A Political Platform based upon Natural Law: (Part X) Environmental Policy

A Clean Environment and a Prosperous Country

In my last two posts, my main points were that countries that are prosperous have the cleanest environments.  And that being a prosperous country is closely related to having abundant, clean, inexpensive energy.  The only way to currently have such energy is through nuclear power.  My last post dealt with nuclear power in detail, so I won’t repeat it here.

The wonderful thing now is that because of technological advances, we can have all of the following AND save money:

1)   Inexpensive energy, both as electricity and for transportation.

2)   Lower prices for almost everything else (because inexpensive energy means the prices of almost everything will go down, and thus will increase our prosperity).

3)   Reduced pollution and carbon dioxide emissions.

4)   Energy conservation.

5)   Be less dependent on or even independent of foreign oil.

How can we accomplish this?

A Clean and Safe Environmental Policy that will also make us more Prosperous

Here’s an outline for an environmental policy that will accomplish the above goals:

1) Whenever we need more energy plants, we would build nuclear ones.  Any older coal plants that are near the end of their usefulness would also get replaced by nuclear ones.  Nuclear plants give off no pollution and no carbon dioxide.  Doing this would also make it unnecessary to have a carbon tax, sometimes called “cap-and-trade”.  These taxes would create poverty, not prosperity.

2) In about 10-or-so years, we'll likely have cost-effective electric cars which can be charged at home with electricity generated from a nuclear plant.  Once these cars predominate, we'll have almost no pollution.  (An important ramification of this is that because the U.S. demand for oil will go down dramatically, the cost of oil will decline, making gasoline cheaper for developing countries, thus accelerating their movement toward prosperity).

3) Also in about 10 years, solar panels on roof tops will be cost-effective (without subsidies).  At some point our entire roof tops and possibly roads will be able to collect solar energy, probably using nanotechnology.

4) Again, in about 10 years, conservation advances, such as Argon windows which are 95% efficient, excellent insulation for homes, geo-thermal heat and air-conditioning systems, hot-water heaters that are insulated so that they lose little heat, and appliances that use much less energy than they do now, will allow us to build “net zero” homes.  This means that the amount of energy they generate is about the same as the amount of energy they consume.  Such a home would typically have no energy bill to pay.  And the extra cost to build in these conservation measures would be more than offset by not having to pay for energy.

These are the major components of the environmental plan.  For those of you who like a bit more detail, read on.

5) Here’s another technological advancement that will likely be cost-effective in about 10 years: self-driving cars.  Currently in the United States over 35,000 people per year are killed in car accidents and many more are injured by them.  Advanced self-driving cars will virtually eliminate this, especially once most cars on the road are self-driving.  Such cars have sensors all the way around them, and can sense light, use radar, and sense infra-red light, which humans can’t see.  They don’t get drunk, and don’t lose their concentration.  They can communicate with each other almost instantaneously.  For instance, if a car senses that a child has just hidden behind a tree close to the street, the car can immediately communicate this to the other cars around it, so they can slow down, or move away from where the child might run to.

Self-driving cars can travel safely with about 3 times the road density that is safe for humans, because of their millisecond reaction times.  So current roads would be able to handle at least 3 times as much traffic as they do now.  Not having to build new roads would save money, time, and pollution.

How about this?  Taxi companies would be able to charge much less that they do now, because there would be no driver.  So most of us could avoid owning a car, and just use taxis.  One could come, pick you up, drop you off at work, and go on to the next person who needs it.  Furthermore, if you will be the only one in the car, it will send a car designed to fit one person comfortably, thus reducing your cost, which will depend on the number of miles driven as well as the weight of the vehicle.

You’ll have no car insurance payments, no car repairs, no car payments, no parking problems, no filling it up with gas, etc.  And they will have cars that can transport those with various handicaps, as well as those too young or too old to drive.

Eat, drink, and be merry while you get to your destination.

6) We could offer to build, run, supply fuel for, and dispose of the waste from nuclear reactors in developing countries.  They would still pay us, but it would be cheaper than any other alternative they have, and would stop deforestation caused by people burning wood for fuel.  And with inexpensive, non-polluting energy, these countries can achieve prosperity much more quickly than they would otherwise, thus benefiting from all the advantages that prosperity confers.

One very nice side effect: prosperous countries rarely go to war with each other.  Rather, they trade with one another, which again will increase prosperity.

7) Trucks, airplanes, boats and other large vehicles would still need a fossil-fuel-based energy source for a few decades, but as time goes on, the amount of fossil-fuel energy would be a very small fraction of what we use now, and we'd have enough to provide our own, and not depend on the oil cartels. 

While not certain, one possibility that could replace fossil fuels entirely is that such large vehicles could use fuel cells based on hydrogen, which could be obtained by the electrolysis of water using the energy from a nuclear reactor.

8) With advances in robotics, robots could be used to go through landfills, junk yards, etc., and recover materials we were not previously able to do inexpensively.  Keep in mind that aside from fossil fuels that we’ve already used, our other natural resources are still here.  By recycling them, we’ll never run out.

9) With respect to global warming, the policies given here will reduce global warming gasses by more than any treaty or international conference has suggested so far.  Other solutions to problems that significant global warming could cause will be given in a future post.

Conclusion

By following the “no regrets” environmental policies given above, we could reach a goal that not long ago would have been unthinkable – at least an 80% reduction in pollution (and CO2) by around 2050, AND we’ll be more prosperous while we're at it.  The Earth’s Population is expected to top out at around 9 billion people.  If we do this right, there will be enough energy and other resources for everyone on Earth to be prosperous.  It could and should to be a great century!

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Tim Farage is a Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at The University of Texas at Dallas. You are welcome to comment upon this blog entry and/or to contact him at tfarage@hotmail.com.

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