I'm in a weird state of mind. I stayed up all night last night and I flew across the country this morning. It's cold and rainy in San Francisco, which is actually nicer than the really cold and snowy it was in Ithaca.
I was walking home this evening and an old man asked me for change. This isn't really anything new. In San Francisco people ask you for change all the time, but it got me thinking about the problems facing the world today. It all seems so overwhealming. It seems like there is very little that can be done to change the direction of things.
So.. here are the thoughts:
Dubai Ports World:
I hate the Democrats. I think they're getting it wrong. It's so important that they beat the Republicans and yet they seem so lost and incoherent. I want to believe in the Democratic Party, but <sigh> there is so little there to believe in. See my earlier post to Barbara Boxer for more on this.
Homelessness:
This is just depressing. Every day in San Francisco. So many people. Let's build dormatories where anyone is welcome to come and sleep for a day or a month or as long as they need. Let's give them treatment options and help them get off drugs or help them with mental illness. Let's feed them and make sure they can get clean clothes and a shower. We are the richest country on earth, why can't we take care of our own people?
New Orleans:
You gotta give them credit. Pulling off Mardi Gras even though they are trying to rebuild the city, and there's not really much there except contractors doing rebuilding. This is a place for a strong central authority. Re-layout the parts of the city that are going to be rebuilt. Compensate people for the loss of their land. Do it fairly. Decide which neighborhoods just need to be scrapped entirely. We need a visionary; this is a moment that should not be lost.
Global Warming:
The answers are so obvious. The solutions are within reach. The politics are so stupid. Part One, implement a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. Part Two, invest heavily in nuclear power. Part One is easy, we already have it for acid rain controls on other pollutants, some power companies make more money on selling their unused emissions then they do on selling power. This will actually drive the adoption of nuclear power since it won't have to pay carbon taxes. Nuclear power is the hard part. There's a lot of things than need to be done here. We need to start reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods. We need to design reactors that run on Plutonium instead of Uranium. The remaining waste after reprocessing is much less radioactive and easier to store. It should be stored above ground in 5-10 heavily secured nuclear waste sites around the country. Nuclear plant licensing should be fixed. Make it more of a cookie-cutter operation. Make it so companies that build Nuclear power plants can submit designs that include "site requirements" and then allow any site that meets those requirements to have a plant built on it without local interference. We will always face a NIMBY problem, lets to the most we can to mitigate it.
There's more, I'll write another post eventually to finish my thoughts.
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