Oh dear, George...

[vtsnowedin]

Putting aside the ideal "renewables and reduce demand", what's the lesser evil, coal or nuclear?

Revise that towards a more fundamental question which George has problems tackling; which is the lesser evil:

# Doing with less and contracting the economy; or # Trying thrash the guts out of what energy resources are left to keep the myth alive until the current generation of stooges leave (or are ejected from ) elected office.

That's what really what lies at the root of this debate -- the fuel source is incidental.

I think you vastly under estimate the consequences of your option one and what good will changing the "Stooges" that are in office? Is there a crop of replacements in the wings with workable solutions in hand that will save us?

[mobbsey]

# Doing with less and contracting the economy; or

I think you vastly under estimate the consequences of your option one

I don't even profess to know what will happen, because it's unknowable. Who saw the uprisings in the Arab world coming, or 20 years ago in eastern Europe?

However, by looking at the operation of the economic process and the geophysical research on future resource supply, you can say that the commodities which underpin the asset value of the modern economy -- like oil and other extractive industries, or phosphate rock for intensive agriculture, or rare earths for advanced digital electronics -- all have limitations over the next fifty years and that in turn will force change on the general economy.

What that resolves as is anyone's guess; the point is do you sit back and wait for the entertainment, or do you get on an guide that process within your own life, in co-operation with those around you, the best that you can?

However, as Bandidoz's question implied, there's a clear difference between living in a world with little money or resources that contains great big piles of pulversied fuel ash, and having no money or resources and great big silos full of spent nuclear fuel. all that trying to expand the energy supply for another decade or so will achieve is that when the crunch comes we'll have, in energy terms, a bigger cliff to fall off.

what good will changing the "Stooges" that are in office? Is there a crop of replacements in the wings with workable solutions in hand that will save us?

I've seen various news reports over the years showing that small share day traders make as good decisions as the big city traders earning seven figure bonuses -- the only difference is the big boy are playing with monopoly money so their returns are greater.

Likewise I think there's an attitude, not helped by our class divided past, that there are small groups of people who can manage, and must do so for the rest of society. I find no evidence to support that view from my travels over the last couple of decades; around the country I find small groups of people, even in some of the worst sink estates, who are able to manage with very little, and in demanding circumstances, and doing far better than those who profess to be their "leaders and betters".

I worked for community groups around the UK for more than a decade, helping them with their problems, and as part of that I saw how decisions are made and carried out at all levels of government; be that the environment minister instructing HMIP not to prevent the test burning of BSE contaminated meat and bonemeal in Didcot power station, or Newcastle City Council spreading incinerator ash on allotments in Newcastle.

As a result I've come to believe that our great handicap in Britain isn't politics, its party politics. For example, I always found that hung councils, where all parties had to participate in decisions, worked a lot more responsively and rationally than those where one party dominated (e.g. some of those Labour councils in the old industrial heartlands who treated the environment, and their public, like crap -- e.g. Sandwell or Doncaster).

Keep politics, just get rid of the political parties. If everyone had to be involved in every decision, rather than spending their time baying from the sideline and trying to undermine the process, I think you'd find decisions would be taken rather differently...

oh, wait a mo, am I suggesting that every local council and Parliament should be hung?

[vtsnowedin]

I believe you are But I can't say as I agree with you. What we need is competent leadership and our current electoral systems tend to gravitate to the mediocre and the photogenic.
Having hung or split governments does keep the incompetents from their excesses but does little to get positive actions accomplished.
At any rate I think the forces approching us, population, oil depletion, climate change, food, and water shortages etc. are so overwhelming that no group of leaders will be able to provide solutions that are satisfactory.
The ultimate result will be a reduction in world population of fifty percent or more and the choices we have are how we will exist between now and then.
War is of course the most likely path to the future and I doubt we can avoid it.
Powering down sounds nice but less power means less food and more starvation. I think rebuilding nuclear power plants using the lessons we have learned and are still learning is the path forward that means a lot less suffering and starvation for the people that choose to build them.
Having those plants will reduce the need of a country to go to war to secure fuel and food from other countries.

[mobbsey]

competent leadership

An oxymoron, or simply a contradiction in terms?

True politics is the art of herding cats, not sheep.

Or, as Saul Alinsky said, politics arose in human development the moment a child played his mother off against his father over what time they should go to bed.

Hmmn, suddenly I'm feeling all Pythonesque; "I'm not the Messiah! I say you are, lord, and I should know I've followed a few."

[vtsnowedin]

competent leadership

An oxymoron, or simply a contradiction in terms?

Just a very rare combination.

