But, not all warmth is good. While we play here in Florida, Japan is trying to stave off overheating nuclear reactors to prevent potential radiation leaks. And, the world watches and speculates about nuclear plants in an earthquake prone area, about regulations, about precautions and, really, about the safety of nuclear energy as a whole.
And the discussion is heating up. It's been all over the news. It was on Good Morning, America this morning. I watched bits of it, including their energy correspondent in a protective suit, while enjoying my sunny view of the bay.
Warmth is emotional. With the Spring Break crowd here in the Sunshine State, it's positive. We're basking in the heat. Japan, on the other hand, is emotionally cooking. Their warmth (potential and otherwise) is negative emotionally. People are afraid of that heat, of the dangerous fallout (possibly literally).
I was thinking of these dichotomies this morning, this splitting of the whole of what warmth can mean emotionally in the areas of energy, during the keynote presentation by Suzanne Shelton, president and CEO of the Shelton Group. She was discussing the tendency of people to make an emotional decision and then create reasoning to rationalize that decision.
"You cannot fight an emotional argument with a logical one," she said. Her suggestion was to focus on areas that speak to both the emotional and rational in people.
People aren't very rational about nuclear energy, even before the Japanese issue. Nuclear energy has always been squarely an emotional decision---either "for" or "against" depending on whether you are concerned about energy independence or health and safety. The reasons to rationalize the very emotional decision that nuclear will help us be energy independent fall squarely into cost and security issues. The reasons to rationalize the very emotional decision that nuclear is too problematic with health and safety issues often circle around natural or manmade disaster possibilities, reinforced, at the moment, by what's unfolding in Japan.
But, the immediacy of the Japanese tragedy certainly brings the emotional question of health and safety to the forefront during these trying days. With enough distance, however, I wonder if worries about nuclear will continue to fall on that side of the emotional argument.
To be sure, nuclear is not 100% safe. That's really very obvious right now; there are men at those Japanese reactors risking their lives to prevent a radiation leak. But, no form of energy, really, falls into a completely safe category. Oil issues killed 11 men in the gulf last year and unleashed an environmental disaster that an entire region may never fully recover from, yet we still continue to drill.
Coal and other fossil fuels contribute to climate change. And, while that isn't as immediate of a disaster as nuclear fallout, it is still predicted to be a disaster---and not one confined to a single region.
So, safety, as an emotional issue, has variables. And, our reactions to the dangers of all energy are not consistent.
In the end, will the benefits of nuclear energy---that it doesn't add to climate change, that it's a steady and reliable source of power---outweigh our fears of disaster as it often does with oil and fossil fuels? I think the final decision on that emotional argument is being played out right now in Japan. If a meltdown occurs physically and radiation leaks from the reactor, nuclear energy may burn through any remaining goodwill in the arena of public opinion.
And, if that happens, I doubt any of the rational positives about nuclear power will manage to make even a small dent in the negative emotional argument for decades to come.
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