From permaculture to nuclear power and other blogs

Ingrid from AustinPermie describes her transition to pro-nuclear through her interest in permaculture:

In permaculture, ‘permies’ as we call ourselves, are interested in the integration of various systems, and the understanding, that all of those systems are related, interconnected, and mutually dependent. Change one, you change the rest. It then becomes the domino effect. In the negative it means for example that you pollute soil (replenishing, healing the soil is one of the important goals of permies), you effect healthy micro organisms, in turn effecting depletion of nutrition and disabling the organic growing environment. Hence, when Lovelock mentioned the cycle of positive feedback, which in turn amplifies the temperature and the increase in temperature would do away with the one big hepa filter the world has (Amazon rainforest), I ‘saw’ the cycle, and understood the urge of redressing that course that Lovelock is after by endorsing nuclear energy.

This is part of her post on the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice, much faster and more alarming than models predict. To read more on the sea ice, go to National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Note: much of what Lovelock says is interesting, but not everything he says overlaps perfectly with scientific understanding.

Bob, a f/Friend (Quaker) from North Carolina discusses over a number of posts his transition to pro-nuclear power:

How will we hold ourselves to our best while death and destruction rain all around us? When refugees swarm at our borders, our doors? When there’s not enough food for our fellow humans, let alone the creatures whose habitats we’ve robbed? I was hungry and you fed me. That will apply until the end, breaking the last crust of bread with the stranger. But what if it’s a group of fifty desperate starving people?

From an earlier post:
Aldo Leopold laid the foundation for deep ecology with his land ethic: A thing is right when it preserves the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. Nuclear power, and everything other tool of the late industrial era, needs to be judged by this overarching ethic, buttressed by the values of the world’s great religions.

Bob also discusses conspicuous consumption (my phrase), such as

unnecessary appliances, especially clothes dryers, my pet peeve.

NNadir from Daily Kos has reformed (he used to be an anti-nuclear activist). His blog is wordy, irreverent, and often touches on points that the rest of miss.

I remember reading that Galileo became interested in the heliocentric model when he noticed that discussions were converting people in only one direction: no one was leaving heliocentrism to accept the Earth as center of everything. I’ve noticed this is true about nuclear power discussions: the arguments anti-nuclear people have produced aren’t winning any converts.

One Response to “From permaculture to nuclear power and other blogs”

  1. Joffan says:

    Wow. What a stunning and retrospectively obvious observation in your last paragraph there.

    Obviously at some point in time the flow of converts has changed. There are public voices for the antinuclear faction that were in the nuclear industry in one way or another. However the recent movement as you rightly observe has all been from anti to pro.