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ANTI_NUCLEAR_CLOWN

                                             September 29, 2019

After seeing the film "Anthroposcene"
at the Castro Theater, hosted by the Long Now.

This is a film somewhere between the usual environmental
documentary and a film like "Barkaka"-- it has small bits
of narration, and small samples of dialog, but largely it's
a collection of images from around the planet: they get in
deep on scenes illustrating some critical things that are
going on at the present--

One of the most memorable things they focused on is the
massive coal strip-mining operations taking place in Germany:
they show you these gigantic pieces of dystopian earth
grinding machinery-- 300 meters long-- that are chewing away
at the edges of the open trench, there are towns and farmland
in the way that are forcibly demolished to let this play
through.  This entire business is a catastrophe on both ends,
but evidently Germany is so addicted to this they're not able
to get away from it--

In the Q&A at the end, one of the three who worked on the film
was discussing the energy situation in germany.

He mentioned in passing that if Germany had ramped up it's
solar and wind and *not* shut down some of it's nuclear
plants, they would've been able to stop this strip mining.

Brand remarked "You seem more pro-nuclear than when we last
spoke.  Is that true?"

In response, he went through a rambling discourse--
I gather he'd be pro-nuclear except for fears of
what to do with the waste--

We he commented "We haven't built any new nuclear plants since
three mile island" a group of a half-dozen clowns to my left
broke out in delighted cheers.

I looked over at the head cheerleader... a not-quite-young man
with receding hair-line, delightedly grinning to himself at this
remarkably clever bit of heckling.

The smug, self-congratulatory smile of the face of this
*completely ignorant fool* made my blood boil, but I let it go
with an "Actually you're an asshole" that he showed no signs
of hearing.

I continued to glare at him for a while, imagining what I would
say if I took ten minutes to rant in the idiot's face--
                                                                  
    "You were staring a coal strip mine in the face for ten
    minutes and it hasn't dawned on you that *anything* that
    gets in the way of shutting that crap down is bad news--
    you're too stupid to work this out for yourself, too stupid
    to choose experts to trust that might enlighten you, and
    *I'm* too stupid to get across to you how dumb you are.
    Have a nice life.  Try not to get the planet fried."
                                                                       
                                                                      

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