Greenwash Watch: Slick Movies from GE Ecomagination
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 02. 6.07
GE's Josh Karpf points us to a revamp of their website with a series of short films about GE ecomagination narrated by Kevin Kline, who we have loved since Silverado. Beautifully photographed with bucolic backgrounds, they have grapes growing in Napa on a solar powered winery, Bambi romping through the woods in Ireland in a piece on Irish wind turbines, powerful but efficient locomotives in Erie Pennsylvania and more. Perhaps the pace is a bit slow for this Youtube world, but they are effective pieces that demonstrate real progress. However, we will never consider them truly green until they either sell off their nuclear division or admit to it on their products list instead of hiding it. After all, they call nuclear "one of the many solutions to establishing a more sustainable energy future for the entire world."- why isn't it up there with the Biogas Engines on the Ecomagination product list? ::GE Ecomagination Showcase
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- The Guardian Takes on Greenwashing
Last night GE was the target of a SAVAGE attack by Fox News, because of the "liberal bias" of its NBC division. Anyone who gets Fox's dander up can't be all bad in my book. I in fact wrote to GE this morning saying "good job!".
Most of the brains in science work for companies like GE, and it's better they lean towards the side of progress than towards the side of Exxon.
The risks of a nuclear accident certainly are scary, but overall nuclear plants have killed far fewer people than coal-fired plants. Even the solar cell manufacturing process produces toxic wastes. Wind energy, geothermal, wave energy -- these are all cleaner and better wherever possible. But we aren't going to be able to convert everything to wind and geothermal overnight. Nuclear is far safer than most people think, and it's definitely safer to live next to a nuke plant than downwind of a fossil-fuel-burning electric plant. Moreover, the wastes from a nuke plant can be safely stored and clearly marked KEEP AWAY -- something we can't do with the exhaust from a coal plant. Nuclear is undesirable, yes. But let's not be so quick to write off nuclear before we rid ourselves of coal and gas-fired plants.
I don't know if nukes are viable or not. I DO know that in the last cycle, the program was run by grinning fratboys, not scientists.
I think that nukes might need to be an option. Treehugger is always talking about how energy can no longer come from one source (oil) and i think this may have to be true in the future as well.
Ack, it kind of annoys me when hippies complain about nuclear (hippies isn't an insult, BTW).
There is one type of nuclear reactor that seems like it could solve many of our problems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor
It is fairly safe, extracts much more of the energy from the uranium, can consume plutonium (so we can dismantle nukes and use them for energy), and produces waste with a much shorter half life.
Assuming that the article is correct and IFRs can be made cost effective, then they would be a great solution.
LA: Please note that I am not complaining about nuclear: I am complaining that GE wraps itself in ecomagination green and lists all of products on the ecomagination website except its nuclear division.