Nuclear is no answer
Ever since the nuclear crisis began in Japan, I was just waiting for somebody to step forward with the argument that “given all the environmental problems caused by fossil fuels, isn’t nuclear energy the lesser of two evils?” The Taipei Times’ editorial indeed repeated this tired, old propaganda of the nuclear industry (“The irrational fear of invisible agents,” March 22, page 8).
What is wrong with these arguments is that they are based not on what kind of world we want to live in, but on purely economic cost--benefit arguments in favor of either fossil fuels or nuclear fission, with no regard for moral imperatives. Are we morally justified in creating dangerous global warming and acidic oceans, leading to collapsed ecosystems? Do we really want to burden the coming generations with thousands of tonnes of the most toxic and dangerous waste for hundreds of thousands of years?
The deep-lying fault in these arguments is what environmental economists call “externalities.”
Energy production via fossil fuels and nuclear fission produces lots of external effects, such as air pollution, global warming or cancer, some of which can be economically calculated, but some of which cannot (how do you value a lost human life?).
Therefore, the whole dreadfully simple-minded economic case which was put forward in a recent letter in favor of nuclear energy (Letters, March 25, page 8) falls apart if we simply incorporate the externality of having to safeguard nuclear waste for the next hundred thousand years. The neo-liberal school of economics is forever disregarding external costs as if they do not exist, which makes it highly cost-effective to trash the planet. Environmental economics tries to incorporate these costs. However, many decisions should not be based on such cost-benefit analyses alone, even if they incorporate environmental externalities, but on what kind of world we want to live in.
I want to live in a world in which we avert the threat of global warming and nuclear poisoning through a massive investment into truly renewable energy sources. I like to show my students a diagram that shows that we only need to capture less than one-thousandth of all the solar energy reaching the earth to provide for all of our energy needs.
We do not have a -shortage of renewable energy, but a shortage of political will. If we made a moral decision to do so, we could revamp the entire world economy in one or two decades to run on solar, geothermal and tidal energy — the three truly long-term sustainable energy sources.
Moreover, through economies of scale, renewable energies would soon become cheaper than fossil fuel or nuclear energy.
Truly renewable energies are the only solution that any responsible parent would wish for his or her child.
The only people who are despicable are those who are willing to trash the planet in the name of economic efficiency, which is just another way of saying “for the sake of economic greed.”
Bruno Walther
Taipei
US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) were born under the sign of Gemini. Geminis are known for their intelligence, creativity, adaptability and flexibility. It is unlikely, then, that the trade conflict between the US and China would escalate into a catastrophic collision. It is more probable that both sides would seek a way to de-escalate, paving the way for a Trump-Xi summit that allows the global economy some breathing room. Practically speaking, China and the US have vulnerabilities, and a prolonged trade war would be damaging for both. In the US, the electoral system means that public opinion
They did it again. For the whole world to see: an image of a Taiwan flag crushed by an industrial press, and the horrifying warning that “it’s closer than you think.” All with the seal of authenticity that only a reputable international media outlet can give. The Economist turned what looks like a pastiche of a poster for a grim horror movie into a truth everyone can digest, accept, and use to support exactly the opinion China wants you to have: It is over and done, Taiwan is doomed. Four years after inaccurately naming Taiwan the most dangerous place on
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
Wherever one looks, the United States is ceding ground to China. From foreign aid to foreign trade, and from reorganizations to organizational guidance, the Trump administration has embarked on a stunning effort to hobble itself in grappling with what his own secretary of state calls “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.” The problems start at the Department of State. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asserted that “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power” and that the world has returned to multipolarity, with “multi-great powers in different parts of the
RSS