Japan has been on everyone’s mind, and some of the discussions I’ve heard have surprised me. Or, more accurately, what I haven’t heard has surprised me. When the talk turned toward Japan in my morning meetings this week, it was about the loss of life, the tremendous cost, and the opportunity to support nuclear power, make it safer, and make it work better. How about getting rid of it? That didn’t come up. The assumption was that nuclear was here to stay and that it was the future.
I hope not.
Now I know that Thomas Friedman of the New York Times is a fan of nuclear power, because he calls it a breakthrough in clean energy production. In a 2009 editorial he wrote that France was dealing just fine with its nuclear waste issues, and that a nuclear waste storage dump in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain was “totally safe.” Because he writes for the Times, he must be right, huh? I happen to know he’s flat out wrong. A couple of years ago I wrote and produced an hourlong documentary for The History Channel about all things nuclear. I went into nuclear missile silos, visited a reactor, and probably inhaled a few barium molecule or two at Livermore Labs. I also read a lot of what Robert Oppenheimer wrote, studied interviews with Edward Teller and Albert Einstein, and looked into was going on at the Yucca Mountain site. Was it “totally safe?” I wouldn’t use the term “totally safe” in relation to radioactive material leaking into groundwater. But don’t take my word for it, check out what Greenpeace has to say, and Counterpunch. The Obama administration has been working on terminating the Yucca Mountain program.
There hasn’t been a nuclear power plant built in this country since the Three Mile Island accident. That was 1979. But President Obama is talking about building new ones, massive gigawatt-sized reactors, and even smaller ones that would use thorium, rather than uranium-235. Thorium nuclear batteries are supposed to be the best, new green way to make power. I hope not.
I think of progress as forward motion, moving ahead into new territory and fresh concepts. But the spiritual view, on the other side of things, looks at progress as going inside, claiming a deeper self that we might have neglected or forgotten. Progress, in that view, isn’t always “forward.” It may even seem backward, anti- or pre-technology. Caroline Myss, in her latest newsletter, wrote, “only a fool would tamper with nuclear power without the assistance of a holy guardian, shaman, or priest.” I don’t agree with that, because it assumes that the shaman or priest may know more than the scientist. The real key to progress is mutual respect. Scientists need to listen to the shamans, and shamans should not run away from science or think they are better than scientists. Progress isn’t always forward, but it is always inclusive.
Will the future of power generation be nuclear? I hope not. Will the future of science involve truly respecting the Earth? I hope so.
Spent time in NYC this week. Got back to LA yesterday. Which city’s better? Vote and then click the button to see what other readers think.
My take? Mayor Bloomberg of New York has banned smoking in public places, campaigned against junk food, defended the planned Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero, and has promised to make New York one of the most ecologically green cities anywhere. LA Mayor Villaraigosa has also accomplished many things. He had an affair and he fell off his bicycle.
Not fair? Breaking it down: Blue skies in NYC mean a green city. New York has become greener under Bloomberg’s leadership. According to Popular Science, it’s already number twenty in the top 50 greenest US cities. In LA, brown skies signal a not-so-green city. We might get some kickass public transit with a light rail line scheduled to roll out in 2015. Our mayor is pushing for better bicycle safety after a taxi driver cut him off while he was riding, causing him to fall and break his elbow. Villaraigosa wants a new law that would require cars to stay three feet away from cyclists. Staying three feet away would work, and it would have been a good idea for him to put three feet between him and a sexy TV reporter instead of having an affair with her and destroying his marriage. But he bounced back by dating a former Miss USA.
How about architecture on a human scale? Please. New York has some of the most walkable spaces in the world. LA has traffic. The “High Line” park on the West Side is an urban wonder, and the economy in New York City is recovering from the recession faster than the rest of the country. The LA economy is based on manufacturing, which has moved to China, and movies, which have moved to Vancouver and Mumbai. We have a thriving yoga industry (don’t laugh) and an important human consciousness movement that is growing in influence. If we could only get to the meetings on a bike without being hit by a cab, the movement would grow faster.
Here’s the surprise in all this. I voted for Villaraigosa because he is a Democrat. Republicans? I’ve always believed that if I ignored them sufficiently, they’d go away. Not so with Major Bloomberg, who started out a Republican and turned independent. You can’t blindly go by party affiliation anymore.
Yeah, one more thing. I hate the Yankees, but they play a good game. A Dodgers game is a good place to take a nap.
Something weird is happening. I’m noticing that futurists are arriving from the past. Maybe I need to explain that.
