{"id":1122,"date":"2015-12-19T22:09:48","date_gmt":"2015-12-19T22:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=1122"},"modified":"2015-12-19T22:19:55","modified_gmt":"2015-12-19T22:19:55","slug":"fusion-power-is-not-the-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/12\/fusion-power-is-not-the-answer.html","title":{"rendered":"Fusion power is not the answer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The implications of nuclear fusion power as a panacea for the world&#8217;s energy needs are not good. There are better alternatives and I&#8217;d like to write about them again.<\/p>\n<p>As explained by nuclear power critic Linda Gunter in a recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2015\/12\/11\/the-false-promise-of-nuclear-fusion\/\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a>\u00a0on the recent Paris climate talks, nuclear fusion, as found in the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project, would dangerously concentrate control of the world&#8217;s energy supplies in the hands of a cherished few. The idea of a single fusion power station, or a few, providing energy to whole countries or continents is a political and sociocultural nightmare that would further divide and impoverish the world. It would completely neglect poor countries, isolated communities, and moreover the majority of the world&#8217;s population.<\/p>\n<p>I believe Gunter does a great thing in mentioning this problem in her article. When we theorise on alternative energy, it should be incumbent on economists, scientists and futurists alike to think not only of finding inexhaustible energy sources but ensuring they can be evenly distributed. The right alternative power sources must work even in the most primitive conditions, if we are to observe the importance of equality and equal development. This is where I think something like &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/2015\/10\/will-synbio-save-us-all-from-scarcity.html\" target=\"_blank\">synthetic life<\/a>&#8221; as advanced by J. Craig Venter has more promise and is more politically progressive.<\/p>\n<p>When synthetic biology&#8217;s creations have been correctly unbound from the chains of laboratories and expensive product catalogs, they will transmute simple renewable feedstocks into instantly usable fuels everywhere.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/2015\/09\/science-and-technology-can-end-poverty.html\" target=\"_blank\">Synthetic biology<\/a>\u00a0is no less than Utopian in its possibilities &#8211; a fact its creators do not deny. I realise plenty of people have and will continue to scorn this idea, including people like Gunter &#8211; who are likely to hold to only a primitivist philosophy. And synthetic biology could be like the work of Prometheus. It could literally bring warmth and development to every place in the world. It could also literally set the world on fire, if handled incorrectly, so the question of how to handle it and at the same time ensure fairness and equal development in the use of synthetic creatures as fuel sources needs to be addressed more deeply.<\/p>\n<p>However, Gunter did write, &#8220;our survival will depend upon moving away from large centralized sources of energy, like coal, oil, gas or uranium, towards much smaller, decentralized sources&#8221;. I agree, but I think those sources will be as small as living cells, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/10\/double-edged-swords-rattle-over-russias-airstrikes.html\" target=\"_blank\">new life engineered solely for human purposes<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The implications of nuclear fusion power as a panacea for the world&#8217;s energy needs are not good. There are better alternatives and I&#8217;d like to write about them again. As explained by nuclear power critic Linda Gunter in a recent article\u00a0on the recent Paris climate talks, nuclear fusion, as found in the ITER (International Thermonuclear&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,63,37,72,66,43,61,62,45],"tags":[1323,1322,1321,5,1205,25,1488,64,1126,4],"class_list":["post-1122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alter-globalization","category-futurism-2","category-history","category-international-relations","category-politics-2","category-post-scarcity","category-science","category-synthetic-biology","category-techno-progressivism","tag-economy","tag-energy","tag-fusion-power","tag-futurism","tag-j-craig-venter","tag-politics","tag-science","tag-synbio","tag-synthetic-biology","tag-technology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Fusion power is not the answer - L&#039;Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Fusion power is not a suitable solution to the crisis of sustainable energy. 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Bentham","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/12\/fusion-power-is-not-the-answer.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/12\/fusion-power-is-not-the-answer.html","name":"Fusion power is not the answer - L&#039;Ordre","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#website"},"datePublished":"2015-12-19T22:09:48+00:00","dateModified":"2015-12-19T22:19:55+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/#\/schema\/person\/576f5919c442d93e18909ed47628846e"},"description":"Fusion power is not a suitable solution to the crisis of sustainable energy. 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Bentham","description":"Harry J. Bentham is a British futurist blogger who has been a contributor at a number of think tanks including the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies since 2013. His work at Press TV and the L'Ordre blog featured at the multi-faith Beliefnet website has gained increasing attention and praise, including in the international media. Commentaries on political and ethical controversies by Bentham have been published at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, H+ Magazine, Dissident Voice and numerous other publications. He edits The clubof.info Blog (http:\/\/www.clubof.info\/search\/label\/Harry_J_Bentham).","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Harry-J.-Bentham\/e\/B00D4MSEY0\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/author\/hbentham"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1122"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1125,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions\/1125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}