| He Blinded Me with Science |
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| By Jason Feinberg | |||
| Wednesday, 06 October 2010 18:30 | |||
Bill Nye
One of the major topics today is what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico – the catastrophic result of our continued dependency on oil. I wondered if the spill had caused Bill to change his views on nuclear energy. “Think of it this way. There are 800,000 oil wells around the world with 3,500 offshore. Wait until there are 15,000 or 30,000 nuclear power plants. There will be an accident and it won’t be tar balls on the beach. You can see I am not a proponent of nuclear energy. We have to get the oil industry to be in the energy industry.” Years ago at Disney’s Epcot Center, I saw an attraction at the Universe of Energy Pavilion called Ellen’s Energy Adventure. It starred Ellen DeGeneres and included a movie with Bill Nye talking about oil exploration and how there was a recent discovery that oil would last 50 years. He acknowledged that 50 years was a relatively short period of time but said we were always inventing new things and new forms of energy. That was about 15 years ago. I thought it was fitting to ask how much of that reserve was left given our increase in fuel consumption. “Here’s the bad news. We will never run out of fossil fuels. We will run out of the really cool, the really nice oil. But the tar sands and oil shale oil – there is so much of that everywhere. As long as people are willing to pay for it, they will never run out. And the coal … there is so much coal. But there is no such thing as clean coal. It was great to get society developed, but now it’s nothing but trouble.” But the news isn’t all bad, Bill points out. Coal is also used to make chemicals and plastics that we do need. One thing he is excited about is carbon fiber, which is a use of carbon that has nothing to do with combustion. If you have seen Bill’s shows, you know the effect of chain reactions. So from oil and energy, the next logical step is the environment and global warming. “Climate change … so serious, so severe. More importantly, no one is doing anything. I have a solar-powered Citizen watch with an eco-drive that is about 15 percent efficient. If they could improve this to 30, 40, 50 percent, we would change the world.” 
One reason people have a hard time getting behind this is the overwhelming apprehension of the time it will take to change things. When asked how long it would take for a significant change if people truly worked at it, Bill says this: “My grandfather wore a gas mask in WWI; so did his horse. But by WWII, my father did no such things. There were aluminum airplanes and trucks. So in 20 years, everything changed. And they didn’t have the Internet. They didn’t have the means to move information around the way we do. There could be sweeping changes in 20 years. We could change everything. That’s my argument.”With his no-nonsense logic, Bill wonders why there isn’t a solar hot-water system on every building in North America. “Future generations will ask, ‘What were you people thinking? This is just plumbing; it’s not rocket science! The heat is free!’” “Don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys. Nor doctors and lawyers and stuff,” advises the Science Guy. “Let them be engineers.” A generation ago, environmentalists like Bill and his good friend Ed Begley Jr. were brought up with the idea of doing less with less. “Don’t wash your clothes … don’t eat … humans are bad for the environment … humans shouldn’t even be on earth!” But it turns out that humans are, in fact, part of the environment and the ecosystem, and should be part of the solution. So the new secret is to get everyone to do more with less. Be more aware. Be more efficient. Be more conscious. The small recommendations really add up – buying a more efficient car or using public transportation. Better yet, get off the treadmill and go outside for a walk. “These are all real things,” says Bill. “The hardest thing to understand about the environment for almost everyone is that every single thing each and every one of us does affects every single person on earth.” For much more on Bill Nye, visit him on his website at www.billnye.com. 
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