Vaporize my trash!!! or Why is everyone always afraid of failure?

Great article in the Boston Globe today about a planned trash incinerator in Florida. It isn't your ordinary trash incinerator but will use lightning hot plasma arcs to vaporize a current landfill along with new trash. Two similar but much smaller plants are working in Japan. Proponants say they will be able to get rid of the current county landfill in 20 years and produce excess electricity and slag for use in paving roads. Critics say the plant will never work as efficient as the developers quote and point to other plants in Europe that closed because of not meeting their efficiency goals.

I hope it doesn't fade into an argument about finding the perfect solution and a bunch of time and money is wasted while some progress can be made. This is the type of innovation that made this country great and will solve the world's problems, one at a time. So many issues get bogged down by proponents and critics arguing about who is right or wrong and the search for the perfect solution. Was the ipod or automated jumbo jet controls invented or envisioned with the microchip? No, but it was a step in that direction. Maybe this is the same type of step. Enough arguing, just try. Maybe the government could learn something from scientific & industrial innovations and apply it to social security or health care or...... Iraq??? No never mind, that would entail a politician actually taking a stand that isn't supported 110% by his/her polls, lobbyists or core constituants and being able to say they were wrong if it didn't work out and then to move on with other good ideas. Imagine Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Thomas Edison or the Wright Brothers not trying because it might fail or not succees 100% as hoped.

Reminds me of a great quote from The Great One...."You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."