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On the Nature of Things
In the first century the Roman philosopher Lucretius wrote Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), which I have not read and probably never will read.
Nevertheless, the title is useful in itself for considering reality.
Last week y’r ‘umble scrivener read in an automotive magazine a review of a specialty electric vehicle. The reviewer noted, among the car’s other purported virtues, that an electric car does not pollute.
One would assume that a writer for an auto magazine would know better. One would assume in error.
Electric cars pollute. A lot.
A rechargeable vehicle requires multiple heavy-duty batteries, and the mining of the raw materials for batteries, the manufacturing of the batteries, and the safe disposal of the batteries at the end of their usefulness require much expenditure of those mean ol’ fossil fuels in generating energy for those processes.
More than that, the electricity necessary for charging and recharging the batteries that make the car go for a few miles ultimately come from, yes, those beastly coal-fired, nuclear-powered, or oil-powered generating plants.
My father once said that there are people who think that milk comes from the grocery store.
Similarly, there are people – one of them a writer in a technical magazine – who think that electricity comes from that little rectangle on the wall.
Fossil fuels are wonderful. Extracting them is labor-intensive, but they are so efficient in providing us energy and building our economy that they pay for that many times over.
Oil and coal are not only about powering our machines; they also are the bases for medicines, chemicals, eyeglass frames, computer cases, fans, windmills, solar panels, window frames and window panes, toothbrushes, notebooks, pens and the inks for them, telephones, safety devices, dyes, paints, flashlights, tools, watches, hoses, toys, scientific instruments, health care (Imagine the doctor saying, “I’ll just use my bare hands; those plastic gloves pollute.”), clothing, fishing rods, fishing lines, boat structures, camera…the list, as has been said, goes on and on. The perceptive reader of this excellent news can put the page down and look around to see all the wonderful things in his or her life whose structural origins are in the nifty atoms of oil and coal.
And, besides, the dinosaurs don’t need them anymore.
The sort of people who make an argument only through yelling at us often make an appeal to “science,” as if that Latin word for knowledge is some sort of magic incantation. When some shrill look-at-me-ista screams “Obey the science!” what she or he is really saying is, “I read it on some site on the GossipNet so it must be true! Obey me!”
If we want to know about cows, we ask farmers, not a little box made in China. You could take a turn milking Old Bessie (I’ve done it, thank you; Bessie and I parted company without a tear shed by either of us.). If we want to know about the efficiency of fuels we seek out the engineer and the chemist, not a little box made in China. If we want to know about cars, we ask the mechanic, not a little box made in China. If we want to be healed of a sickness or injury we ask the doctor or nurse practitioner, not Dr. Box from China.
Seeking knowledge from a little plastic box (made in China) that lights up and makes noises is futile. We learn only by studying, with our brains and our five senses, the nature of things as they are, not as they are programmed as images.
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