I have often read the argument that we cannot "afford" to abandon our oil production facilities, or we cannot afford to replace all automobiles. This is wrong because we do abandon and replace all oil refinery equipment over time, probably 20 or 30 years. We replace nearly every car on the road in about 9 to 12 years (depending on the economy).
We also abandon hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure, buildings, houses and so on before it wears out and has to replaced. Axil Axil <janap...@gmail.com> wrote: > The systems that have developed over the centuries cannot be overturned in > a shocking overnight revolution of disruption. > Here are some photos of Detroit, MI.: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jan/02/photography-detroit They show billions of dollars worth of buildings and infrastructure that have been abruptly abandoned. Libraries with thousands of books, schools, hospitals . . . all rotting away. It has all gone to waste. In any rural district in Japan you will find depopulated areas with abandoned roads, collapsed houses, abandoned factories and schools. Billions and billions of dollars worth of stuff. No one claims that we cannot afford to abandon Detroit. On the contrary, we cannot afford to maintain it, because fewer people want to live there. When cold fusion replaces a third of gasoline powered cars, the others will soon be abandoned the same way Detroit has been. Yes, it will be a waste of still-useful equipment, but that is what always happens when technology changes. Not only can we afford it, it is actually cheaper than trying to maintain obsolete equipment. If it was not cheaper to abandon obsolete but still serviceable machines, we wouldn't abandon them. We would still be cranking up 1980s IBM mainframes and DEC minicomputers. I am pretty sure most of them would still work if they existed intact. (Most have been recycled.) - Jed
