I keep thinking, "I wish 200,000 Germans had demanded the shutdown of their coal-fired generators"

[phantom power]

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

[bbinacan]

1. Instead of nuclear plants or

in addition?

[GliderGuider]

2. I vote for "in addition".

My preference is to shut down all fossil-fuel use (coal, NG and all oil burning), all nuclear plants, and all mega-hydro - world-wide.

[bbinacan]

3. I guess they don't

want to freeze their asses off in the dark.

[txlibdem]

5. Everyone will just end up with hundreds more coal power plants

take away all the nuclear power plants and you'll either freeze or be jumping up and down demanding that the electricity be turned back on. Then the utilities will build a few hundred more coal power plants.

Mission accomplished for the coal lobby and their mindless drones who post pro-coal talking points.

[bbinacan]

8. There's a big move from coal fired

to natural gas fired power plants. I like that.

[txlibdem]

9. As a stop-gap measure only

Look up "fracking" and the problems it has caused: kitchen tap water that can be lit on fire for instance seems like a downside of natural gas to me.

[bbinacan]

21. That wasn't caused by fracking. n/t

[GliderGuider]

7. You just can't convince anyone to take the long view these days.

Everybody's always whining about how uncomfortable they'd be. As if the world would be a worse off if a few thousand million hyperactive tool monkeys froze in the dark...

[txlibdem]

10. If a few thousand million hyperactive tool monkeys froze in the dark

I grew up poor in a northern climate. I can tell you from first hand experience: you won't like it.

And I'm sure you don't mean that 1 billion people should freeze to death... just to satisfy your world view.

[GliderGuider]

13. Good lord, no.

I don't do "should". I just think that if they did, the world would not necessarily be a worse place as a result. Actually, freezing to death is rumoured to be one of the better ways to go. I live in Ottawa, so I'm quite familiar with the process...

Depopulation won't happen that way, though. It will likely come about through a combination of famine, disease and people deciding that "now is probably not a great time to have babies". It will also happen on its own, without our direction or management. One aspect of my world-view that most people will probably take issue with, is that I'm not really motivated to prevent it.

Oh, and the 1 billion you refer to is not the number of people I expect to die off, it's the number I think could be left once the process winds its way to a conclusion over the next century or two.

[txlibdem]

19. Wow.

I see there is nothing left to be said. Reading your post, I just threw up in my mouth.

My only hope is that there are very few people with your world view, your lack of motivation to prevent the death of up to 9 billion people during the timeline you suggest.

My world view holds that we absolutely can avoid all that death. We just cannot do so by continuing on in the "business as usual" Capitalist ways we've become accustomed to.

[GliderGuider]

20. I am not God. I cannot prevent death.

What I can do is to make sure that those around me who are alive are as happy and fulfilled as possible. I'm extremely motivated on that score.

[XemaSab]

11. I am a bit of a hypocrite here

Living DIRECTLY downstream from the 9th-tallest dam and 12th-largest reservoir in the US, I am EXTREMELY invested in the maintenance of large hydropower facilities. (The edge of the floodplain is a block away from my house... in the WRONG direction. :o )

And if you want further disclosure, my grandpa built a bunch of dams, my mom is working on a MASSIVE dam expansion project, and my last major work projects involved hydropower relicensing for several watersheds in the state. I am hoping for future work on a relicensing project as well.

Dams in this state are CRITICAL for irrigation and flood control. Yes, they're environmental nightmares, but massive floods and not eating would be a huge bummer. :P

If we're going to have dams (which we are), we should milk every last drop for energy.

[pscot]

14. Welcome back

:hi:

[XemaSab]

15. Thanks!

:hi:

[GliderGuider]

16. That's kind of why I specified "mega"-hydro.

I was thinking in terms of projects like Three Gorges, Itaipu (Brazil/Paraguay), Guri (Venezuela) and James Bay in Canada. When a dam is truly multi-use and is smaller in scale I have less of a problem, though I'd really like to see tighter controls on the construction of any new projects of 2GW or over anywhere in the world.

[XemaSab]

17. That smacks of cherry-picking to me

If you're not going to count the largest projects in the US as "mega," then I think it makes the prefix "mega" meaningless.

The Columbia River, Sacramento River, Colorado River, and other rivers in the US have seen a lot of violence, literally and metaphorically. I think we should own that.

[GliderGuider]

18. Mebbe so.

The way the Columbia has been screwed over is unconscionable. Considered together, the dams on the Columbia turn it into one of the largest power projects on the planet. Got C4?

[phantom power]

4. Either way, I guess. Fossil fuels are what is going to kill billions of people.

[txlibdem]

6. +1

[wtmusic]

12. +1. Well on their way. nt