Brief Encounter or The Life of Brian?

Sometimes life has strange coincidences.


Returning from London on the train the other evening, I ran by chance into Green Councillor Andrew Cooper (author of the blog Greening Kirklees), who was not long finished at a consultation session between environmental groups and Greg Barker, Tory Energy Minister and deputy to the Lib Dem Energy Secretary Chris Huhne. Professionally, Andrew is an expert in the renewable energy field and he was lamenting the reversal in Government policy over renewable energy feed-in tariffs, a great incentive for consumers to install microgeneration in their homes, especially solar panels, and which pays them for electricity they generate but don’t use (it is instead fed into the national grid, hence the micro-producers’ payment from the electricity companies).

Huhne’s department, in spite of claiming to be part of the greenest government in history, has just decided to slash the subsidies supporting solar power and the tariff (from private companies) by 50% on the spurious grounds that the 30p added to the average annual household fuel bill by the tariff arrangement pushes poorer people into fuel poverty. The Government also for some reason adds the cost of the tariff to the public deficit, in spite of there being no public funding involved and hence utterly no reason for doing so.

We grumbled a bit more about Huhne’s turnaround on nuclear energy as well – from decrying it as dangerous and expensive in his days in opposition to now advocating it as an essential part of Britain’s energy supply and adopting the bizarre view of it as being a source of green energy.

Bidding Cllr Cooper farewell, moments later, on a connecting train, I was hailed by an old acquaintance, now a recently elected Lib Dem MP, who out of residual personal affection shall remain nameless.

He was looking a bit downhearted, apparently having just rebelled, clearly with some difficulty, against one of the Government’s welfare plans. I asked him how he was finding life as an MP and heard him say how awful it all was, how essential the dreadful cuts were to tame the deficit, how Plan A wasn’t working but they had no choice, etc, etc. My suggestion that some good old Liberal Keynesianism might help seemed to go down like a bucket of cold water in a rainstorm, but he tried to appeal to my environmentalism by telling me, “We have done some good green stuff. Chris Huhne has introduced some new green energy initiatives.”

Well prep’d from my discussion with Cllr Cooper, I responded, “Well, hasn’t Chris Huhne just slashed the feed-in tariff...?”

“Yes, yes, he has...but before last week, he had done some good stuff.”

“Well, I don’t like his turnaround on nuclear energy...I remember watching him talk about that in the past and he was really anti but he seems to have changed his tune...”

“Er...yes, but at least there won’t be public funding for it...I mean apart from the tariffs and nuclear...we will eventually do more solar panels...I think...”

“It would be good if money was spent on solar now...its a labour intensive field and if you invested in jobs, the multiplier effect would generate tax and get the deficit down. But I think I read they are cutting back on funding community schemes for renewables...”

“Yes...but....apart from these...I think in time we will do more green things... our Green Investment Bank, when it gets started...it will... well, it’s difficult...”

And then, as our brief encounter threatened to turn into a reverse parody of Life of Brian, it was his stop.

Blowing Away Nuclear?

Has a major technological breakthrough in Japan created a new generation of wind turbines that finally destroy the claims by the nuclear lobby that renewables can't match their dangerous and dirty radioactive power? Martin O'Beirne of THE ECOSOCIALIST ponders on what it could mean...

Major Wind Turbine Breakthrough! 3 times the output. The End of Nuclear and Fossil?

The designers of this new wind turbine, based in Japan's Kyushu University claim output, the amount of electricity produced is up to 3 times greater than a conventional turbine. 

The first question is...What major design breakthrough could possibly be responsible? Some super light material allowing the turbine to spin faster? Some inexplicable method of increasing wind itself...eh? No that would be silly, why did you say it, but not far off, see the video.

They have had the amazing idea of ...Wait for it......Putting a ring around the outside...Oh....So we have to be a little guarded before we get too excited. If it was that easy, surely it would have been done before now, right? Let's wait for some independent research and so on, and I mean independent because the fossil fuel and nuclear industries will be falling over themselves to rubbish it. 

The other caveat (ironically) is that the anti-nuclear movement in the wake of Fukushima are making progress.  The energy agency plans to earmark up to 20 billion yen ($261 million) for offshore wind farms. This has displeased the local fisheries. At the end of this video the commentator suggests the wind farms could be used for fishing, which is a little hard to buy. But hey I don't want to play sceptic here! 

IF the designers are right, the implications are immense. If we were to be conservative and say that all it does is double the output this really could be the end of any of those arguments about the cost of nuclear actually being cheaper than renewables (Ask the workers and local people at Fukushima how they define cost) Wind generation would be closer to those claims we heard all those years ago about nuclear (that it would be too cheap to meter). In the video below a single offshore wind farm using the turbines would be equivalent to an entire nuclear plant. Think of the 8 new nuclear power plants planned for the UK replaced by 8 offshore windfarms with the benefit of no nuclear waste to bury or plants to decommission.
 
In addition there is no great paradigm shift involved if we were to propose that the very expensive tar sands extraction and fracking would not get a look in. Just a quiet woosh of spinning turbines. 

But the real deal is how the argument stands up for capitalism. This could be divisive, major fossil and nuclear companies with their dirty fingers in all the pies, could not compete with companies pushing the new wind farms, they would either have to embrace it themselves or suffer the consequences, but either way the Military-Industrial (Fossil Fuel, Nuclear, War) Complex (as David Schwartzman calls it) that sustains capitalism would wither. Perhaps an example of how the market  (for a change) could work in our favour. 

