Ah those alarmists...
Ah those alarmists. Damage control.
I see the alarmist are having a field day currently advocating gold by the day at record prices, telling people to sell their shares and hoard cash under the mattress and yes, start growing vegetables. Maybe this time with some reason as the fall-out in the US is indeed very concerning. But I think is it yet another “déjà vu” all over again by the alarmists. Surely I am not selling good Thai stocks, I would be buying! Even a broken clock shows the correct time twice a day, so one day maybe they will be right.
Here is one example of the past were such overreacting negative views and advocacy created I think enormous damage, in hindsight. Just as today it will if things recover as I expect. What will these nay-sayers do with the vegetable growing farms and gold coins, if things in the US economy and dollar eventually recover at least some, as I expect?
The ill fated anti-nuclear activists, just one example of the past.
Three decades ago so many of these overreacting same types told us back then Nuclear power would destroy the world. Hollywood had its huge effect with the release of the movie “The China Syndrome” just after the 3 Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979. In the blockbuster record money making film is a fictional disaster scenario featuring a nuclear meltdown into the center of the world with nuclear winter etc..all portraying that industry cloaked in secrecy and incompetence.
All without merit as it turned out as there has never been even a single death in the US due to a nuclear fall out! And this despite the fact that in the US, some 20% of all electric power comes from non-polluting nuclear power. That film was an instant hit and its title became the new catch phrase to much damage, as it turned out. There were other similar movies/ TV shows at the time; one called “the day after” comes to mind which was watched by a record at the time 100 million people on the day of its viewing. In those days as now, the alarmists had a “great time” predicting that doom.
The doom they brought on was one on a viable and future benefiting clean technology.
The risks of runaway technology become the major talking points in the media on those days and the millions of anti-nuclear activists all but killed that now global warming saving industry. On April 9th 1979 Time Magazine fueled all this with its cover scare called “Nuclear Nightmare”.
Greenpeace, consumer activist Ralph Nadar and so many others went “to town” on discrediting, at whatever cost and lies, that viable industry and technology. The media messages and alarmists (as it turns out) hogwashed so forcefully, that since that year 1979, there has not been a single new nuclear power plant build in the US. All despite the perfect safety record ever since. And that is too bad as today we would most likely be better off.
Today more then 600 coal fired electric plans in the US alone produce 36% of US emissions, or nearly 10% of global emissions of CO2. That is the primary greenhouse gas responsible fro climate change. Over 2/3 of the total energy consumed in the electricity sector comes from burning fossil fuels.
“Nuclear energy is the only large scale cost effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power and these days it can doe so safely”. Patrick Morre Co founder of Greenpeace. Washington Post April 16 2006. Wow what a 180 degree turnaround.
And yet Greenpeace in those days went against that industry in such vigor (and as it turns our wrongly so) that it helped the reality that no single nuclear power plant was built ever since. Had that cause not been so devastating today with far more safe nuclear power plants in place (like France has) the global warming and global climate change would surely be in a much better.
Over the next 20 years it is expected that the US will need some 50% more electricity capacity then it does now (and Thailand surely has even a higher growth rate here), it is far from clear how this will be brought on. One thing is nearly certain, nuclear energy the claimed villain of the past, will likely be the savior.
Today those very same doomsayers advocate nuclear energy as the way to solve our global warming problems. Greenpeace advocates safe nuclear energy vs. 20 years ago nearly destroyed it.
So will the economic doomsayers talk people out of their good stocks and homes into solar caves and vegetable growing? What damage will they inflict if they are wrong? As fueling “angst” among the vulnerable in a fast changing world is just as much as “a crime” as selling them US home mortgage bonds and derivative structured investment products.
The anti nuclear alarmist of 25 years ago as it turned out were a detriment to the current global warming on hand, the CO2 emissions polution and the globe running out of oil/gas. I just suggest one example with this, there are many more…not the least nor last those who did not buy Thai stocks on the meltdown in late January '08. Or worse those sold out. All due to the doomsayers, ever present around us. Beware.
Best Regards,
Paul A. Renaud.
