A nuclear error Richard Gowan
June 20, 2008 | More on Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Global system, North America | 2 comments
At the start of the month, I tried to write a wry and whimsical post about signs of scarcity in Putnam County, a beautiful bit of hill country north of New York City. Well, sometimes you’re trying to do whimsy and you come over as a bit of a dick. Although it wasn’t possible to comment on the post (any blog that involves internet hate figure Daniel Korski has to take such measures) one Putnam resident ferreted out my e-mail address to point out that I’d got my facts and analysis wrong.
I won’t reprint the entire correspondence, but the central issue has been Putnam County’s 1970s Indian Point nuclear power station, which I mocked as “Olde Worlde” and a menace to the community. That’s not a unique point of view – heck, even folk legends Pete Seeger and Ani DiFranco claim that “Indian Point is leaking radioactive waste into the Hudson River, is one of the most vulnerable terrorist targets, and has 20 million people without a workable evacuation plan living in its shadows.” And for those who aren’t convinced that folk genius and knowledge of energy security are one and the same thing (I have visions of Steeleye Span commenting on pipeline issues) an organization called Riverkeeper bashes away at Indian Point and other polluters along the Hudson River.
All ostensibly convincing. But my correspondent says it’s all deeply misleading: “Putnamers in general do not subscribe to the PR-based notion of Indian Point as a problem. That notion flies higher the further away from the animal itself one gets.” He counters that Putnamers appreciate the employment Indian Point brings; fear that the alternative would be coal-fired power stations that would ruin the area’s excellent air quality; mistrust Riverkeeper and are generally weary of “negative snark” from ” the gentrification corps up from SoHo”. Now, I live in Brooklyn, but I plead guilty of snarking without fact-checking.
Of course, it’s possible that my correspondent doesn’t speak for a majority in Putnam County either – for once, I’m going to allow comments on this post to see if anyone else from that part of the world wants to contribute (but if you wish to weigh in on the merits of Steeleye Span as political commentators go here instead). Still, I’m convinced for now – as David has pointed out, energy and emissions issues are going to loom large in U.S. politics before and after the elections, so it’s good to look at the issues from the ground up. My correspondent and I ended up 100% agreeing that everyone should spend some time in Putnam County – go to Cold Spring from Grand Central via Metro North. It’s great.
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Twitter - David Steven
We have been uniquely privileged here in The Hudson Valley, to have both Pete Seeger’s groundbreaking campaign….. (and its results)… AND a non-polluting means to attain full modernism, without having to export our environmental sins to some unlucky downscale area, an area we can conveniently forget, while riding Metro North up from SoHo, enjoying pristine sunsets unsullied by smoke, haze, and carcinogenic dioxin compounds. (We make our own clean power locally).
It makes it difficult to join whole-heartedly with mainstream progressive issue followers in knee jerk nuke bashing, because without our “designer nuke”, we would have not so beautiful a valley, as the one we are used to.
So it requires pluck. It requires an ability to think for oneself, to stand apart from celebrity-led lemming societies, and to openly cherish that which makes life around here worth living. Among those things, the presence of Indian Point is the largest single beautification engine, orders of magnitude more important than any other factor (now that Pete & Riverkeeper have chased away the dye factories).
Now, if we can just keep the Hudson from becoming a Miami-beach-type wall of gated condos from Troy to Staten Island, we can say we’ve done some good, these 60 years or so. It may already be too late, though.
As far as .00012 of a millileter of SR90 found at the bottom of a 250 deep borehole, I would not worry, unless I were mining in the same space… and all local mining ceased around the time of the Garfield administration.
As far as the environmental morality of using self-warming minerals to power our homes (via Indian Point), consider the uranium heating in the Earth’s core, that causes all geothermal processes, and sustains life uniquely on this one single planet, by virtue of driving the core spin that induces our life-saving terrestrial magnetic field, thus deflecting some really nasty cosmic influx from frying us alive, as we ride Metro North to Cold Spring.
What’s good for Gaia, ought to be permitted to her offspring, wouldn’t you say?
Having been here for a while, I remember the disappointed talk when Robert Boyle quit Riverkeeper over the William Wegner hiring incident.
People hereabouts felt Riverkeeper had been commandeered by amoral newbies, and sent down a bad road. The consensus was, the organization had lost all credibility as a pro-environmental force, by hiring a convicted bird smuggler as a “technical advisor”. What kind of advice could such a miscreant offer? Crime how-to tips? It was a year after Boyle left, that they began their failed anti nuclear pogrom.
Mr. Wegner is still on salary, so make your own judgements.
Pete Seeger loves his causes, his alternative vision of the possible, and was far along to accepting Indian Point as a help, when the Bronxville Ladies Club sensed heresy in the wings, and isolated the poor guy.
As natural as rainwater, as rustic as a log cabin. The Hudson Valley’s own pristine future-bringer. Indian Point
Maybe Pete can write a song…..