We wait with bated breath to see what special interest groups will take over our government in November, 2024, or January, 2025. Some of us are optimistic that the ‘rule of law’ will emerge as the winner, even if it takes the subversion of laws to achieve that end. Some of us are mournful that we may witness the ‘death of democracy’ at the hands of our own democratic processes. Many of us are just ‘mad as Hell and won’t take it anymore,’ regardless of what “it” is.
In this uncertain climate, at least one nation, the United Kingdom (aka, England, Great Britain, etc.), has decided to help us breathe more easily by shutting down its last coal burning power plant. Although this will reduce air pollution around the world imperceptibly and will have no impact on global warming, it is a noble gesture. Of course, the motivation for this change is purely economic, but it recognizes that power for the masses can be generated without employing planet-killing, outdated technology.
At the same time we have been notified of this long-overdue but inconsequential initiative in power generation, we have been advised that the interplanetary probe Voyager 2, launched in the 1970s along with Voyager 1, is facing its own power problems. The electricity needed to operate its onboard experiments and to orient its thrusters is barely sufficient to meet the craft’s power demands. Consequently, at least one of the sensors onboard is being temporarily shut down to conserve energy.
Voyager 2 is about 13 billion miles from its launch pad and home planet. Instructions to this now-interstellar probe take 19 hours from their broadcast from our tiny blue planet with its ever combative residents to reach its onboard computers and sensors. Similarly, all information from Voyager 2, whether it be radiation reports or updates on the increasingly faint solar wind, takes 19 hours to reach antennas on the Earth.
What is most remarkable with regards our wandering Voyagers is that they have been active and reporting back to us continuously for nearly 50 years without access to external power supplies. They are too far from our sun or any other star to rely on it for power. All of its gadgets and gizmos have relied upon a small packet of plutonium that generates heat that is converted to electricity.
This radioactive material is what leveled Hiroshima in 1945. Since that explosion, which incinerated tens of thousands of people, we have been assured that nuclear power could be safely harnessed for peaceful applications. The Voyager probes were examples of peaceful applications of nuclear power. The problems with nuclear power, however, have included waste disposal, diversion into armaments, and accidents, like those at Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl. The solutions to all of these problems were achievable, but our leaders and those of other superpowers chose pollutants over possibilities.
An obvious question is why we continue to be reliant on coal, natural gas, and oil, the burning of which is destroying the habitability of our planet for our species, when we have access to a variety of alternative power sources. In the 1970s we already had nuclear power sources with viability and reliability lasting at least decades, if not centuries. We had devices that could generate electricity from sunlight, hydraulic systems (e.g., dams, tidal forces), volcanism, wind, etc., and yet we stuck with archaic technology that would inevitably foul the nest in which we live. As recently as 2012, 39 % of the United Kingdom’s electricity was still generated by coal-burning plants. The United States relied increasingly on natural gas for power generation in the Twenty-First Century, but this did not reduce the planetary burden of greenhouse gases and global warming.
America and most other major consumers of electricity do not lack the technology for generating electricity without destroying the planet. On the contrary, the options are numerous and readily achievable. As with many of our self-inflicted problems, the issue is money. Much of the wealth accrued by a powerful minority of Americans is based on the utilization of oil and gas based technologies. Both major political parties have been complicit in looking out for the vested interests of these wealthy patrons. The Republican candidates insist on our continuing to “drill, baby drill,” even though we have net exports of oil and gas. The Democratic candidates have yielded to their financial supporters by leasing out more public land for oil and gas exploration and development than any prior administration.
Our recent hurricanes have been a reminder that Mother Nature is choking on our exhausts. The oceans are getting warmer, the wind is blowing stronger, and the pattern of rainfall is shifting disastrously. We need the rule of law, and we need the survival of democracy, but most of all we need to preserve the environment in which our ancestors evolved if it is to be available to our descendants.
Dr. Lechtenberg is an Easton resident who graduated from Tufts University and Tufts Medical School in Massachusetts and subsequently trained at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan. He worked as a neurologist at several New York Hospitals, including Kings County and The Long Island College Hospital, while maintaining a private practice, teaching at SUNY Downstate Medical School, and publishing 15 books on a variety of medical topics. He worked in drug development in the U.S., as well as in England, Germany, and France.
