The Magic Garbage Bullet: Part One

The title combines an old film title about "magically" effective medical treatment with the true story of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. At the time of May 27, 2010, when the idea of covering the outflow with a dome did not work due to ice crystal formation, the "magic bullet" of garbage was trotted out of the lockers of Research & Development back in the UK. (Probably from Q's laboratory in the basement of M6... or whatever; I can only dream of Sean Connery as 007 being lectured  by Q on the correct way to use the garbage bullet properly.)

And this is part of my fascination with my discovery of the inequity of Science: on one hand,  the cutting edge (and sometimes poorly understood!) Science that is daily changing and is the outcome of expensive R&D programs and is so enticingly alluring to be used for Profit! On the other hand, the Science used to clean up after the cutting-edge Science blows up, and that deals with the human cost after the "fall" from cutting-edge-hood.
For example, in the Gulf of Mexico, we had drilling down 5 miles below sea level - no minor accomplishment, followed a magic garbage shot to the well head. It did not work, by the way. Oil continued to pour out for a couple more months.
In Fukushima, we had all the bells and whistles of a GE nuclear plant, scientists and regulators all over the place, followed by local firetrucks trying to pump sea water on a nuclear pile!

For further examples, we look at Computation & Mathematics, and in particular at financial markets. The incredible increase in computation and the speed of computation eventuated in a financial "melt down" in 2008. There had been warnings before then. Seems to me I recall some rogue trader from Barclay's dropping a few billion back well before then. Everyone was rather aghast at "billions" - not "millions" - being flushed by one person and not plugging the darn drain. But it happened.
How did we fix the 2008 financial melt-down? We gave the people that caused it our money, and we did it not particularly at the speed of light, but almost. The fix for the situation was a legalized "theft" of assets from the innocent to the guilty, a bit of the old Robin Hood in reverse.

The human cost? The health of the people? Iodine tablets, get 'em at the local Chemists's, the corner Apothecary, the neighborhood Drug Store. In our country, a lot of the people affected by such a disaster would not even have health coverage.

How do we handle nuclear waste? So far, we ignore it and let it build up. We have absolutely no Science to address the situation. We have people studying it, and they periodically tell us things are getting desperate, but we have no application of Science to come up with a way to effectively handle it... because that would cost a good deal of money, and why - oh, why - would we make a billion generating power, and then spend a half billion cleaning up our nuclear cesspool? Not us. If things fall apart, I'm sure there are firetrucks nearby.... may not be water, though.
Then we turn around and feed antibiotics to millions of farm animals to fatten them up and increase profits, and immediately provide breeding grounds for "super bugs". There are pathogens that no drug company is trying to develop drugs for now.

The Science of Taking-Care-of-People-and-the-Earth needs to be as well funded and as up to date as the Science to extract and exploit. The Sciences must be made Human in this type of Capitalist economic system.