Jan 17 2013: I've seen the evidence as presented from both wings, Coke AND Pepsi. I'm a green, btw, total enviro-geek, vegan and all.
And I'd like to agree with you but sentences like "multinationals didn't keep squashing clean free energy inventions" are a real turn off in logical discussion.
They don't exist, your technology gods, it's too close to "conspiracy theory".
I'm not saying "it can't happen"... but I am saying that we are using coal and oil, and your laptop is powered that way just as surely as mine. I don't recall that Tesla ever finished figuring out the "free, clean energy" thing, and Atlas may have shrugged - the fact is that we have been dumping tons of US and allied currency into "securing the Middle East" and the same time our citizens are paying for both sides of the fight. Doesn't matter if we're there for the purpose of securing oil, we buy oil from there regardless.
Hydraulic fracturing is a way of opening a domestic energy source that is cleaner and more efficient than coal or oil. It's not pretty, but neither are the coal mountains or the oil fields. It's not optimal, it pollutes, but imagine if we had been using natural gas powered container trucks instead of diesel for the last 15 years, imagine how much less carbon would be in the air, how much less cash out of the pockets of those multinationals.
As far as i'm aware, the biggest heads in the oil biz are just as aware of the "end of big oil" as the rest of us, perhaps more poignantly so - and some of them have lost the most money on attempts at generating "clean energy" through solar and wind collection.
Of course, windmills face the same "Not In My Back Yard" problem that hydro-frac'ing does, and solar fields take up great swathes of desert, killing fields of cacti and spiny lizards.
We demand energy, we can demand *clean* energy, but we don't stop using dirty energy.
You can't really feel good about your sugar, and eat it too.
Jan 17 2013: Anyone who is using coal for their electricity, gasoline in their car, using sugar in their coffee or buying plastic from China is promoting devastating ecological damage.
There isn't much that is attractive about Hydraulic Fracturing, but it's a lesser of evils compared to the current fuel production system. Getting the US and Canada off of "foreign oil" would be a big plus, might even help to rebalance the world economy and thin the cash funds away from religious terrorist groups.
Personally, I believe that we have more to fear from the damage done to the Everglades and reef system off the coast of Florida due to the sugar industry, thanks to fertilizers, the canal drainage systems and the clearing of forests... and nobody rallied for the displaced Seminoles.
Jan 17 2013: I've been a TED fan for many years, and i've never felt the need to jump into the comments... until now.
I stopped here because i recently spent some time listening to the Koran on "tape", a cantor signing the verses in Arabic accompanied by an English translation. The signing is beautiful, but the lyrics are terrifying.
Ralph Ellis has made a number of very valid points in his comments, and i'm disappointed to see the answers to his questions come in the form of attack instead of debate (and so i am not surprised when and where he takes the defensive). I am an atheist who believes in freedom of and *from* religion (i don't condemn you for your beliefs, unless you act on the hate in your beliefs).
The medieval "book" religions are *all* frighteningly explicit in their hate mongering. This goes for the Torah and the New Testament as well. The fact that there are rational people who do not act on the statements of impetus that Ralph has quoted from the Koran, or the equivalents in (for example) Leviticus, does not exclude the opposite - because many do.
A very potent example of that opposite is the religious nuts who flew planes into buildings on 9/11. Another way that irrational behavior is represented in the US is by fundamentalists who murder abortion doctors, yet another is "fag-bashing". This kind of hatred comes from intolerant religious beliefs, it is hate that is inspired by the dehumanizing of non-believers, of difference.
Most people don't *choose* a religion, don't build beliefs rationally, examine them and become believers through the process of logic. Most people are conditioned to religious beliefs at a very early age, through the typical system of fear, reward and punishment (and questioning is definitely punished). Hate is something that is learned, and hate is taught through these books - which is obvious no matter how lovely the poetry might be, or how lovely the idea of political correctness that prevents clarity in a debate of this nature.
