Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> And the alternative is...? What exactly?

  You don't need to throw out current power generation technologies and
come up with something new in order to significantly reduce pollution.
Not all developed countries pollute even nearly as much as eg. the US,
Greece or China (not even if you scale it per capita).

  Finland is a pretty developed country, with a pretty advanced industry
and high living standards, yet Finland is on the lower end of the pollution
scale. (The same is true for many other European countries, especially the
northern ones.) The trick is to produce and use energy more smartly.

  For example, in China the most common way to heating homes is to burn
coal on each building. (For example this is extremely common in Beijin,
and not surprisingly Beijing is one of the most polluted cities in the
world.) In many other countries homes are heated using electricity, which
is extremely wasteful.

  Not so in Finland. The heating of homes in cities is centralized (iow.
so-called district heating). It basically works by having central heating
plants which heat water, which is then transported via tubes to homes.
(The water is then run through radiators.)

  There are efficient, low-polluting ways to heat the water (such as using
geotermal heating), but even if more polluting methods are used, reducing
the pollution (by using filters etc.) is easier, more efficient and cheaper
when this is centralized, reducing the total amount of pollution.

  Automobiles can be made less polluting via legislation (for example by
demanding the installation of catalytic converters, and overall defining
a maximum allowed amount of pollution for each car, such as is the the
case in Finland).

  Improving public transportation to reduce the need for private cars is
another efficient way to reduce pollution.

  If every country in the world used the same ecologic techniques as the
best ones, the amount of pollution in the world would be significantly
lowered.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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