Attack of the Worst-Case-Scenario Supporters

As the occasional disaster hits the news cycle and the mainstream media offers its support to its cohorts, the radical environmentalists, we are seeing what is being identified as expanding the boundaries of the former worst-case-scenario measures and putting in place even more stringent ones, which will continue to harm numerous industries, and make them even more costly to operate, which is especially damaging in energy.

The latest is of course the earthquake in Japan, which hadn't happened at that level for well over 100 years. Now talk is some are attempting to increase the already costly worst-case-scenario parameters in order to allegedly keep what has happened in Japan from not happening again, even though we are still in the middle of the narrative and have yet to know or understand the extent of the damage.

This has happened in the past when coal mines experience an explosion causing deaths of workers, as well as in the case of the extremely rare occurrences of oil spills, such as with BP (NYSE:BP).

Now we're not talking here about improving the industry and its practices, everyone is for that. What we're talking about is the attempt to create a perfect world where nothing could possibly go wrong with technology and the things mankind makes. It's Utopian and not a worthy goal, pushing up the costs of doing business prohibitively and also raising the cost of energy or other products produced by those companies and transferring them to consumers.

This is why there is already a growing call for slowing down or ending the nuclear energy sector, as its opponents see this as an opportunity to do it some damage.

The bottom line is while we strive to do the best we can in relationship to safety and making improvements, we can't be perfect, and we can't manage that with which we have no control. It's doubtful anything could have kept the nuclear reactor in Japan from being challenged by an unprecedented earthquake. What do we do next, plan for an earthquake of 11 on the Richter scale? What would that cost? Would nuclear be viable at that point?

We live in a world of scarcity. We must build things that could cause harm to resist the most they can at prices consumers can afford.

After all, an estimated 27,000 or more are dead or missing from the Japan earthquake and tsunami, far more than will be harmed from any problems related to the nuclear accident, which should be relatively few.

No matter how well something is made or the safety precautions put in place, there will always be risk associated with it. To attempt to create products around an unrealistic worst-case-scenario with no or little loss of life as the result, while an admirable goal, isn't a realistic one.

Being alive is a risk, and the huge numbers of people killed annually in auto wrecks aren't causing people to call for the end of driving. Sure improvements will be made, but even here, with the ignorant call for the use of lighter materials in vehicles so they reach mpg standards will result in even more deaths. But somehow this predictable and inevitable carnage is considered acceptable.

That means there are agendas behind all of this, and we need to cautiously watch this new buzzword of best-case-scenario, as it's already being used by those attempting to force the nonsensical and ineffective solar and wind energy upon us, even when in the case of wind turbines they kill millions of bats and birds as well, far beyond the relatively few killed in the BP (NYSE:BP) oil spill.