You know what really makes me want to plunge? Spray painting mountains green in order to answer calls for more attention to environmental protection.
Take a moment to consider what something like this involves. It begins with people putting pressure on China to be more environmentally friendly. A meeting is called and someone suggests covering a hillside with green toxic paint to resolve the issue. The idea is approved and $60,600 is spent on putting the plan into action.
$60,600 worth of toxic paint could have bought 13,060 pounds of Perenniall Ryegrass seeds, enough to cover 1,632,343 square feet. The end result would also have been a green hillside, with plenty of seeds leftover to feed an entire fleet of remote controlled pigeons. $60,600 could also have been used to plant a fake forest with green cardboard trees. While this would also have been a waste of money, at least it would have been recyclable, not toxic.
Ironically, many people speculate that “officials of the surrounding Fumin county, whose office building faces the mountain, were trying to change the area’s feng shui – the ancient Chinese belief of harmonizing one’s physical environment for maximum health and financial benefit”. This means that government officials came to the conclusion that the best way to harmonize the environment for maximum health and financial benefit is by wasting money on destroying the environment even though the environment is necessary for good health and investing money wisely is necessary for financial benefit.
Protecting the environment and spray paint don’t go together. In fact, anytime you see a skull and crossbones image on a product you plan to dump on a hillside, chances are its a bad idea. That being said, don’t let politicians fool you. Protecting the environment and nuclear power also do not go together. A nuclear power plant may create less air pollutants, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a giant spray-paint can with millions of skull and crossbones all over it. As of 2000, Canada has 35,000 tonnes of highly radioactive nuclear waste, with nowhere to put it. With a radioactive half-life of 25,000 years, nuclear waste remains dangerous for 250,000 years (And these are just the problems we face when a nuclear power plant is working properly!). The damage from spray painting a mountain green will be gone long before then.
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http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/070214/K021404AU.html
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/Energy/Nuclear.asp