Regarding Renewable Energy, Think for Yourself
From today’s Wall Street Journal:
At 6-foot-2 and 240 pounds, Steven Kemp had to move his size 14 shoes to avoid tripping toddlers at his pediatrician’s office in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. “It’s kind of awkward, but we’re good friends,” says Mr. Kemp, now 19 years old and a student at Butler University, still looking for a doctor he likes as much and still consults his pediatrician occasionally….These days, more and more are staying with their pediatricians through their college years,” says the past president of the American College of Pediatrics.
Here’s a wonderful example of the WSJ telling you exactly what they want you to believe. Yes, they’re serious; they want you to accept the idea that you’re better off with a doctor of some sort walking around with you every day of every year of your life – through your childhood, then through your college days—and, of course, until the day you die.
How roped and tied to you have to be to believe this, though? If I asked you – and a thousand randomly chosen people like you — to choose which of the following two statements you thought better approximated the truth, what would you say:
A) It’s good for your children to become associated with modern medicine and its associated practices (pharmacology, psychiatry, etc.) — and remaining so from the time they’re born, or
B) If your kids eat well and play outdoors, you’re much better off with a very infrequent relationship with these practices.
Which would you choose? I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest you’d choose B). In fact, I’ll go further and tell you that I could take this proposition into the Upper East Side of Manhattan, over to the plains of South Dakota, and then out to the beaches of Southern California — and I’d have a huge majority voting for B) every time.
This is just another example of some group’s attempt to convince you of something that’s good for them, but not at all good for you.
But what’s the relevance to renewable energy? To the degree that people can’t see through things like this, we’re done. To the degree that we’re sheep, with no power to see where we’re being led, we’re mutton.
There was an article in another paper today that accused the developers of the large solar thermal plant in California of greenwashing – of pretending to be green merely to gain public support, recklessly endangering the desert tortoise. As long as we can have a real argument that solar thermal farms in the southwestern desert are in the same class in terms of the environmental devastation that are wreaked by oil and coal, we’re dead. But that’s where PR takes us. That’s where this article by our beloved WSJ – funded by God knows whom – would have taken us.
Beware.
We’re mutton alright – I’m reminded of the old saw that Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner, and Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
What I’m suggesting here is that we all need desperately to be well armed – with information – accurate, cogent, germane information.
Albert Einstein famously observed that imagination is more important than knowledge, but I believe that’s true only because imagination cannot as easily be acquired as knowledge. I’ve long believed that heart without mind is lost, and mind without heart is damned – you need both.
My very best strategy here is to seek multiple, alternative, and varying sources for information – take the time to find both the raw data and honest opposing viewpoints, and discern between them using your best interpretation of that raw data.
Fear is a healthy emotion – it warns us of danger – but it is all too often used to manipulate us and drive us from a careful investigation and deliberation of the facts at hand. When you find that information is deliberately hidden, such as the genetically modified content of the food you ate today – where those who hold the information are insufficiently proud of their acts to open them to the light of day – this is strong cause for suspicion.
When an entity profits more by your misery than by your well-being, do not allow it to control your fate.
Until we evolve to the point where government, justice, law enforcement, fire protection, higher education, water, nutrition, healthcare and mass transit and mass communication are all completely removed from the profit motive and granted as rights to all people, all these vital societal elements will be in constant need of vigilant and vigorous defense, and will remain under constant threat of manipulation, subversion and pollution. Look at Forbes recent list of the happiest populations on the planet, and see how many of the top five have discovered and dealt effectively with this simple fact.
Leave all the entertainments and luxuries to the moneychangers – there’s money enough to be had there. Let the crucial necessities be cared for by collective civic entities that are accountable to the people they serve.
I chose A & B, My wife is an MD and a great nutritionist. Japanese as well. I see an Acupuncturist weekly for RA. I see the mirror daily for the choices I make. I know the holistic industry from 1965 when I was introduced to it, and have seen Green Washing. I currently an a Certified Green Plumber Trainer where I expose Green Washing with facts of physics and accepted Engineering Matrix … Responsibility of choice in diet and behavior is the daily mirror thing that I respect most in a person. Everyone is different no one pill is for all, think for yourself (in the mirror) and not in front of a box (TV).
It makes no sense to see a doctor for every minor ache and pain. On the other hand, periodic examinations can sometimes find problems which, if not addressed, could become serious. What we need is a reasonable balance between A & B.
One’s health is one’s own responsibility and best addressed by eating properly, getting adequate exercise, and avoiding detrimental substances, and avoiding detrimental behaviors. But there are times when medical assistance is essential.