China and Germany Go Head-to-Head on Fusion

If the sci/tech press is any indication, research labs in Germany and China appear to be racing towards a successful demonstration of fusion energy. I won't get into the physics because I don't understand them, but I was fascinated to see the consistent "Germany vs. China" meme across different outlets last week.

The clichéd and, I think, kind of dumb knock against nuclear fusion is "fusion is the energy of the future and it always will be." As a fusion optimist, when people throw that in my face I like to remind them that Thomas Edison made over 1000 unsuccessful attempts to create a workable incandescent lightbulb, and that was after over 80 years of other people failing. Fusion has been the dream of scientists and engineers for something like 60 years. If it takes a comparable amount of time to successfully create a tiny artificial sun as it took to generate small amounts of light with electricity, I'll count that as a win for human ingenuity, cynical doubters notwithstanding.

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Speaking of nuclear in China, two commercial gas-cooled reactors are scheduled to go online in the Shandong province next year. Tech Review's Richard Martin has the details on these advanced "meltdown-proof" plants.

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Over at EcoScience Wire, Adam Hanburry-Brown has a great note on a "new kind of environmentalist: the 'ecomodernist.'" I'll take it:

Whether or not you agree with their approach, ecomodernists appear to me to be people who envision a future where technology has enabled us to do more with less so that we can leave parts of Earth for non-human life. An ecomodernist is a person with guiding principles about what they want the world to look like, a pragmatic approach, and a quest for solutions.

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I can't keep up with all the good writing Rachel Laudan is doing on modern food and farming systems. Check out her new piece at Genetic Literacy Project on "Why we should love processed food."

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I fear I may have lost followers on Twitter last month after several days of incessant complaining about the Doomsday Clock. In the category of things more eloquent and impactful than my grumbling, I heartily recommend this piece by Kara Platoni on the Long Now Foundation's 10,000-Year Clock:

This machinery, an enormous, carefully wrought column of stainless steel instrumentation inserted into the mountain bore, will be the clock, meant to last for 10,000 years, a monument—and a challenge— to the human perception of time.

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Jen Schwartz has a good piece at Popular Science on why the Paris climate agreement is good progress, but not enough. In her piece, she cites 'An Ecomodernist Manifesto' coauthor Michael Shellenberger on how sharply Paris' ostensible targets contrast with countries' technological capabilities.

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In what may be more of a symbolic statement than a realistic proposal, President Obama's final budget contains big ambitions for increasing US federal invesment in energy innovation. Mark Muro digs in at Brookings Metro, and correctly observes how important this is for those of us who've been advocating this type of action for years.

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David Ropeik has a helpful, if frustrating, piece at Big Think on how bias, scientism, and conflicts-of-interest are treated differently by the media depending on the subject of inquiry (in this case, organic vs. "conventional" food). Ropeik's take on media integrity and scrutiny is always well worth a read.

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President Obama signed the Electrify Africa Act last week! Another brick in the policy edifice in support of Our High-Energy Planet.

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I'll close this week with a couple seeming non-sequiturs that nonetheless caused me to ponder ecomodern-ly.

The first is on urgency. On the subject of tech companies and software teams, Kimber Lockhart argues at Medium that a "sense of urgency" is inferior and possibly dangerous compared to a "sense of purpose." I couldn't help but draw parallels to environmental campaigns, where lots of social science shows that doomsaying and catastrophism don't motivate people, but rather alienate and depress them. Lockhart hits the nail on the head when she explains that undue urgency leads to 1) shortcuts and sloppiness, 2) limited space for creative solutions, 3) micromanagement, 4) a loss of potency, 5) a takeover of the communications stream. Can I get a hollaback, climate pragmatists?

Finally, as a proud millennial, I greatly enjoyed this Vox article titled "Today's teens are better than you, and we can prove it." As Sarah Kliff, Soo Oh, and Sarah Frostenson describe in the piece, today's teenagers are less prone than previous generations to fighting, drug use, unwanted pregnancy, binge drinking, carrying weapons, and watching television. So yet again, despite Donald Trump and Naomi Klein arguing to the contrary, the world is getting better. I'm reminded, gratefully, of other prognosticators of progress like 'Manifesto' coauthor Ruth DeFries, Max Roser, Mike Grunwald, Charles Kenny, Louise Fresco, Hans Rosling, Bill and Melinda Gates, and many others.

Most importantly, I'm reminded of this great Louis C.K. line on generational progress: "If you feel stupid around young people, things are going good."