[Looks like there is still public education work to do. At least it sounds like the LNG folks are in the same boat as nuclear (i.e., almost as unpopular despite a good safety record)].
http://platts.com/Nuclear/News/7031096.xml?sub=Nuclear&p=Nuclear/News&?undefined&undefined
Washington (Platts)--2Jun2008
Twenty-one percent of Americans would support a new nuclear power plant in their hometown, according to a survey released June 2 by investment bank RBC Capital Markets. This is up from 17% support in last year's survey, RBC said. Seventy-one percent of respondents said they would support an "alternative energy system in their hometown, including a wind or solar facility," 34% would support a clean coal technology plant, and 32% would support a liquefied natural gas facility. The survey of 1,007 online respondents was conducted May 17-23 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2%, RBC said.
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8 comments:
Looks like the public opinion still sits on the principle NIMB (Not In My Back Yard). Some of them might understand the benefits of nuclear power but better to build it somewhere else than near my own home...
A lot of PR work is to be done! Noam Chomsky and his "democracy" would be of a good use here (by the way Chomsky N., Necessary Illusions (1989) I enjoyed that reading yesterday in bed. At least someone dares to speak about propaganda as a democratic tool as it is being used. There is another good book unfortunately not translated to English Kara-Murza, S. Mind Manipulation (Moscow, 2000). The same processes but from a perspective of a different side of a globe.
The basic story in those books is that the "democratic assumption" that the general public is too stupid to make decisions, instead there is a group of wise men who tell them what to think, and there are well developed technologies on how to manipulate the public (developed very well in the USA, besides by Nazi Germany and in Lenin's works).
Once the American public was told to reject the nuclear idea. Now it's time to get rid of this fear and create another one - the global warming, for example.
Nuclear has advantages, but since its primary output is electricity, it does not show a tangible difference to the public for what appears an exotic way to make wet steam (even coal makes dry steam). :-)
That makes it harder to bring the message (or propaganda...) to the public on the need for more nuclear.
The masses are also very easy to manipulate. I believe because man is a herd animal and most people just want to fit in. I figured there would be a flood of pro-nuclear propoganda coming when about 3 years ago I heard about retired nuclear engineers being called out of retirement. One said to me, 'the decision has been made, we're going nuclear'. And then we talked about how the media will change the peoples minds.
On Democracies I personally think the age of democracies is over.. most of the active countries I see now are non-democratic. The oil Kingdoms, Russia, China, Vietnam etc.. These countries don't ask permission or try to win popularity contests, they just take action, and the average person seems quite happy with it.
--aa2
Well, the worst thing about modern "democracies" is that they keep the public that is formally free under control using manipulation, so to say brainwash the people the way they need. A dictatorship in that sense is much more "human" for of rule - it might tell you what to do but it does not care what you think. A person under dictatorship is more free in his mind, therefore. At least they know what to rebel against.
I once read a collection of leaks someone in the media collected over a period of months. They were the memos sent by some centralized US government group to the major television networks in the United States. With a list of what stories they had to cover, and what angle they all had to view the story from.
If they didnt' do what the government wanted, I'm sure the government could cancel their broadcast liscence or sick a bunch of government regulatory bodies on them.
--aa2
This is pretty much what the Belarusian government does on whatever important social issues with state television, the only difference is that they do it openly and everyone knows it :) the other thing is that we might not like it, but the channel needs to keep the license. Very much so.
Propoganda is easy to do as well. The most important thing is never to lie, but instead only talk about the stories that advance your agenda.
For example if I wanted to make people afraid of a minority group, a lot of stories about members of that group committing crimes would make it onto the news programs(of the 1000 news stories that could be covered each day which 20 do you choose?). See I'm not lying I'm telling of murders that really happened.
--aa2
Yes this that you describe is the number one technique used by the media to create an image of something. They never lie, because it's a matter of trust in case lies get discovered, but instead they filter events to be published in such a way they want. For example, when reporting about nuclear power, taking up only those news about radioactive waste, pollution, accidents, security problems, Chernobyl related sicknesses and so on. Those stories are true but they are far not the only nuclear stories that exist in reality. That's the way media work (as they call it in literature, "goalkeepers").
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