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A comment on Conversation: Is hydraulic fracturing the answer especially when you take in consideration the environmental impact it is having?
A reply on Conversation: Is hydraulic fracturing the answer especially when you take in consideration the environmental impact it is having?
And I'd like to agree with you but sentences like "multinationals didn't keep squashing clean free energy inventions" are a real turn off in logical discussion.
They don't exist, your technology gods, it's too close to "conspiracy theory".
I'm not saying "it can't happen"... but I am saying that we are using coal and oil, and your laptop is powered that way just as surely as mine. I don't recall that Tesla ever finished figuring out the "free, clean energy" thing, and Atlas may have shrugged - the fact is that we have been dumping tons of US and allied currency into "securing the Middle East" and the same time our citizens are paying for both sides of the fight. Doesn't matter if we're there for the purpose of securing oil, we buy oil from there regardless.
Hydraulic fracturing is a way of opening a domestic energy source that is cleaner and more efficient than coal or oil. It's not pretty, but neither are the coal mountains or the oil fields. It's not optimal, it pollutes, but imagine if we had been using natural gas powered container trucks instead of diesel for the last 15 years, imagine how much less carbon would be in the air, how much less cash out of the pockets of those multinationals.
As far as i'm aware, the biggest heads in the oil biz are just as aware of the "end of big oil" as the rest of us, perhaps more poignantly so - and some of them have lost the most money on attempts at generating "clean energy" through solar and wind collection.
Of course, windmills face the same "Not In My Back Yard" problem that hydro-frac'ing does, and solar fields take up great swathes of desert, killing fields of cacti and spiny lizards.
We demand energy, we can demand *clean* energy, but we don't stop using dirty energy.
You can't really feel good about your sugar, and eat it too.
Unless you're Ed Begley Jr, of course.
A comment on Conversation: Is hydraulic fracturing the answer especially when you take in consideration the environmental impact it is having?
There isn't much that is attractive about Hydraulic Fracturing, but it's a lesser of evils compared to the current fuel production system. Getting the US and Canada off of "foreign oil" would be a big plus, might even help to rebalance the world economy and thin the cash funds away from religious terrorist groups.
Personally, I believe that we have more to fear from the damage done to the Everglades and reef system off the coast of Florida due to the sugar industry, thanks to fertilizers, the canal drainage systems and the clearing of forests... and nobody rallied for the displaced Seminoles.
A comment on Talk: Lesley Hazleton: On reading the Koran
I stopped here because i recently spent some time listening to the Koran on "tape", a cantor signing the verses in Arabic accompanied by an English translation. The signing is beautiful, but the lyrics are terrifying.
Ralph Ellis has made a number of very valid points in his comments, and i'm disappointed to see the answers to his questions come in the form of attack instead of debate (and so i am not surprised when and where he takes the defensive). I am an atheist who believes in freedom of and *from* religion (i don't condemn you for your beliefs, unless you act on the hate in your beliefs).
The medieval "book" religions are *all* frighteningly explicit in their hate mongering. This goes for the Torah and the New Testament as well. The fact that there are rational people who do not act on the statements of impetus that Ralph has quoted from the Koran, or the equivalents in (for example) Leviticus, does not exclude the opposite - because many do.
A very potent example of that opposite is the religious nuts who flew planes into buildings on 9/11. Another way that irrational behavior is represented in the US is by fundamentalists who murder abortion doctors, yet another is "fag-bashing". This kind of hatred comes from intolerant religious beliefs, it is hate that is inspired by the dehumanizing of non-believers, of difference.
Most people don't *choose* a religion, don't build beliefs rationally, examine them and become believers through the process of logic. Most people are conditioned to religious beliefs at a very early age, through the typical system of fear, reward and punishment (and questioning is definitely punished). Hate is something that is learned, and hate is taught through these books - which is obvious no matter how lovely the poetry might be, or how lovely the idea of political correctness that prevents clarity in a debate of this nature.