Left Flank

It's a convenient opportunity, but one cannot be impressed by how Canada's British Columbia and America's EnergySolutions are conducting their respective carbon and nuclear energy policies. It's no surprise, but I lean towards nuclear energy as a carbon-free alternative and favor carbon taxes. But, nuclear waste disposal is probably the most prominent liability for nuclear energy proponents to defend. On the other hand, BC has initiated carbon taxes while keeping the overall budget revenue-neutral.

And, where are the Democrats on energy? Rescinding tax breaks…wait, where is America's national energy strategy, not it's corporate habits?

The Christian Science Monitor takes a critical glance at nuclear power, including a moment's pause for proliferation.

Governments must take a gimlet-eyed look at nuclear power. They must insist that operators have strong safety plans and adequate funding for the entire life cycle of facilities, from construction to proper decommissioning and storage of hazardous waste.

Nuclear power is a friend that bears close watching.

Yet, when discussing Tata's Nano, CSM's chief concern is profitability. The upside is poignant:

In principle, though, Mr. Tata is attempting to do something akin to what Henry Ford did with his Model T. Rather than waiting for more of the population to rise economically to the point where they can buy a car, he has used his company's engineering know-how to reinvent what a car can be. He hopes to turn a profit by sheer volume, tapping into those untapped, poorer reaches of the Indian market.

It is a quintessentially Indian idea. For decades, Indian technology has been focused more on practicality than pomp, hoping its use will help the country's poor. The country's space program, for example, has long concerned itself only with helping farmers and schools through weather and communications satellites.

Now, the country has a car to carry on the tradition, and its people below the famous-but-still-small upper-middle class are cheering. Says Professor Gupta: "These are the people who are really excited by it."

The image of hundreds of millions of Indians, and hundreds of millions of Southeast Asians, buying gas for their precious Nano, though, is not so precious. The "revolution" has passed India by, and now it's time to tackle the problems advocates of both petro-and-atomic-based power try to minimize: waste.

Let's be fair about the problem with humans using cheap energy.