[OSM-talk] radioactivity

Nic Roets nroets at gmail.com
Mon Aug 10 18:36:29 BST 2009


On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 6:48 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com
> wrote:

>
> and by lung cancer (I'm a smoker) and other stuff as well. Hundreds of
> thousands seem little bit overestimated to me though. E.g. in Germany
> (80 million people) there were killed 4 477 people in 2 294 000
> registrated traffic accidents in 2008 (and they don't even have a
> speedlimit on motorways). If you consider that in the parts of the
> world with the highest population (africa and asia) there are far less
> cars then it is probably less people dying in accidents.
>

I had exactly this conversation with my neighbor today. When he lived in
France for a year he saw many badly designed roads (no center line, rows of
trees right next to the trees etc) but he saw only 3 accidents (all
non-lethal). During his first year back in South Africa, he saw more than 3
head on collisions each with multiple fatalities. Some parts of South Africa
is really like the Wild West and it may takes a century or two before the
population places the same value on human life.


>
> actually it is possible to use filters to eliminate the sulfur in the
> fallout of coal plants. But they cost money.
>

Yes, many forms of progress is expensive. They either cost of a lot of money
or they have a large environmental cost.

And then there are other forms of progress that either costs very little, or
may in fact be profitable. Like eliminating agricultural subsidies, some
open source projects or a long list of traditional (industrial) investments.
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