Plastic, Profit and 'Progressive Nonsense!' oh, my.

[The below was written as a(n expanded) response to a story on NPR (and a comment from a Conservative critic railing against "Progressives" and their/my agenda against 'Free Enterprise and the American Way'), regarding the banning of Bottled Water containers movement that is growing on college campus'. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/02/12/146692656/battling-the-bottle-students-and-industry-face-off-over-water>. ]

Ah, "Conservatives!' Things like 'conserving the ecosphere' don't appear in their agendas. 'Conserving' profit, however, always does. 'Saving American Jobs' always does too, while these same 'Conservatives' either help to/ or are directly related to shipping 'American Jobs' to Third World countries, and the China they were so rabidly against (until it became a 'hugely profitable market.'

They don't want to ban plastic bottles, and where I live in Santa Monica, Ca., rail against the banning of plastic bags. 'Outrage!' they say. 'People should be able to buy whatever they want to!' they cry (when it effects their same bottom line about not beiing able to sell another kind f plastic -- most of which ends up either in the trash, or worse yet, gets ejected as soon as it gets out of the store ('I gotta right to it. I pay for it.' Yes, you do. All of us do.)

Which leads us to the Pacific Plastic Gyre. As big now as the state of Alaska (imagine that) and still growing, it is quickly polishing off the Pacific and its ability to recycle air, as well as, yes, ending up in the seafood you eat (which I haven't now  since sixteen -- Oh, the 'Conservative' horror! I've been a vegetarian since then). This, along with the killing of the Gulf of Mexico from, first the runoff from the Mississippi and the factory farming all along its length, to the BP oil spill (which seen from space in NASA photos whose trail of death is shown to be reaching almost to the Yucatan Peninsula and Belize).

That profit eclipses ecology comes as no surprise, but the depth of the self-serving-ness of these 'Conservatives' for some reason always does.

Nuclear "Option" in Meltdown Status! Scramm it!

"Nuclear Power! So cheap it won't even be measurable!" screamed the Voice back in the 1950's and 60s'. Along with the (radioactive) nugget: Safer than Coal or Gas!"

With the power plant in Japan breached, lacking electricity to get water into the containment vessels of tow (our of five) reactor cores, this stands as the largest nuclear disaster in history. Larger than both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Of course, this was due to the massive earthquake, but it was built on a known (and quite active) fault line, guaranteeing that sooner or later...

And this reactor is not the only reactor in the world built on a fault line. There are several others, including those in California. These are just accidents of monstrous proportion waiting to happen, also sooner rather than later.

Let's return to those thrilling days of yesteryear...

Nuclear power was sold to the American People as both safe and cheap. That spent fuel rods hav e to be kept in water that is costantly filtered and refreshed, wasn't part of the propaganda. Neither was the billions of dollars that went into developing the technology by the US Government, not the Private Industry that would profit from this "cheap" energy source.

And as to the waste byproducts... That was a whole nother prospect.

Not only are the reactor cores in full breach in Japan, but the spent fuel rods 'isolated' in on-site storage tanks are also in danger. If not constantly cooled, they would still have enough fissionable material (in the quantities stored) to start an uncontrolled chain reaction as well.

If the US Governement had spent a mere fraction on the solar and other alternative power possibilities, the cheaper alternatives to Nuclear, Coal and (especially Liquified) Natural Gas, those sources would be online and generating power in the quantities that were once touted for Nuclear. And solar panels don't go critical, either.