Back To A Feudal Future

Ian Hore-Lacey, spokesman for the London-based World Nuclear Association, said: "Italy has had the most dramatic, the most public turnaround, but the sentiments against nuclear are reversing very quickly all across Europe."

When asked which nations were likely to join Britain and France as major producers of nuclear power, he replied: "Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and more."
            Scotsman

Meanwhile in Vermont:

After part of a cooling tower collapsed last August at Vermont's only nuclear power plant, the company that runs it blamed rotting wooden timbers that it had failed to inspect properly. The uproar that followed rekindled environmental groups' hopes of shutting down the aging plant.
The proposed closing, albeit a long shot, has gained some support this year among Vermont politicians.

This is the lead paragraph in a  New York Times article that has been reprinted in the Herald.   Regular visitors to this site will have read it all before.  But the fact that the Vermont Yankee saga has now gained national recognition (which is what making it into the pages of the Times means), we can expect the debate to be less informed by rational, prudent considerations and fueled, far more, by passions that don't really take into account the needs of the people and businesses in this state.  For the anti-nuclear cause, Vermont will become what Kansas was in the days before the Civil War.  The place where the battle will be waged, no quarter.   

Shutting down the Vermont Yankee plant would be considered a victory for righteousness by those opposed to nuclear power.  It would also send a signal that Vermont is not merely a tough place to do business but, in fact, thoroughly hostile to business.  The state would become a more expensive place to live, work, and visit.  Productive people who are here would leave and those who might have considered coming here would change their minds.  Vermont would travel a long distance toward a day when the state becomes a congenial place for only wealthy people (most of whom whom make their money -- or had it made for them -- elsewhere), the peasants who do chores for them – splitting firewood, plowing drives, pumping septic tanks, etc. – and employees of the state. 

A new kind of feudalism, then.  Just the sort of society the first Vermonters repudiated when they bailed on old Europe and when Ethan and the boys took up arms against the aristocrats across the Hudson. 

Comments

[Green Mtn Punter]

The crisis du jour is real this time, it is a crisis of the end of the oil era, it is here today, and not going away anytime soon.

You now have a crisis which will soon eclipse any talk of a global warming crisis, or any other environmental crisis. But meanwhile the patient is on life support while the Democrats' anti-nuke special interest group chants: "Pull the plug!"

What is the Republican response? Is McCain tone deaf, or what? Cap and trade? Huh? VT Republicans should be saying: "We told you so!- many times over many years! Are we going to keep shooting ourselves in the foot? Or, are you finally ready to try it our way?"

Who will jump into the breech? Time is running out.

[T. Shea]

The anti-nuke crowd has the 'solution' -- put a wind turbine farm in the middle of the Green Mountain National Forest. It might -- sporadically -- replace 0.01% of VY's output. Then, we can all sit around the campfire (our only viable source of light at that point) and sing Kumbaya!

[Karen Kerin]

Geoffrey is more correct than most might think at first blush. We are already a significant barter economy in Vermont, trading to the greatest extent possible to avoid taxes and other costs out of pocket. While we do produce a lot of food in various ways. e could produce a lot more and many of the oil producing states can't produce the food they need. So we may just be heading into a world wide feudal system of barter. We will pay one bushel or corn or wheat or carrots for a barrel of oil. The shipper gets a peck of the same. Actually, shutting down VY is really stupid because we will need 45% more energy in 2035 according to the experts.