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Originally written by Kelandon:

My state, California, recently repealed a tax on excessively polluting cars

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Originally written by spy.there:

Nuclear power is certainly the wrong way. As you name it, nuclear plants would be a great goal for terrorist attacs. And how can we leave waste, that poisons the world over decades? How can we leave such a mess to our children? We should go for harmless energies like solar, water or wind power.
Did you not hear a word I said? Solar is impractical on a global scale, and the other are completely local. Being a socialist, I'm all in favor of cheap power; commodifying products is a Bad Thing, even if it's for a supposedly Good Reason.
Besides which, nuclear waste is a bad target. It's usually in isolated areas, has so many layers of detection and warning that any threat would basically be an annoyance in human terms, and is not a cost-efficient way to make a bomb. It'd be much cheaper in terms of effort and hush money to make a dirty bomb out of uranium dust, and you Can't, capital-C Can't, make a nuclear bomb out of nuclear waste without a specialized breeder reactor.
And unless you just so happen to be either the US or the Soviet Union, you don't have a breeder reactor on your hands, so...

As for polluting, we, as human beings, are going to do a hose job on the environment. We have done it, on a small, local scale, since the Egyptians, and we will continue doing it forever. Nuclear power is far more environmentally friendly than the only other realistic alternatives; coal and petroleum, and even natural gas, do much greater harm to our environment.
And all that money into solar panels will barely make them cost-efficient. With that kind of research into nuke power, we will see self-sustained and possibly even cool fusion by our twilight years, and there is absolutely no cleaner way to get power than fusion, unless you're going to get a bunch of brontosauri on treadmills or something.

But as it looks now, nuclear plants will be inevitable. Except, the Americans would suddenly start to save current and turn off their air conditions. But who cares about nature, when the personal comfort is threatend?
Conservation is a luxury, environmentalism is a luxury, and for the most part, recycling is a luxury. You can't afford to bother buying local and natural when you're on near minimum wage, you can't afford to waste time putzing around with a garden and tin cans when you're on near minimum wage, and you certainly aren't going to come home in the summer heat and sit around the house without any AC.
Also, there's the simple law of large numbers: it is as likely for one man to have an IQ of 200 as it is for 100 men to have an IQ of 105. Similarly, ad campaigns aimed at MASS MOVEMENTS are INTENSELY difficult, and mostly depend on a generation very progressive in a certain way.
That kind of energy would be better devoted to building a better system of intraspecies relations, not interspecies and man-environment relationship. When we have a globalist social democracy in place, the environmental issue will become small potatoes, and won't take more than a few years to fix efficiently and humanely.
As is, we can struggle as much as we like to get our house in order; the third world is still going to spew pollution like mad and go home and turn on their AC and bask in momentary cool, and I don't care if we do find a way to power cars on water, but we'll still have their issues to worry about.

You could raise the matter to your politicians. Vox populi is never better heard than before elections. Catch that guys on their tours and ask them about environmental future.
Unfortunately, I still don't see the environment as a first issue, and a LOT of green issues are a knee-jerk.
One good example you might have heard of that really applies to me: Yucca Mountain. It's supposed to be a nuclear dump, a national storage area a while out in the Nevada desert. Within a hundred miles of my home.
I'm very happy with the plan to put waste there; I think that, without a national waste dump, nuclear power will remain essentially small-scale. Nuclear power remaining small-scale will ruin us when oil starts to run short; our only remaining options are coal and nuclear, period. Solar will not be feasible on a national level for generations.
As much as I'm afraid of nuclear waste -- hey, we all are! -- I'm much, much more concerned with winding up with the black lung.
@>
( ^
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Besides which, nuclear waste is a bad target. It's usually in isolated areas, has so many layers of detection and warning that any threat would basically be an annoyance in human terms, and is not a cost-efficient way to make a bomb. It'd be much cheaper in terms of effort and hush money to make a dirty bomb out of uranium dust, and you Can't, capital-C Can't, make a nuclear bomb out of nuclear waste without a specialized breeder reactor.

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