These monuments are some of the most blatant fossil fuel propaganda to hit the mainstream.
Oh no, nuclear is so scary, we have to warn our possible descendants 100,000 years in the future even if all cultural continuity is lost because we care so much for the distant future. Climate change? Oh don’t worry, it’s just your grandchildren and everybody after them that will have to live through a mass extinction event, you have nothing to worry about.
Nuclear waste? Well, sure, you could keep it perfectly safe by putting it on a grate in a bathtub, but that would require maintenance once every decade or so, and that’s just not acceptable. Now by law you have to bury it in a geologically inactive region where it can be guaranteed to not leak in the slightest for the next million years without any human intervention. Leaded gasoline and car exhaust made half the population angry xenophobes and kills hundreds of thousands of people per year? Cost of doing business, I’m afraid.
Because of their effect, their media positioning, and their cost. These monuments are from the 20th century, when clean alternatives were more expensive and less efficient, so the defunding of nuclear directly fed into increased fossil fuel consumption. And thus into increased pollution, climate change, war, and airborne radioactive waste. Any activist could have seen this.
As for media positioning, it is always very clear whether corporate media support or oppose a cause. Climate activists are disruptive weirdos that get arrested while people whose lives they slightly inconvenienced are interviewed over shots of backed up traffic or a wide-angle shot of a handful of activists amidst a lot of context. Anti-nuclear activists are concerned citizens who get interviewed to low crowd shots that show even small groups as a throng, or lower-middle class moms and pops interviewed at home about their worries for their kids’ health, cut with ominous shots of drinkwater-safe water vapor coming from cooling towers.
As for cost, first there’s the monuments themselves. Grassroots activism tends to have lots of people with hodgepodge equipment, while astroturfing has fancy tools and either a handful of people to operate them or contractors. These monuments are massive projects built by contractors designed by handfuls of individuals. It fits the pattern.
Second, there’s all of the expensive storage. No capitalist government is going to waste millions of dollars listening to their people’s objectively excessive safety concerns, unless it directly benefits the rich people they have made corrupt deals with. Nuclear safety laws were designed to keep nuclear power more expensive than fossil fuels, because if the safety standards were reasonable then it would blow fossil fuels out of the water and threaten the justification for funding the military-industrial complex.
Even now, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, if nuclear power safety standards were reduced merely to those of wind turbines and solar panels - where people regularly die from falling, electrical fires, electrocution, etc. - nuclear power would probably be cheaper than renewables.
Oh no, nuclear is so scary, we have to warn our possible descendants 100,000 years in the future even if all cultural continuity is lost because we care so much for the distant future.
Even if it isn’t that relatively impactful these kinds of monuments are still really cool and whatever experts in culturally independent communication they are getting to do it totally deserve the funding
whatever experts in culturally independent communication they are getting to do it totally deserve the funding
Some of those “experts” proposed genetically engineering a bioluminescent breed of dogs to detect when radiation is nearby, and making viral pop songs about “when the dog starts glowing, run very far away”…
I think some of them got a little too imaginative. Sometimes you think so abstractly that you miss the obvious.
For instance, Carl Sagan suggested we simply mark them with a skull and crossbones, which every organism with an endoskeleton can recognize as a symbol for “death” and thus “danger.”
These monuments are some of the most blatant fossil fuel propaganda to hit the mainstream.
Oh no, nuclear is so scary, we have to warn our possible descendants 100,000 years in the future even if all cultural continuity is lost because we care so much for the distant future. Climate change? Oh don’t worry, it’s just your grandchildren and everybody after them that will have to live through a mass extinction event, you have nothing to worry about.
Nuclear waste? Well, sure, you could keep it perfectly safe by putting it on a grate in a bathtub, but that would require maintenance once every decade or so, and that’s just not acceptable. Now by law you have to bury it in a geologically inactive region where it can be guaranteed to not leak in the slightest for the next million years without any human intervention. Leaded gasoline and car exhaust made half the population angry xenophobes and kills hundreds of thousands of people per year? Cost of doing business, I’m afraid.
Why is anti nuclear propaganda always portrayed to be pro fossil fuels by nuclear proponents?
Cleaner alternatives have been available for quite a while now.
Because of their effect, their media positioning, and their cost. These monuments are from the 20th century, when clean alternatives were more expensive and less efficient, so the defunding of nuclear directly fed into increased fossil fuel consumption. And thus into increased pollution, climate change, war, and airborne radioactive waste. Any activist could have seen this.
As for media positioning, it is always very clear whether corporate media support or oppose a cause. Climate activists are disruptive weirdos that get arrested while people whose lives they slightly inconvenienced are interviewed over shots of backed up traffic or a wide-angle shot of a handful of activists amidst a lot of context. Anti-nuclear activists are concerned citizens who get interviewed to low crowd shots that show even small groups as a throng, or lower-middle class moms and pops interviewed at home about their worries for their kids’ health, cut with ominous shots of drinkwater-safe water vapor coming from cooling towers.
As for cost, first there’s the monuments themselves. Grassroots activism tends to have lots of people with hodgepodge equipment, while astroturfing has fancy tools and either a handful of people to operate them or contractors. These monuments are massive projects built by contractors designed by handfuls of individuals. It fits the pattern.
Second, there’s all of the expensive storage. No capitalist government is going to waste millions of dollars listening to their people’s objectively excessive safety concerns, unless it directly benefits the rich people they have made corrupt deals with. Nuclear safety laws were designed to keep nuclear power more expensive than fossil fuels, because if the safety standards were reasonable then it would blow fossil fuels out of the water and threaten the justification for funding the military-industrial complex.
Even now, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, if nuclear power safety standards were reduced merely to those of wind turbines and solar panels - where people regularly die from falling, electrical fires, electrocution, etc. - nuclear power would probably be cheaper than renewables.
Not to mention that the nuclear fuel can be recycled, albeit with some loss, but (at least in the USA) you’re legally not allowed to do that.
Because they need that byproduct for the bombs.
Even if it isn’t that relatively impactful these kinds of monuments are still really cool and whatever experts in culturally independent communication they are getting to do it totally deserve the funding
Some of those “experts” proposed genetically engineering a bioluminescent breed of dogs to detect when radiation is nearby, and making viral pop songs about “when the dog starts glowing, run very far away”…
I think some of them got a little too imaginative. Sometimes you think so abstractly that you miss the obvious.
For instance, Carl Sagan suggested we simply mark them with a skull and crossbones, which every organism with an endoskeleton can recognize as a symbol for “death” and thus “danger.”
I’d be worried people would end up thinking that is where all the pirated media is buried
Riiight, because “skull = death” is a social construct, but “jolly roger = pirates” is totally a universal constant that transcends time and culture…
Yeah, these monuments are pretty… rad
👈👈👈 😎😎😎 👉👉 ☢️
My guy this is a shitpost