Feb 05, 2013 09:54
One of the things that frustrates me about environmentalists is that some of them are so foolish. South Africans spend hundreds of millions trying to combat poaching of rhinos and elephants. What if they took some of that money and started trying to combat the source of the problem - consumers in China and Southeast Asia who use horns in folk remedies - with publicity campaigns discouraging the practice? Or, alternatively, what if they started breeding rhinos as livestock to simultaneously help the species and meet consumer demand?
In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Germany announced that they would be shutting down their nuclear power plants starting in 2015. While abandoning nuclear facilities may make sense in regions like Japan with high risk of seismic activity, in places like Germany it makes less sense: unless they are going to increase their solar and wind capacity at an astronomical rate, then they will probably end up turning to coal or gas, which will pollute a lot more than nuclear power would.