Dear Mom - Letters to Heaven

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Big Coal, Oil and Nuclear Cooking the Books, The Planet and You


When you factor in costs for solar and coal - you have to factor in downstream pollution and waste. Whether anybody likes it or not our world is a closed system what we put into it comes out. We absorb everything back into our bodies. The coal company ceo's like to take their downstream pollution off the books and don't account for it in any way or fashion as if it doesn't exist or that it is somehow someone else's responsibility or problem. How is the mercury in the fish we eat not their responsibility?

The cost of dirty energy, nuclear, coal and oil in wars, terrorism, pollution, cancer, health gets passed onto the tax payer, the health system and the thousands of people who can no longer farm the land or fish and drink the water. There is a real cost associated with the polluting industries. But the dirty energy sector has been enormously efficient of keeping that cost off their books. They are no better than the cigarette companies who somehow aren't responsible for the lung cancer their product causes. By passing their responsibility and cost of their waste and pollution and cancer back onto the macro-economic system at large - that's the rest of us both in the public and private sector – they are in affect cooking their books.

When you factor all of the real macro costs in solar energy is by far cheaper, more sustainable, healthy and peaceful. What kind of world do YOU think we should live in?

When they give you the "cheaper" argument in promoting last centuries technology versus the new emerging technologies ask them - cheaper for who?

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