As much as I'd like to be Raccoon's saddle, bicycles are no substitute for horses. The distances involved in contemporary commutes make them unfeasible. And (not giving away details) for those who live in terrain which isn't flat, they're just unusable even for short distances. Not everyone is a Lance Armstrong.


The waste problem is only so from a constant technology perspective. Unlike the carbon dioxide from oil, which is waste in the sense that it can't be used for energy in the state it is (ok, plants and many bacteria do -- provided they have another energy source, chemical or photosynthetic), nuclear waste is not. In fact, it is dangerous exactly because it still leaks energy (in the form of radioactivity). We don't need to store nuclear waste virtually forever, as was assumed in the 1950s. All we need is to develop the technology to extract further energy from residue which we currently can't use. The children in 2500, if the species doesn't demographic transition itself to extinction by then, will be using our "waste" for energy.





Cuteness is to die for
Cuteness cannot fail
Cuteness knows no limit
Cuteness will prevail