The Moderate Voice - Latest Comments in Manhattan Project For Energy Independence

Re: Manhattan Project For Energy Independence

RememberNovember — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:10:55 -0000

Standing around saying how it's not going to work is much like the people walking behind Sysiphus telling how to push the rock uphill.

Re: Manhattan Project For Energy Independence

DLS — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:45:06 -0000

Superdestroyer: The example I routinely think of is an Apollo Project begun today, rather than more than forty years ago, which would feature not only dysfunction and petty politics but even PC stuff such as the composition of the crew aboard the spacecraft and walking on the moon.

Re: Manhattan Project For Energy Independence

runasim — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:10:47 -0000

The need to improve the level of energy independence (being completely indpendent is a very far -off, if not unattainable goal) has been trumpeted for years.
This is nothing new.

It isn't leadership that is lacking, in this post-Bush era, it's the ability to coalesce around a plan of HOW to go about it. That shouldn't be dismissed as mere fractiousness.
The HOW has consequences that can determine the very fabric of our society. Who will be the winners and losers, who will pay for the cost, and who will reap the beneifts are all vital questions that have to be considered seriously and in depth.

Failure to do so in the Industrial age, and more recently, when globalization took hold, has had enormous consequences, some of them devastating to large swaths of the population. Then there comes the backlash.

We could determine the HOW by presidential decree. In a democracy, it's more difficult. While frustrating, ,the advantage is that we do have this window of opportunity to conconsider consequences as well as alternative approaches.

Re: Manhattan Project For Energy Independence

superdestroyer — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:26:27 -0000

The government is incapable of doing things like the Manhattan Project. Can anyone image General Leslie R. Groves going in front of Congress to explain his minority contracting program or how he plans to promote more women to middle management positions or whether the Environmental Impact Statement and Reocrd of consideration had been completed.

. The reason that the Manhattan Project was different is that it had only one goal and everything was focused on it. Also, much of the science was already know and the project was engineering to develop the components. A better equivalent would be a Manhatten Project for hydrogen fule cells.

In the current atmosphere, the energy manhattan project would be a pork laden program with multiple goals and would probably fail.