Tim "Maddog"

"It's still a false dichotomy. Opposing nuclear power plants doesn't mean one supports burning coal."

I say TimMaddog is right, it is a false dichotomy - people like him have two other options open to them: the first is the application of institutional violence to compel industries vital to so many Taiwanese people's lives to reduce their power consumption. The second option is the construction of renewable energy sources on such an enormous scale as to necessitate... land theft.

Either way, I know exactly what the correct conclusion to draw about Tim Maddog's ethics is.

Update: Oh c'mon Tim - say it ain't so!

Look - if you take coal out of the equation (28% of Taiwan's electricity production in 2009 according to the government's own figures) together with nuclear (18.10% of Taiwan's electricity production), then the renewable industries would be left to make up nearly half - 46.10% - of all electricity production in Taiwan. A "Maddog" administration would have no choice but to either force the industries, and by extension, the people of Taiwan to lower their electricity consumption by exactly half, or it would have to seek to make up this electricity shortfall by investing in renewable sources. But consider the sheer scale of the numbers here: 46.10% of electricity production in Taiwan (using 2009 data) is about 106 TW hours, which, as a yearly figure would require an output capacity of about 12 GW (or 12,000 MW). To generate power on that scale from say, wind turbines, would require an area of land large enough to accommodate 1,714 E-126 mega-turbines, or possibly somwhere in the region of 860 square kilometres. That's about three times the size of Taipei City! I don't know what the figures are for solar or hydro yet (I'll look into it...) but they're not going to be small. The point is that a "Maddog" administration simply could not afford to buy that much land at market prices - hence land theft, or if you prefer the euphemism, "expropriation".

(And I've got two words for anyone who does prefer the euphemism...)