Nuclear Power: a vegan, political science perspective.
18 October 2016 [link youtube]
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yo what's up I got a question from
support on patreon someone who's committed to spend one dollar a month to support this channel my recording and uploading new content question inviting me to comment on nuclear power this question comes from a woman named Kelly I say that because they're also men named Kelly uh anyway what up Kelly Kelly expresses her concern that vegans ought to have a responsible and balanced attitude towards nuclear power nuclear energy as a useful technology in a period of transition and when she expresses that in our own words I think she's actually expressing a majority opinion or an opinion that is at least back by the majority of people who are in positions of power influence within governments around the world the technocratic consensus is that nuclear power is preferable to and superior to cope out coal power gas power plants other fossil fuel sources and that we should have a detached attitude towards the risks and the environmental hazards of a nuclear power generation until such time as a really superior technology comes along so Kelly may feel like she her view is marginalized or treated as extremely unusual amongst vegans it's certainly possible that in the political circle shichi lives in that she's regarded as very unusual for having that view but it's not an unusual view and she wrote to me in response to my recent video criticizing Jill Stein the woman who was currently the leader of the Green Party United States of America woman who was currently running for president of the United States America on a green party ticket so what is my view of nuclear power nuclear power its risks etc have been a recurring issue from my earliest childhood memories to through to my adult life today it has been an issue everywhere I've lived in Asia in Canada in Europe it comes up again and again it's being re-examined from different angles at different times and today in 2016 sadly the lessons that might have been learned from the disaster Japan the Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdown that event is quickly disappearing from public memory from the consideration of the public record and there were very very serious political lessons to be learned from that in terms of human nature and practical political science we always need to be aware that when we design something to work under certain conditions the other opposing condition the inclement conditions incompatible conditions will inevitably arise somewhere sometime I remember speaking with someone who was an ardent supporter of nuclear power under absolutely all circumstances add to say look even if you believe this solution is safe when you're talking about a newly constructed power plant in southern Ontario under the oversight of the Canadian government how do you feel about this nuclear power plant and simply by using google and wikipedia i had come up with some examples from venezuela and other South American countries some of them constructed in the 1970s some in the early 1980s and as soon as I knew the names of those power plants I could very rapidly google and see scientists you know experts nuclear physicists etc scientists expressing their concern that these specific reactors were of tremendous danger to the public tremendous danger of the environment and that the government's concern really did not have the budget or the expertise to properly and safely regulate them operate them etc and in some cases the aging infrastructure the fact that the day were built in the 1970s early nineties that was itself part of the problem part of the concern now if you go through step by step the human decisions and the hubris but human decisions made step by step in Japan Fukushima Daiichi there are terrible terrible lessons to be learned from that one of the great overarching themes is that people in positions of power in our era people who wear business suits with suspenders and who are part of the bureaucracy people who believe in statism people who themselves are instruments of the state but who regard the state having an instrumental role that they control manipulate those people tend to have overweening confidence in their own social class and in that elite classes ability to handle all emergencies all unforeseen problems under all circumstances and of course from time to time whether it's a nuclear disaster or just stay a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans from time to time we see just how hollow that those pretensions are how they're over waiting confidence in themselves the social class as a as a group of technocrats as a group of experts how really ill founded that confidences and when those things go disastrously wrong who is responsible who really deals with the consequences obviously in Japan it is not particularly the corporation that was profiting from the status quo before the Fukushima Fukushima Daiichi disaster when i was living in canada i was watching with great interest as many years ago the privatization of some of our nuclear facilities so the public sector handing is over the private sector and they had contracts that were guaranteeing these companies that the companies would not be responsible in the event of an accident and so on now again if you go through a checklist of under what conditions is such a facility safe and reliable and there are such checklists and I've myself never been to one museum that I remember explained to me those this checklist I'm sure actually the candidate does have some of the safest and most reliable reactors in the world would I however extend similar confidence to Venezuela how about Cambodia how about Laos how about China how about Japan and one of the most hilarious but again telling in terms of human nature the history of the sella fields facility in England in the United Kingdom shows that wealthy Western countries can indeed have bad non-transparent bureaucracy mismanagement poor decisions lack of accountability lack of transparency and can make the same mistakes in operating a nuclear facility that a third world country would make so ah the rule here in political science is that any project requiring management we must prepare for the