It would be great if we, as humans, could realistically blame our shortcomings on nature. Solar flares will again give us an incredible Aurora Borealis and we are in the middle of an ice age, but still, we can only blame our actions on ourselves and not some grand extra-terrestrial magnetic imbalance.
Thirty-some annual Earth Days have wrested the helm of environmental action from the hippie’s and tree hugger’s “back to nature” stuff, and given way to a corporate-controlled political correctness.
Ideas of national security and imminent domain guide us through reckless decisions in a patriotic momentum. For example, the number of deaths by friendly fire accidents in the Afghan conflict are mostly by our own doing and not by enemy fire (and by now exceed the number of casualties of the Sept. 11 attacks).
In 1991 the Department of Energy began surface studies at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. It set nuclear waste acceptance to begin in 2010. In 1998 the DOE also created a new approach to begin interim waste storage of Multi-Purpose Canisters.
In the same year the department declared the site “viable,” but admitted that much work still needed to be done. This rhetoric leads nagging social consciousness away from the primary problem. It makes us think that we must choose how it is stored and when can we reach a base level of “safeness” rather than “Why are we doing this in the first place?”
In 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency announced proposed radiation standards for Yucca Mountain, and the DOE was forced to investigate allegations of collusion between itself, its contractors and the nuclear power industry. Collusion, imagine that. What works for us must certainly be good for you.
The earliest natives of this continent base their decisions not only on the present, sweeping the dirt under the carpet, but build their choices around the future. The tradition of even generations is that every choice must consider the effect it will have on the following seven generations.
In 2010, DOE will begin a full-scale injection of nuclear waste into the Nevada desert. Maybe gambling is the department’s new tradition.
