[lbo-talk] RE: Technology not neutral

Dwayne Monroe idoru345 at yahoo.com
Tue Sep 16 16:21:10 PDT 2003


Wojtek wrote:

What I would like to see is the total social cost and total social benefit of various modes of electricity production that include the following:

1. The cost of electricity generation 2. The cost of transmission 3. The full cost of waste disposal (pollution, spent fuel,etc.)

4. The full social effect (cost/ benefit) of underproduction/overproduction, i.e. what would happen if electricity was consistently produced at a lower/higher level than the current usage

5. Externalities of various types of power generating and transmission plants (job creation, health, impact on quality of life, environment etc.)

************

Yes, precisely.

In a fuller democracy the question of whether or not to deploy any large-scale technology would be made by just such a consideration of all the technical and social factors.

Of course, this isn't the situation we're in and so technology like nuclear power is thrust upon us without debate or concern for either the present or the future.

Which explains our discomfort.

Much of the resistance to various tech we see comes not simply from the obviously negative effects (which in many cases are controllable if the will and governence apparatus to do so exists) but from the un-democratic and imperious way we found ourselves dealing with powerful and dangerous systems.

We have no experience with deciding upon the inclusion of society-changing technologies into our lives - nuclear was pushed onto the scene, sold, marketed and supported by government subsidy for the benefit of energy firms.

We were not asked, we were told. We were not involved at all, except as, at first awe-struck and later, terrified consumers.

This history explains, I think, the blanket, often reactionary dismissal of complex systems, power systems and all sorts of big science and engineering so typical amongst traditional lefties. 'No one asked me.'

Our entire perception of these technologies was developed in a deeply flawed environment; we can't see them as they might be imagined, supported, developed and deployed in a less flawed world.

So we think that solar, wind and other alternatives are morally superior because they've been the outcasts of the dominant system. If the power companies oppose them, they must be on the side of the angels.

To be clear, I have no special love for nuclear power.

But I find the assumption that it is especially evil and the belief that the 'green' alternatives are inherently good to be too simplistic.

Believe it or not, there are physicists of good will who have thought deeply about ways to make safer plants and handle the waste issue intelligently. In the current system, the non-marketability of their ideas makes them outcasts from the world of corporate power.

Ironically, the left's fear and loathing of the entire idea of using our knowledge of fission for, well, anything, makes them outcasts among us as well.

DRM

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