April 20, 2005

Letter to Bob Chaput

Bob,

My decision to have you remove my e-mail address from the "Geezer's List" came about after I gave the group and my relation to it some thought.

The fact that you did not read the material I sent you played a minor role. In sending the material to you, I "presumed" on a brief and superficial acquaintance with you. It was "bad manners" for me to impose in the way I did. No one who knows me well and who values what I think and write would have shunted aside what I sent. My error, but I offer no apology.

Much more important in my decision is your advocacy of nuclear energy as a way to meet future energy needs. In this, as in almost all aspects of life, ignorance, stupidity and mendacity come into play. In my definitions, ignorance is a lack of information. Stupidity refers to not applying information in rational, meaningful and productive ways. Mendacity is, of course, the deliberate misuse of information.

You support the nuclear option in spite of the fact that you assert that nuclear disasters may lie ahead and that the nuclear waste disposal problems have not been solved to any acceptable degree. I find these two aspects of the nuclear option compelling reasons for NOT including it in future energy "mixes."

You indicated that a number of countries, France and Japan included, seem to have solved the waste disposal problem, at least in the short run and that, overall, the nuclear option seems to be a success in those countries.

I take a different view. The waste problem may have been "swept under the 'carpet'" for the moment. However, in those countries that have pursued the nuclear option most diligently, the nuclear industry is heavily, heavily subsidized - often clandestinely - at the expense of options that offer less risk and far more long-range viability.

Perhaps your advocacy is based, at least in part, on the fact that "monstrous" mendacities have been circulated and perpetuated by those who advocate the nuclear option. I prefer to believe that you have been lied to over choosing to believe that you are ignorant, stupid or, yourself, mendacious.

I was a nuclear advocate for a number of years. One of my closest, long-time friends worked in the nuclear industry until he "saw the light." In the early 1950s, when the first nuclear-based electric generating plants were being planned, the media reported that the cost of the electric power so generated would be so cheap that "sending out" that power would cost less than mailing out the utility bills for that power! What a cruel and unrealistic picture that propaganda 'painted.'

The fact that we have nuclear plant dangers and a nuclear waste disposal problem that grow ever greater and that generate ever more divisive social, economic and political discourse suggests, most powerfully, to me, that "something is amiss" in the industry and among its advocates. There are better ways to solve our energy challenges. If there were not, given all of the dangers and problems inherent in the nuclear option, I would still be an advocate for it.

"Homo Sap" is dooming the planet to eventual destruction. Since you are a grandfather, I find it incomprehensible that you do not put your grandchildren "ahead" of your generation, and, in doing so, that you devote every ounce of your intelligence, education, obvious social skills and other resources toward creating a sustainable world. Every grandparent in the world should be working toward a sustainable world: economic, political and in all other ways. (Unfortunately, I have no grandchildren, but I do have many nieces and nephews who are parents, grandparents and great grandparents).

The problems loom large and grow ever more daunting. Those who believe in the inevitability of 'Armageddon' or those who act as if they do are the 'power base.' Those who advocate solutions that are reasonable, rational and logical either have 'little voice' or are viewed as 'ignorant' (or worse).

There is hope. If the human race is to survive (in fact, if the planet is to survive with a diversity of "higher order" life-forms) Homo Sap will be replaced by Homo Responsibilis. The hour is late and the "Doomsday Clock" is ticking in its own inexorable way.

Given all of this, I feel there are far better ways for me to spend three hours of my Tuesdays than with the "Geezers," however pleasant (at times) that may be.

I wish you well,

Hal Mansfield