inevitability of mismanagement and when the stakes are so high when the consequences for mismanagement are so terrible as they are in the case of nuclear power plants how really reasonably responsibly can we organize your society to deal with that technology now to some extent we are dealing with it the disaster that happened Japan doesn't happen every month doesn't happen every year it is rare it is exceptional to some extent all of these societies all over the world completely diverse in their political backgrounds and their bureaucratic cultures in their levels of wealth through the levels of poverty they're all in different ways coping with this constant danger the reality of nuclear power being used as an energy source of transition it's already here we don't have to debate it that's how currently the whole world operates the first world the third world africa europe asia us everywhere I've lived this is this is part of the reality of modern life so in so many ways the debate is over and the person writing to be Kelly Kelly at your side of the debate has already won the real problems here I feel are not technological and they're not even ecological in a limited sense really the strongest party for criticizing the dangers of nuclear power would be the anarchist perspective would be anarchists who can point out what the problems are with statism with the attitudes of people and authority who in such a facile way can fall into a sense of invulnerability just a sense of self justification a sense that put it this way they lose the fear the skepticism the procedural vigilance that is so necessary with the technology like nuclear power however nuclear power is not unique in this way actually if you look at the technologies will rely upon at sewage treatment plants both to ensure the safety of our own drinking water and to ensure that sewage being treated and being introduced to ecosystems whether it goes into a lake or river of the ocean those technologies also were terrifying and if there's one incompetent drunk in the factory for just one day that actually can result in a whole city of people getting food poisoning waterborne illness what are you going to say um and if they're you know can result in polluting the whole ecosystem terribly and so on so there are other public services there are other technologies in the service of public good this way that may fall under private sector control that may fall under public sector or maybe a hybrid of the two where we have to ask the same questions and while i am not an anarchist and I don't even sympathize thinner chasm I think this is an interesting case where actually the haha rigour of an anarchist perspective you know kit can be really a useful gadflies as a Socratic reference in a useful way it can stimulate us to question our assumptions and to realize that beneath the veneer of seemingly responsible men in blue suits and ties even in a wealthy country like Japan there can be profound in competence a profound lack of responsibility a profound lack of accountability and in fact you know beneath the veneer of that professionalism we can be you know sowing the seeds of a disaster where none of us really can ever be accountable for the long-term consequences
support on patreon someone who's committed to spend one dollar a month to support this channel my recording and uploading new content question inviting me to comment on nuclear power this question comes from a woman named Kelly I say that because they're also men named Kelly uh anyway what up Kelly Kelly expresses her concern that vegans ought to have a responsible and balanced attitude towards nuclear power nuclear energy as a useful technology in a period of transition and when she expresses that in our own words I think she's actually expressing a majority opinion or an opinion that is at least back by the majority of people who are in positions of power influence within governments around the world the technocratic consensus is that nuclear power is preferable to and superior to cope out coal power gas power plants other fossil fuel sources and that we should have a detached attitude towards the risks and the environmental hazards of a nuclear power generation until such time as a really superior technology comes along so Kelly may feel like she her view is marginalized or treated as extremely unusual amongst vegans it's certainly possible that in the political circle shichi lives in that she's regarded as very unusual for having that view but it's not an unusual view and she wrote to me in response to my recent video criticizing Jill Stein the woman who was currently the leader of the Green Party United States of America woman who was currently running for president of the United States America on a green party ticket so what is my view of nuclear power nuclear power its risks etc have been a recurring issue from my earliest childhood memories to through to my adult life today it has been an issue everywhere I've lived in Asia in Canada in Europe it comes up again and again it's being re-examined from different angles at different times and today in 2016 sadly the lessons that might have been learned from the disaster Japan the Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdown that event is quickly disappearing from public memory from the consideration of the public record and there were very very serious political lessons to be learned from that in terms of human nature and practical political science we always need to be aware that when we design something to work under certain conditions the other opposing condition the inclement conditions incompatible conditions will inevitably arise somewhere sometime I remember speaking with someone who was an ardent supporter of nuclear power under absolutely all circumstances add to say look even if you believe this solution is safe when you're talking about a newly constructed power plant in southern Ontario under the oversight of the Canadian government how do you feel about this nuclear power plant and simply by using google and wikipedia i had come up with some examples from venezuela and other South American countries some of them constructed in the 1970s some in the early 1980s and as soon as I knew the names of those power plants I could very rapidly google and see scientists