“I’m a big fan of the site stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. They are normally dead-on with their witty, ridiculous stereotypes, and they could leave almost anyone-white or not-with a guilty, giddy feeling that someone out there could predict how they feel, exactly.”
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I’m a big fan of the site stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. They are normally dead-on with their witty, ridiculous stereotypes, and they could leave almost anyone-white or not-with a guilty, giddy feeling that someone out there could predict how they feel, exactly.

Their list is still unfinished, however. When I attempted to search for anything with the words green or energy when I took on the task of writing this article, I was surprised there was nothing on the subject. After all, white people love green energy. They totally believe in it, and they think the world should just be greener. They go shopping with those little burlap sacks that match the store name, and wear organic clothing. If you want to make friends with a white person, you should tell them how much you like green energy, and make sure they see you recycling something later.

All joking aside, it would be racial profiling to say that only white people like it. Take President Obama, for instance-Tuesday night’s speech included a plurality of paragraphs to address one area of bipartisanship-green energy. And it’s good that he did, as it was a huge issue in the 2008 election-especially nuclear energy.

Nuclear energy, more supported by John McCain than by Barack Obama, has been around for a while. Recently, however, it has been promoted as a green, alternative energy. And who doesn’t like that?

It’s true that the electricity it produces is green; here’s a bit of science for you. The atom used to be considered the smallest form of matter-that is, until scientists found how to split them by nuclear fission. Because the masses pre and post split did not add up, it was clear that energy had been produced-nuclear energy, as we call it today. Seems pretty green, right? Just splitting some uranium atoms-no big deal.

They obviously haven’t told you enough. Apart from the ten to eleven figure costs that are now associated with building a power plant, there is the ever looming question of radiation. And I’m not just talking about the horror movie-type Chernobyl radiation. The decommissioning of a nuclear power plant involves very highly radioactive substances throughout the power plant, and the cost of nuclear waste produced in the processes that the plants carry out could be very serious to the country.

The truth is, there’s no way to get rid of it. You can bury it in Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but that will only take care of the problem so long, aside from the high costs and risks associated with its transport. In France, where they depend on 80 percent of nuclear energy, they are developing technology to place it in the ocean.

Doesn’t sound very green to me.

Other alternative energies, such as solar and wind, also have drawbacks-but those, at least, have the short-term potential to be rectified through research. Even if we put billions of dollars into research for nuclear energy, who knows when we will find a solution for it? It might be next year, but it might never happen.

When I was in France, we met a businessman on the train who used a long-winded example to illustrate the reason that France hasn’t left nuclear energy alone. His ideology? The French are too stubborn, too involved in what they have done to change their dependence on nuclear energy.

We don’t want to end up with the same problem. Let’s leave nuclear energy alone, and put our resources into developing wind, solar, and hydroelectric power.

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