Oh, how we love our technology! I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with it, as it’s done so much good for the world and yet may be the end of us all. (It’s already been the end of quite a few of us when you think about weapons of war and toxins in our bodies.)

Nevertheless, we are all a-twitter this week, and rightfully so, over the amazing news about fusion power. The much-anticipated holy grail of scientific and energy geeks the world over, fusion ignition has finally been achieved. Scientists call this “proof of concept.” One might argue that spending untold billions just to conclude, “yeah, maybe this could happen,” is not the best use of money. I can’t begin to imagine how much progress we could have made had we used only an itty bit of that taxpayer money to improve already viable safe, clean energy sources like solar, wind, geothermal, or tidal. I mean, solar batteries, for heaven’s sake! We can do batteries.

Still, Lawrence Livermore Lab where this proof of concept took place is a nuclear weapons lab, and I highly doubt all this fusion money would have materialized if it weren’t for the “national security” element. (Read, “new & exciting ways to pulverize humans in other countries.”)

Oh my, but I see my cynicism is showing. Sorry – it’s part of my charm.

Fusion Seems Too Good To Be True!

I’ve been reading up on fusion power a bit, enough to learn that it’s not true that fusion doesn’t produce radioactive waste. And it is true that fusion still carries the risk of terrorists creating weapons-grade plutonium 239, and that there is a danger of highly radioactive tritium (which replaces hydrogen in water molecules) leaking into our groundwater. Oh, it’s also true that the molten lithium within the reactor could explode. You know how the nuclear industry always tells us that there’s no danger of fission nuclear plants exploding? Yeah, well, welcome to the new and improved reactor.

But I’m the first to admit I know next to nothing about fusion power. I have some expertise in energy from my educational background and my 27 years as an environmental policy analyst and lobbyist with Sierra Club. But mostly I’m just googling and using my brain.

My usual sources within the national environmental community have made no comment on this scientific breakthrough, which is highly irregular because they will put out a press release at the drop of a hat. My guess is they are still scrambling to figure out how this fits in to their energy campaigns and messaging, which is understandable but not OK. They’ve let the “Hooray, we are saved from climate change” message get way down the road in front of them.

I know enough to suspect that fusion is not the solution to our climate crisis. The warming and melting and flooding and droughting that’s already been set in motion is not going to wait the decades it would take to build even one fusion reactor. But it’s way more than timing.

A Kinder, Gentler Technology

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-technology — it will obviously play a large role in whatever efforts are made to confront the crisis. Technology caused the problem, and it must be part of the solution. I’m excited about the great potential of clean and safe energy production technologies, and also about energy conservation and efficiency technologies. Once these proven technologies free us from our fossil fuel addiction, then we can diddle around with weapons systems posing as environmental progress. Oh man, there’s my cynicism charm showing again.

It’s just that the more we as a country invest in outrageously expensive technologies that continue our reliance on centralized industrial plants connected to massive interlocking energy grids, the less we invest in the common sense, humane solution of smaller, localized energy sources that enhance our communities rather than threaten them.

My church recently converted eight acres of land to a community solar farm, designed to serve 350 families, one-third of them low-income homes at reduced cost. We didn’t like sacrificing our wildflower meadows and we had to move our beehives, but it is good to know we are part of a just and compassionate solution to humanity’s climate crisis.

CEDAR RIDGE COMMUNITY CHURCH, DOING ITS BIT TO PROTECT CREATION

Undeterred By Any Other Power On Earth

“We spend our lives, as nations and as individuals, waiting to be saved by the power of our own achievements or the power of destructive force. And yet, it is the clear, soft, consuming, overshadowing power of the {Higher Power} in us—the power of goodness that is undeterred by any other power on earth—that lies within our grasp, that can really turn all of life benevolent.”

Science and technology are great, but as long as their foundation is corporate profit and military power, I don’t see a real solution to the problem of the suicide machine we have created.

The crisis, I believe, is spiritual. It is a crisis of greed and selfishness, and the solution is compassion and kindness. I know, I’m probably being unAmerican. But I read the above quote from Joan Chittister this morning, and it got me thinking about this brouhaha over fusion. It seems to me a very costly step down the wrong road. But perhaps it’s necessary so that humanity will survive long enough to learn the compassion thing.