you know experts nuclear physicists etc scientists expressing their concern that these specific reactors were of tremendous danger to the public tremendous danger of the environment and that the government's concern really did not have the budget or the expertise to properly and safely regulate them operate them etc and in some cases the aging infrastructure the fact that the day were built in the 1970s early nineties that was itself part of the problem part of the concern now if you go through step by step the human decisions and the hubris but human decisions made step by step in Japan Fukushima Daiichi there are terrible terrible lessons to be learned from that one of the great overarching themes is that people in positions of power in our era people who wear business suits with suspenders and who are part of the bureaucracy people who believe in statism people who themselves are instruments of the state but who regard the state having an instrumental role that they control manipulate those people tend to have overweening confidence in their own social class and in that elite classes ability to handle all emergencies all unforeseen problems under all circumstances and of course from time to time whether it's a nuclear disaster or just stay a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans from time to time we see just how hollow that those pretensions are how they're over waiting confidence in themselves the social class as a as a group of technocrats as a group of experts how really ill founded that confidences and when those things go disastrously wrong who is responsible who really deals with the consequences obviously in Japan it is not particularly the corporation that was profiting from the status quo before the Fukushima Fukushima Daiichi disaster when i was living in canada i was watching with great interest as many years ago the privatization of some of our nuclear facilities so the public sector handing is over the private sector and they had contracts that were guaranteeing these companies that the companies would not be responsible in the event of an accident and so on now again if you go through a checklist of under what conditions is such a facility safe and reliable and there are such checklists and I've myself never been to one museum that I remember explained to me those this checklist I'm sure actually the candidate does have some of the safest and most reliable reactors in the world would I however extend similar confidence to Venezuela how about Cambodia how about Laos how about China how about Japan and one of the most hilarious but again telling in terms of human nature the history of the sella fields facility in England in the United Kingdom shows that wealthy Western countries can indeed have bad non-transparent bureaucracy mismanagement poor decisions lack of accountability lack of transparency and can make the same mistakes in operating a nuclear facility that a third world country would make so ah the rule here in political science is that any project requiring management we must prepare for the inevitability of mismanagement and when the stakes are so high when the consequences for mismanagement are so terrible as they are in the case of nuclear power plants how really reasonably responsibly can we organize your society to deal with that technology now to some extent we are dealing with it the disaster that happened Japan doesn't happen every month doesn't happen every year it is rare it is exceptional to some extent all of these societies all over the world completely diverse in their political backgrounds and their bureaucratic cultures in their levels of wealth through the levels of poverty they're all in different ways coping with this constant danger the reality of nuclear power being used as an energy source of transition it's already here we don't have to debate it that's how currently the whole world operates the first world the third world africa europe asia us everywhere I've lived this is this is part of the reality of modern life so in so many ways the debate is over and the person writing to be Kelly Kelly at your side of the debate has already won the real problems here I feel are not technological and they're not even ecological in a limited sense really the strongest party for criticizing the dangers of nuclear power would be the anarchist perspective would be anarchists who can point out what the problems are with statism with the attitudes of people and authority who in such a facile way can fall into a sense of invulnerability just a sense of self justification a sense that put it this way they lose the fear the skepticism the procedural vigilance that is so necessary with the technology like nuclear power however nuclear power is not unique in this way actually if you look at the technologies will rely upon at sewage treatment plants both to ensure the safety of our own drinking water and to ensure that sewage being treated and being introduced to ecosystems whether it goes into a lake or river of the ocean those technologies also were terrifying and if there's one incompetent drunk in the factory for just one day that actually can result in a whole city of people getting food poisoning waterborne illness what are you going to say um and if they're you know can result in polluting the whole ecosystem terribly and so on so there are other public services there are other technologies in the service of public good this way that may fall under private sector control that may fall under public sector or maybe a hybrid of the two where we have to ask the same questions and while i am not an anarchist and I don't even sympathize thinner chasm I think this is an interesting case where actually the haha rigour of an anarchist perspective you know kit can be really a useful gadflies as a Socratic reference in a useful way it can stimulate us to question our assumptions and to realize that beneath the veneer of seemingly responsible men in blue suits and ties even in a wealthy country like Japan there can be profound in competence a profound lack of responsibility a profound lack of accountability and in fact you know beneath the veneer of that professionalism we can be you know sowing the seeds of a disaster where none of us really can ever be accountable for the long-term consequences