Mercury News: Cheney uses California’s woes to call for more energy development. Vice president rejects conservation as major part of solution.
Now there’s a shock.
Cheney is precisely wrong on this. He equates conservation with deprivation, and does so with scare language designed to persuade folks that only more drilling, mining and otherwise plundering of the environment will be the only rational answer.
Conservation does not mean living worse. It means using less to achieve the same ends.
The call for more nuclear energy is particularly short-sighted, if you have the slightest concern for the generations that will live on this planet in the next, say, 10,000 years or so. We do not know how to dispose of nuclear waste safely in the long term. We only have vague ideas, and the tons of poisons we’re saving will haunt our descendants.
The vice president, like the business people who use the current energy crunch to settle old scores and dream up new ways to make money, is not being honest. What else is new?