[mobbsey]

The Fukushima "incident" isn't over yet

On Tuesday, March 22, 2011 George Monbiot wrote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -fukushima
The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting.
Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution.

Now, have a look at this map


A much larger but less detailed map is available on page 32 in the EU Greens report on Chernobyl -- http://www.greens-efa.eu/cms/topics/dok ... rch@en.pdf


Now have a look at the IAEA's monitoring data results for the last few days:

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/201 ... 30311.html
"The IAEA radiation monitoring team took additional measurements at distances from 30 to 73 km from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The beta-gamma contamination measurements ranged from 0.02 to 0.6 Megabecquerel per square metre."

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/201 ... 20311.html
"The IAEA took measurements at additional locations between 35 to 68 km from the Fukushima plant. The beta-gamma contamination measurements ranged from 0.08 to 0.9 MBq per square metre"

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/201 ... 10311.html
"High levels of beta-gamma contamination have been measured between 16-58 km from the plant. Available results show contamination ranging from 0.2-0.9 MBq per square metre."


Note that 1 kiloBecquerels (kBq) is equivalent to 0.001 megaBecquerels (MBq). So, in kBq, the figures above range from around 20kBq (0.02MBq) to 900kBq (0.9MBq).

If you look at the map image, the dashed circle is the 30km exclusion zone -- the sampling above went up to twice as far from the Fukushima plant. That means, on the basis of this interim data, the contamination is almost as high as the middle of the Chernobyl, and equivalent to the outer parts of the zone, and might cover a similar area to the larger Chernobyl fallout zone. The 900kBq figure is going to be somewhere in the middle of the orange strips on the map, and the lower levels are equivalent to the light yellow areas.


Perhaps George publicly "came out of the fallout shelter" (my best nuclear equivalent to "the closet") a bit early!

[kenneal - lagger]

I asked George a question after his talk to the AECB Annual Conference at CAT last October and in his answer he said that he was convinced of the ability of global capitalism to come up with a solution to upcoming resource shortages. He's sure BAU and growth can continue uninterrupted and if nuclear is one of those possible solutions he will go with it.

After his answer I have been very sceptical about his green credentials and certain about his addiction to growth. He has gone right down in my estimation.

[biffvernon]

Nice post, Paul.

It's not the first time Monbiot has gone native. He writes a lot. Sometimes I feel his priority is getting his work published (and paid for) with content coming second.

[vtsnowedin]

I asked George a question after his talk to the AECB Annual Conference at CAT last October and in his answer he said that he was convinced of the ability of global capitalism to come up with a solution to upcoming resource shortages. He's sure BAU and growth can continue uninterrupted and if nuclear is one of those possible solutions he will go with it.

After his answer I have been very sceptical about his green credentials and certain about his addiction to growth. He has gone right down in my estimation.

The green position will evolve as it's adherents take a long hard look at all the possible alternatives with more science and logic taking the place of emotions and idealism. Nuclear will rise as this process goes on and it will come to a time where being pro nuclear will be synonymous with being green.
The debate will move beyond shall we build new plants but to where to best build them and by whom and with what safety features and practices.

[RenewableCandy]

I beg to differ. It appears that nuclear, once made acceptably safe, is simply too complex to be green. And without all the extra complexity, it's (kind-of obviously) too dangerous to be so.

What would make me support nuclear? Well, if you could buy a small-scale modular one, made without putting any workers at risk, using as fuel stuff whose global supply won't run out in the forseeable, that's safe to run in our house or in a building at the end of the street, that uses up enough of its energy, once at the end of its working life, that it can be disposed of without health issues and without due ceremony (i.e. without security issues).

A bit like our PV, actually, only nuclear instead.

It'd be funny if it actually happened. It'd bloody well put me on the spot, if nowt else

[kenneal - lagger]

You're talking about small scale thorium reactors then, Candy.

[RenewableCandy]

Only if they actually do all those things, in real life.

Mind you, I wouldn't believe it in advance, and wouldn't let them build one 'til they've proved it. Nukes: stymied by their own past behaviour

[biffvernon]

Even a thorium reactor will need a global economy to sustain it's development and production, so that's a non-starter unless they're very quick about it.

(Remind me, if thorium reactors are so smart why don't we already have them in every village - I thought the physics was worked out more than half a century ago.)

[Aurora]

Even a thorium reactor will need a global economy to sustain it's development and production, so that's a non-starter unless they're very quick about it.

(Remind me, if thorium reactors are so smart why don't we already have them in every village - I thought the physics was worked out more than half a century ago.)

You can't make bombs out of the stuff.

[RenewableCandy]

Because I've eaten the entire UK reserves of Thorium