The Mainstream and Social Media have exploded after Greta Thunberg’s impassioned speech at the UN. Greta’s words were either bold and daring or the hysterics of a spoiled child depending on your position and as someone who lives in Russia it must be said that her rant came across as deeply offensive from a cultural standpoint and highly irrational from an environmentalism standpoint as at least one Earth-shaking development towards an ecologically safe future is being developed in Russia.
Some of the claims of Thunberg’s comments (as the daughter of wealthy successful parents in Western Europe, who sailed to give said speech on a heavily sponsored sea vessel) are shockingly offensive to a solid majority in the former Soviet Union.
Perhaps maybe one day people will be “suffering” and “dying” from climate issues but at present it is delusional to make this claim and a slap in the face to anyone going through real tangible suffering. How could some imaginary misery due to the environment made up in a teenage mind in an ivory tower compare to the loss of innocence suffered by an entire generation of Russian-speakers who had to fight, poverty, starvation and in some cases military conflict during the collapse of the USSR? The amount of naivety and Eurocentrism needed to truly believe in this worldview is stunning.
Her other claim that politicians’ lack of climate action has “stolen” her childhood could at best be viewed as dark humor as to this day children every day lose their childhood to artillery shells in the Donbass. It also goes without saying that during our lifetimes children all over the planet have lost their innocence in places like Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia etc. and I am sure the survivors would be thrilled to have “Climate Change” as the only problem in their lives.
Smugly dictating correct behavior from the West to the unwashed billions beyond is nothing new and it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that Russian (or other Non-European) history is never taken into account but there are at least two developments happening now in Russia that environmentalists should take note of even if they hate this country for “giving America Trump”.
When it comes to producing energy (a key cause of pollution/carbon emissions) nuclear power is king and that king’s throne is in Russia. Nuclear power’s Energy Return on Energy Invested ratio is by far the best of anything we have on offer today. Not only does it produce a massive amount of electricity from fuel materials but it does so cleanly. If we all must go out and buy trendy electric cars, wouldn’t it help to have the means of making that electricity be cheap and clean? Burning coal defeats the purpose of having an electric car and things like ethanol and solar are a joke especially when we look at a new development in nuclear energy coming from Russia.
Rosatom has been developing a means to possibly eliminate toxic waste entirely by moving (recycling) nuclear material between different types of reactors in what they call a Dual-Component Nuclear Power System. Essentially the uranium gets used by one reactor, then after usage can be put into a second reactor, then put back into the first again to repeat the process.
This bears repeating to be clear… the Russians have a way to reuse nuclear fuel! Electricity here is plentiful and cheap now and will continue to be so thanks to “Dual-Component System’s” perfected use of uranium. The upcoming “energy crisis” may have already been averted as cheap seemingly endless power is coming and if recycling can guarantee us the ability to reuse materials cheaply and effectively (which is already happening even in Russia, with German cooperation) then humanity has a bright comfortable future ahead.
You would think that environmental/climate activists like Greta Thunberg would be absolutely thrilled by this news and yet there is a deafening silence because they either A) don’t care what the untermenschen are doing in their s***hole countries or B) their emotions irrationally blind them to the option of a nuclear future because atomic power is scary. After all it did create the Ghouls in Fallout.
It cannot be stated enough that humans are highly irrational and emotional. Much of our core political beliefs are based on feelings rather than reason, and both Russia and Nuclear Power feel wrong to Climate Change Crew. Even though it seems like an obvious winner, nuclear fusion just doesn’t fit their ideological vision of what being ecological would look like. They see tiny houses, bicycles, veganism and solar panels, not life kind of like it is today with new snazzy nuclear power plants. Especially when the technology for them comes from troglodytic Slavs with their backwards political beliefs.
Furthermore, acknowledging that a real answer to the the ecological questions of the future could already be here is very bad for one’s career as an activist. It is much better for them to always have that boogeyman of an eco apocalypse looming on the horizon, be it Global Warming, Global Cooling or just Climate Change.