There’s a young couple who have started a business empire selling heirloom seeds. The wife looks like she’d be a natural in a bonnet and the guy has Thomas Jefferson’s fashion sense. They don’t look like leading-edge people but they are responding to a leading-edge need: people want real food, and they want to grow it themselves.
Their company, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, sells 1,400 varieties of heirloom seeds and they run monthly “pioneer town” festivals with crafts, folk music and lots of bonnets – just the kind of event that has always made me want to run away. Maybe it’s the bonnets, or folk music not being sung by Bob Dylan, but old-timey stuff generally brings on in me a kind of nausea that only listening to Radiohead can cure.
But this time, it’s different. I’m willing to welcome spelling conventions like Olde Tyme into this article because of what Monsanto has done.
You know about Monsanto, the company with a long history of fouling natural resources? It got my attention in the movie Food, Inc. with its aggressive attitude about the genetically-modified seeds it produces. Monsanto has created seeds that resist its herbicide called Roundup so that farmers can spray their fields with poison that kills everything but the Monsanto seeds they’ve planted. Cool! Well, kind of cool in an evil way, because it gets convoluted. Monsanto has patented its seeds – turning a life form into a corporate asset. The patent has held up to legal challenges, allowing Monsanto to threaten farmers who try to replant its seeds from season to season. (“Drop that seed spreader and back away from the dirt, mister.”)
Ever since dirt was invented farmers have saved seeds to replant. Monsanto says you can’t do that and reaps great profits from what farmers sow. Oh, and according to the International Journal of Biological Sciences, Monsanto’s genetically-modified corn might be linked with organ failure. So the Monsanto corn on the cob I serve might cause your liver to blow up. Sorry, would you like another Chardonnay instead? You can stay away from what Monsanto is doing by buying organic. Or you can buy your own seeds and plant them.
That’s where the heirloom seed people come in. They’ll sell you purple tomatoes and white pumpkins that look a little like organs themselves but are good for you. Despite last week’s blog, I am not advocating a worldwide return to whittling and wearing gingham, but I will be seeing how many acres of tomatoes I can fit on our porch in Santa Monica.
Yesterday we were at Tibet House in New York, filming an interview with Dr. Robert Thurman, the first American to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk. The talk was all about karma, the role of chance events in life and, because we were filming in New York City, we talked traffic. (We all remember the ancient spiritual puzzle, “What is the sound of one car not moving in traffic?”)
I’m from New York, so when I complain about it I do so as a professional. I’ve always found New York to be challenging for film crews – just finding parking can eat an hour of the shoot, to say nothing of getting camera gear through security checkpoints, jammed into cranky old service elevators staffed by even older and crankier service elevator operators, and determining how much to bribe the nut next door who decides to hammer on the wall for a couple hours.
But now, there’s something else to contend with – Mayor Bloomberg. He wants to turn the city green.
“The city has changed completely in the past year. Eighth Avenue was down to one lane yesterday,” one crew member told me. Many other streets are the same way: one lane. Why? It’s crazy, but the Mayor is putting in bike lanes. The city’s full of them, big generous paths of green subtracting road space from cars and adding New Yorker-style bikers aggressive enough to turn you into road kill unless you’re vigilant. The West Side Highway is gaining green space, too, and there are 376 lawn chairs scattered around Times Square. They are, exotically enough, just for sitting in, provided as part of a plan to make the city more pedestrian friendly. That’s just weird.
“I’ve had people say to me both that it’s a stroke of genius and that I’m the king of trailer trash. The lawn chair decision is far and away the most controversial decision I’ve made in my seven years as head of the alliance.” — Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance.
According to Popular Science, among America’s greenest cities, New York is ranked number twenty. (Portland is number one.) The NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) ranks New York as environmentally smarter than Los Angeles. New York was the first US city to require that manufacturers recycle the electronics they make. As of this summer you can’t just dump your old computer out on the street. You have to recycle it — and its maker, be it Dell or Apple, has to help. New York City is even playing around with using the tides in its waterways to generate electricity with turbines. San Francisco has outlawed supermarket plastic bags. Are you listening, Los Angeles?
LA has more palm trees, but the concrete canyons of New York might be the greener place.
Not fair? Breaking it down: Blue skies in NYC mean a green city. New York has become greener under Bloomberg’s leadership. According to 
Written by Lee Schneider, founder of DocuCinema
The city’s full of them, big generous paths of green subtracting road space from cars and adding New Yorker-style bikers aggressive enough to turn you into road kill unless you’re vigilant. The West Side Highway is gaining green space, too, and there are 
