Lots of tangential squabbling
has been moved here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MitzaLizalor
The problem of nuclear waste however has been addressed in principle with the advent of fourth generation reactors.
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Leftists say "
how can more technology solve problems caused by technology"?
Technology is like money or food or personal physical energy, or personal emotional energy: you're not better off having less. Even if you've made different priorities in the past, or made mistakes, it's never better to be poor, malnourished, lethargic, or depressed, or ignorant or technologically backward.
Environmental problems were caused because people didn't consider the environment a problem when they chose which technology to adopt. Henry Ford could have chosen electric cars but at the time the only pressing environmental issue was the growing piles of horse manure that were threatening to make cities unlivable. The only rising sea level was the sea of horsecrap. The only smog clouds were the clouds of flies that lived in the horesecrap piles.
That's like saying "
how can more money solve problems caused by money?" Well, if you bought bad things before, you don't have to buy them again. You can buy good things with more money. Having more money is overall better than having less money. The solution to bad spending choices is not poverty.
Or health. Or confidence. Say you were feeling healthy and confident, so you did a dumb dance move and hurt yourself. Okay, don't do dumb dance moves. The answer is not to be crippled and depressed.
If you ate bad meat and got food poisoning, starvation is not the answer. Choosing better food is the answer.
Or you wasted years studying philosophy and it turns out you should have learned math: ignorance is not the answer.
When will technology answer X? Well, when we choose technology designed to solve the problem of X.
When CFCs were a problem we didn't ban all fridges, we built better fridges. When leaded gasoline was found to be a problem, we didn't go back to manure piles, we got the lead out of gas (and
got a generation of wimps).
When the dust bowl trashed Oklahoma, we didn't decide to go hungry, we
learned about land management and made it a priority. When
a coal-cloud killed newsworthy numbers of people in London, they didn't decide to ban all heating and get used to shivering. They changed their technology.
People have faced many environmental problems in the past, and the solution has always been new technology. It has never been austerity, or backwardness, or nagging people to be more caring and charitable.