Negativity & Naysaying

It has become increasingly apparent that people will say almost anything, at any point of time, as a result of any given event, that will reverberate short-term feelings rather than long-term thought.

The simplest thing to do nowadays seems to be to say "no".

For example, Egypt: No to constitutional reform, No to return of police.

Kuwait: No to prime-minister, No to bedoun segregation.

There was even an event on facebook that invited people to say no to nuclear power, and calling for all the world to stop using nuclear power.

I won't turn this into a political debate of what is going on in Kuwait, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya etc. rather, I will focus on the last issue with nuclear power.

Japan has been hailed as a country at the mercy of the elements.

This is a map of the world based on tectonic plates, now, all the following information is from my own head, as a result of the imprint imparted there by my middle school geography teacher, Mrs Parsons, god bless her. Hence, pardon the lack of technical terminology.

Tectonic plates are basically the divisions of the world, forget countries, these are the earthly borders that shape up the planet earth. These plates move, in different directions, a few cm's or so every hundreds of years or millenia or so.

Now, the movements of these tectonic plates can be abrasive (where they move in opposite directions, therefore rubbing into each other), destructive (where they collide into each other and cause massive earth quakes), or the last one which I cannot remember, but basically the plates move away from each other, this causes volcanoes to errupt (earths magma, the liquid crust) and forms new land.

Now, what happened to Japan is tragic. I highly doubt you can find one person who will tell you otherwise.

However, the idea of using this tragedy as a basis for an argument to ban nuclear power is laughable at best.

The problem is, you have temperamental people arguing for the sake of arguing, with no facts, only recent events.

"Oh, look what happened to Japan, the Fukushima reactors are leaking, the world is in peril."

You have everyone running around now claiming, "Chernobyl" all over again.

Lets draw a line between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.

As of date, nuclear energy is the "cleanest" renewable source of energy that provides sustainable energy at moderate prices (Physics, year 8), the harms ofcourse are the half-life of nuclear elements and isotopes, and the waste left, and the water required to cool the reactors etc.

However, I do not see the naysayers providing any viable substitute for nuclear energy. Oil? the silent killer, same as coal and the other non-renewable resources that blanket the earth in a shroud of carbon dioxide, building he green house effect that will, eventually, see us all burnt like toast in the distant future.

Unfortunately for me, the world seems to operate according to Rawl's Principle:

The Burden of Proof

Rests with those who Favor Restricting the Activity

This means that, they can make as many uneducated, biased, fictional claims as they want, it is up to those who want to refute them to prove them wrong.

What I am trying to impart here is that the easiest thing to do is say no. Try it, have anyone ask you for anything, no matter how simple or trivial it is, "pass the salt please", "No.", as opposed to actually having to physically move your arm across the table, reach for the salt, pick it up, and pass it over. But where is the logic?