Rather than pouring creative energy into more and more lethal weaponry, this is what human brilliance can be used for: “hedonistic sustainability,” as the designer of this power plant with ski hill and much much more, calls it. YES!
Though by inclination a Luddite, visionary and yet practical projects like this one do make me wonder if technology can save us.
3 thoughts on “COPENHILL “stacks functions” to the max!”
you’re a little too young to remember, Ann, but some of us have actually seen this Movie before.
way back in the ’80s of the last millennium there was a bit of a kerfuffle here in Bloomington (IN) over a brilliant idea coming from our (Corporate sponsored) Dimmoecan Mayor Tommielea Alison when she wanted to build what sounds suspiciously like a very similar waste incinerator just outside –and UPWIND– of town.
this brilliantly conceived, wonderful, “ecologically sustainable” touted device would not only burn the city’s garbage, but could also use the fire/heat to “burn” the million or so tuns of earth which had been (deliberately) contaminated with PCB oil by the Westinghouse facility then in town (since closed) which was dedicated to the “recycling” of electrical capacitors –each and every one of which were full of the PCB oil, used for insulation– from all all over the eastern U.S.
turns out that, in the “Real” world, the incomplete incineration of PCBs (in whatever form they may be found, including many plastics) creates a funny little chemical called “dioxin” –and that there was *no way* that the heat generated by the burning of municipal garbage can possibly be high enough in temperature to completely transform PCBs into something which would not contain Dioxins.
apparently the idea to build this incinerator/dioxin factory on land which was *upwind* of the city was part of some sort of sweetheart deal which Westinghouse (responsible for paying for the construction of the thing) had worked out with the property owner.
as best i can remember, the Danish incinerator (which will burn municipal trash, which surely contains no plastic at all) beats hell out of the one which Allison proposed for Bloomington: shucks, there wasn’t even a sky slope incorporated into the latter’s design.
if you are interested in this topic, you might take a few minutes off from monitoring your FAUX News feed and google:
Bloomington
PCB
incinerator
hey, while you’re at it, throw “Mike Andrews” into your search, and see what might be out there in Paranoid Cyberspaceland about a “local activist” (“local activist Mike Andrews” was the way he was *invariably* referred to in the local noispaper) who played a key role in stopping Dimmoecan Allison’s idiotic/literally murderous incinerator plan for Bloomington –and paid for it with a six month sentence in the state pen, thanks to a kangaroo court drama which featured testimony against him by the (Dimmoecan) president of the city council.
Mike (who died about 5 years ago, from a cancer which was surely related to his exposure to Dioxin-laden Agent Orange while “serving his country” in Mr. Johnson’s little Veetnam Fiasco.
he was a very good friend of mine, good enough for me to ask him if i could call him by his first name: “Local”
he was, among other things, a very gracious guy.
c
I do wonder what the “unintended consequences” of Copenhill might be, and we’ll hopefully we’ll find out over time.
I did not know about the incinerator controversy here. Didn’t arrive until 2003. Thanks for the info.
Given your extreme cynicism, I hope your own news sources aren’t “faux.”
“hopefully” being the Operative word there.
as my second-favorite** rubricated passage in my well-worn Red Letter New Testament puts it:
“Hope in one hand; Shit in the other –and see which one fills up first”
do Catholics even have Red Letter New Testaments?
probably not; they are pretty handy things to have around, and i doubt if that particular passage can be found in the Douay-Rheims translation.
(**my favorite rubricated passage: “By their *works* shall ye know them.”)
my (admittedly incomplete, but substantially correct) understanding is that one simply *cannot* indiscriminately burn the remarkable variety of plastics which is to be found in *all* municipal trash (even in Green-Friendly Denmark) without creating Dioxin –and other, more or less pernicious, compounds.
even if the incinerator is inside a quite beautifully designed building.
but, perhaps all that snow on the slope of the Danish incinerator will insulate it enough to raise the incineration temperature up enough to preclude that kind of Dioxin-creating event.
me, i’m busy Hoping, in one hand…
but certainly do not rely on just my “sources” (i.e., mostly fading, probably faux memories) of what went down during the PCB incinerator daze (mid-’80s) in B’town.
aux contraire, ma frere, do do the Due Diligence of a thorough Google, learn a bit about the (quite recent) history of your (present) Home Town.
note that Mike Andrews –who was far, far from being a miserable “cynic” like me (whateverthahell *that* cute term might mean, in a non-antique, non-ad hominemistic context)– would probably have a pretty good opinion about your little Pernaculture Village project.
he certainly had his own little (even smaller) Permaculture scene going on on two lots he owned off of West Adams Street –he was, among other things, the most fantastic gardener i’ve ever seen –and he had a pretty low opinion of what Bloomingfoods had become in recent decades, namely: “BloomingFools. Children and Aging ‘Liberal’ Yuppies playing Store”
(that last bit is my own, extremely cynical characterization, btw, not Mike’s; in the 25 years i knew him i never, *ever* heard him say a single negative thing about any other human being, including any of the thoroughly Odious, knee jerk “liberal” Monroe Co. Dimmoecans who sent him to prison via a kangaroo court proceeding which would make your own dear St. Vladimir green with envy.)
c