Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Greenpeace.org nominated for Webby-Awards

I don't know if I would necessarily label myself as an environmentalist. I don't know enough about the problem, nor am I particularly active on environmental issues. However, I am extremely involved in what is referred to as the "peace movement", and I must admit that the concept of nuclear proliferation is quite scary.

The discussion here regarding nuclear power has been (pardon my Johnny Cochran impersonation) rather simplistic, positivistic and at times fetishistic over the role that technology can play in solving the world's problems.

Theoretically, nuclear power could be a big step towards solving our power issues, but the same can be said of multi-tier web architectures that are written in strongly typed object oriented languages with excellent XML integration. They both sound like great ideas, but no one's been able to implement them without screwing the pooch once or twice.

The step between having a working power reactor and turning that into a "weapon of mass destruction" seems to be one that is relatively small. The argument can be that turning it into weapons grade plutonium might take some work and then figuring out a way to deliver it may also be complicated, but we all learned what a couple dozen creative guys with box cutters were able to achieve.

Consider the current fun we are having with North Korea (Google news). Things may have turned out different had Saddam been able to threaten us with a "sea of fire" (Pyongyang's words, not mine.) What would the geo-political landscape look like if the standard solution to energy in the developing world were to just build another reactor?

Further, for many countries, the development of nuclear energy programs are not to provide their population with cheap, useable power but quite explicitly to develop nuclear weapons. The most obvious, of course, is Israel, who to my knowledge has yet to even admit it has nuclear capability.

So while I'm hopeful that the reliance on fossil fuels will lessen in the the near future, I'm not as hopeful reliance will switch to nuclear power for no other reason than I am not inclined to see Bush's "pre-emptive strike" policy come into effect. Again.

Also, Brian, I know someone who uses the Spiral Dynamics principles quite often and quite well. I don't know so much about Ken Wilbur, other than seeing his books on the shelf at the bookstore.

But I think that he and you are applying those principles way off the mark. To argue that taking a strong position against or for the war is on some kind of lower level of consciousness is, well, weird to say the least.

If I were an Iraqi (which I am, btw, my family having left in the fifties), would I be simply on the first level for wanting the war to take place and quickly in order to get rid of Saddam once and for all? Or perhaps the opposite, for no war to take place so that I wouldn't have to deal with all the destruction that war's implicity require? Or perhaps if I'm an American and I simply don't like the fact that schools are suffering massive budget cutbacks while we invest billions of dollars in an unpopular war?

When I am confronted by such a question, I usually refer to the important work by Dr Martin Luther King Jr, "A letter from a Birmingham Jail.". King wrote this letter while in jail during the civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. The letter is in response to 8 Birmingham clergymen who asked that the demonstrations end and that a return to "common sense":

When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.

King's response was the Letter, which he wrote on the margins of a newspaper until he was finally given proper writing papers (not by his jailers, btw). In the Letter, he describes why he has been moved to demonstrate and commit civil disobedience. For me, the most powerful paragraph is this one:

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

Whether a stance on the war in Iraq has as much moral clarity as the civil rights movement in the American South is certainly questionable. But I would certainly hope that Mr Wilbur wouldn't consider Dr King thoughts here to be "green."

talli