We are what we consume. If it's junk food, or sugar-coated entertainment or corporate slanted news, it could be the media's empty calories and lack of substance that proves lethal to humankind and all living things eventually. Even if your BS filter is firmly switched on, your brain is constantly being assailed by news and information that isn't necessarily true. Especially if you're "down here" and the media is "up there" in perceptive terms. We usually swallow what we are fed. If your quotient of news and information tells you everything is basically okay, you need a better BS filter. It isn't.

Look how long it took people in this country to figure out that George Bush and Dick Cheney are liars and murderers. Look how long it took people to wake the hell up to our energy and environmental crises. Look how long it takes to get a rise out of you. Like never. Hell would sooner freeze over.

Chew your cud, go back to work, focus on your boatload of crap. Stay in your head and construct elaborate rationalizations to help you forget that there's a troubled world beyond your me-centric existence. 

Have a nice day dining at the trough of disinformation, you selfish American fuck.

"Now, there’s one thing you might have noticed I don’t complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: ‘The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.’"

— George Carlin

Filling the increasing gap between expensive fossil fuels and demand for those fuels will be no small order for many decades into the future. In fact, with today's current transportation efficiencies, it seems pretty well impossible to replace all of big oil's deeply entrenched position as the energy source of choice worldwide, even using all possible alternative energy sources. Which means we're going to need every last drop of alternative energy we can generate, and the market is rapidly evolving for alternative energy technologies to be competitive. One of the technologies is converting waste to energy using plain old garbage, woody biomass, and whatever else isn't recycled.

"For decades scientists have known it was possible to convert waste to fuel, but in an era of cheap oil, it made little sense. With oil now trading around $125 a barrel and gasoline above $4 a gallon, the potential economics of a waste-to-fuel industry have shifted radically..."

Link to complete NY Times article.

You probably don't see solid waste (household trash) as much of a problem. After all, your local garbage company hauls your weekly quota of the stuff off to the landfill once a week and buries it so you don't have to see it, smell it, or be concerned with the lingering effects of everything in that trash, ranging from stinky garbage, to pesticides, to pharmaceuticals, to paint, to plastics.

The problem is that solid waste doesn't really ever go away. Most of it isn't recycled either, it just sits there in your local landfill, giving up its toxic payload over time to the soil, the air, and the water. You'd be surprised by how many millions of tons of trash are in your landfill. We've been doing it since the beginning of modern history, and it has only accelerated in the modern era

This is clearly a problem in need of a better solution. Plasma gasification is that solution. It's an optimum, non-polluting method to convert waste materials to alternative energy. Without creating greenhouse gases. It's a technology with a bright future because there's a significant source of raw material to feed it and generate alternative energies, basically free. Of course the underlying technology is wildly expensive, and as yet, unproven at large municipal scale.

The City of Ottawa, Canada has just announced a 400 ton per day gasification facility, based on a year's worth of impressive results of its 100 ton per day test facility using technology by Plasco. Ottawa is a great big city that generates far more than 400 tons of solid waste per day, but it's a great start in the right direction.

The real benefits of plasma gasification will accrue soonest to smaller municipal areas that can "right size" the technology to the waste footprint. And for areas that generate significant woody biomass, this can be combined with municipal solid waste to assure a steady stream of feedstock for these new ventures.

So who's pursuing plasma gasification where you live? Probably nobody, which means it's a wide open business opportunity for those who can build a business around it. 

Listen up, world. That means you! We don't have the luxury of debating the cause or severity of global warming. We only have two options: take action now or do nothing and pay the price of mass extinctions, massive sea level increases, and untold misery around the world because we refuse to change or take action.

Read this article and see if you can remain apathetic to the core.

I can't.