Standing in our convictions

Have you ever heard or read something by someone you like and respect that sounds right, yet you feel you're not quite sure you agree? The more divided and polarised our opinions become expressed, the more important it is to stay both nuanced, critical and devoted to our own truth and experiences. This is for example why I follow both CNN and Fox News - to make sure I get both sides. And it's also why I go and check my own direct preferred sources to check if both the news and the opinion following are correct, so I know what I should like or not. Several times, I've found him to be right and the news not. All based on my own impression after a random meeeting in Germany and reading a couple of posts. So glad I dare to trust my own judgment. It's one thing that an opinion might be angled and thus called fake, but that actual news become fake - I don't know what to say. What happened to journalistic integrity in the United States? Are journalists too fooled by online appearances rather than real life meetings?

In Sweden, much is either concluded by a small group of cultural intellectuals overbearing with their snobbism, or evening papers translating news with no fact-checking and no addition of Swedish relevance, or just sharing direct quotes from people's Instagram profiles without interviews.

Regardless, checking in with our own standing and our own opinions now and then to see if we still think and believe the same, makes for a good solidification or our own values. Values that shape our identity. So it is with me and the use of nuclear power plants for example. I grew up close by enough to receive evacuation preparations and visited it with school as a young girl. This together with watching the movie: The China Syndrome and then shortly thereafter hearing about Chernobyl and the possibility of receiving radiation onto our reindeers up north besides our crops and water, became a sure way to reject this as a non-preferred source of electricity. Something we even had a public vote about and agreed on closing. Now more than 30 years later, there seems to be an increased interest brewing by some decisionmakers to build more nuclear power plants again, assuming it to be clean energy in comparison to burning charcoal and oil. While it might look as if at a first glance, what happened to the waste that was buried 30 or 40 years ago? How has it affected our waters and crops and our health? How has the nuclear power plant industry developed these years? Are there new safety measures and processes reducing the risk of a meltdown? There is no news about that. Just about the cut in the protection sealed over the very leaking Chernobyl, due to a Russian attack and how this frightens us. And that from a plant not used for all these years! Then add Fukushima and its debris showing up months later in Hawaii, while happening due to an earthquake and a tsunami, still made vulnerable through our choice of energy source. Is it then safe to build more?

My vision is to make all houses self-sustainable. And cars too for that matter. Imagine little mini turbines or solarpanels on each. Imagine if all the money and research allocated into making weapons, could be used into developing small scale solutions for the energy we all need and can use instead. Wind, water, solar, and geo thermal heat - have we tried these enough?

It's in your power!