generators have been jailed because of
their inventions. Is this America? Troy Reed has also mysteriously dropped
from the scene after he publicized his invention of a magnetic power
generator that could run a car. Sounds like oil industry chicanery to me.
Inventions like the
’magnet motor’ and ’water-powered’ technologies interest me from the aspect
that we could potentially power the world without negatively affecting the
atmosphere nor the Earth itself. A technology that I conceptualized is
passive wind turbines for use in automobiles which takes advantage of wind -
both naturally-occurring and that created via air pressure against a vehicle
in motion - add a solar shell to the mix along with the magnetic power
generator and you’d have a car that can recharge its battery whether the
vehicle is in motion or parked - greatly increasing the cruising range. Add
a small flexible fuel motor that runs on both conventional and bio-fuels
will greatly decrease our dependence on petroleum as well helping to clean
our air in the process. |