Wouldn't it be something if nature herself destroyed capitalism before it destroyed her. 


original article, plus video HERE

Obama Covers Up Nebraska Nuclear Accident?

A fire has broken out in a nuclear facility in Nebraska. It may not be of the proportions of Fukushima, but there again, as the President of the United States has reportedly ordered a blackout of all news from the plant, we can only hope that is the case. After all, it took the Japanese Government several weeks to admit to the disastrous levels of radiation that even now continue to leak out of their damaged reactors to spread over almost the entire surface of the Earth.

The fire, which broke out after the nearby Missouri river burst its bank a fortnight ago, has knocked out a cooling pool for spent fuel rods. As to how bad it is, there is no news other than that "an unusual event" has been notified to the authorities.

Reassured? No, not likely. We have been here before so many times with the nuclear industry - firstly we are told the plants are so safe that nothing can go wrong; then, when something goes wrong, they assure us that its nothing to worry about; and then as it gets worse, they tell us that the particular reactor or plant is an old one and the problem could not repeat itself anywhere else.

Except that it does - Fukushima was frowned upon by the world as a uniquely stupid place to site a nuclear power plant. After all, it was by the sea in an earthquake zone. So, unlikely to find similar situations elsewhere.

Well, the Nebraska plant is next to a major river on a flood plain. Smart siting?

In March, a Canadian reactor suffered a pump failure and has leached tens of thousands of gallons of radioactive waste into Lake Ontario.

And even in Britain, plans are afoot to recommission a nuclear power plant on the north Wales coast in spite of two recent major (by UK standards) earthquake tremors and being right next to the sea.

Why on earth do we keep buying into the nuclear lie? Supposedly cheap, it isn't - it has never been profitable so governments have had to pay electricity companies to build nuclear power, subsidise them to operate them and now shell out to decommission them. In the UK, decomissioning our existing, aging nuclear power stations will cost in excess of £73,600,000,000 over the next century, a figure substantially eclipsing the bank bailout with no prospect at all of any cash back. And then we have to keep the waste safe for several thousand years - laughable if it wasn't so execrable.

Clean? No, it isn't. And safe, no.

Who knows what is happening in Nebraska? If it is so safe, why has the operating company simply said that rumours of a level 4 nuclear alert "are not how we classify nuclear problems" and why has the President stepped in? This is the man who won an award for transparency - so what is so seriously wrong that he has imposed this ban?

Of course, we may never know. Perhaps in 10 or 20 years cancer deaths in the state will be notably higher, or not. But the fact is that just as Chernobyl even now makes sheep on Welsh hillsides sick and inedible, Fukushima has shrouded the world in its toxic embrace. If Fort Calhoun threatens to do the same, the world deserves to know and know now.

SPREAD OF FUKUSHIMA RADIATION TO EVERY CONTINENT

The No sense of Nuclear Nonsense

Russia Today interview on the many high costs of nuclear energy and the myth of abundant atomic power.



Why Do They Hate Us So Much?

The ghost book of the year is published today. "Decision Points" (allegedly) by George W Bush recounts the Texan Cowboy's eight year stint at the Whitehouse and to perhaps no one's surprise is his disclosure that he actively planned for attacks on Iran. Ultimately, these came to nothing - Bush's finger was itching on the trigger for months, but even he had to stand down when in 2008 the CIA declared that there was no evidence of a current Iranian nuclear weapons programme. His successor, Barak Obama, has however repeatedly refused to rule out a military assault on Iran and the nuclear issue refuses to go away.

Bush: linked Iran and Iraq to 9/11 with
 no evidence at all

Bush's closest (maybe only) ally, the then British PM Tony Blair had similarly wielded the figurative cudgel at Iran. Blair reportedly bleated to journalist, Jon Snow, in reference to Iran, "Why do they hate us so much?" Snow in response suggested, "Perhaps because of Mossadeq..." to the blank stare of the hapless Premier. Now while most westerners would undoubtedly have shared Blair's bafflement, the would-be war leader's ignorance of Mossadeq is in fact quite inexcusable, though it is also certainly a penetrating insight into the shallow understanding of Iran among politicians in the West.

Iran was once the superpower of the world, the Persian Empire, creating many innovations, including the first postal service. Although remaining a significant realm for much of its history, by the 19th century, it was hard pressed by the two global players of the age, Russia and Britain, who saw Iran as an objective in their "Great Game" of colonial ambition. The Qajar dynasty of Shahs (kings) tried to modernise in response, reforming Iran's education and finance systems. The Majlis, an elected parliament, was established and began to assert a degree of control over the Shah's government.

A recommended history
of ancient Persia

However, Iran's blessing and curse was the discovery of massive oil fields by a British prospector, in Khuzestan in the south-west in 1901. When British dreadnought battleships converted from coal to oil for their fuel, Iran was cajoled into major concessions to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (which would later become BP). For a tiny annual fee, the country's entire oil reserves were handed over to the British, a state of affairs that would continue, with the Americans joining in, for over 75 years. And just to be sure, in 1921, with British support, a junior army officer, Reza Pahlavi, seized the throne, guaranteeing continued hegemony for the UK.

By the 1940s, however, Reza's ineffectual son, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was struggling to stem calls for democracy. In 1944, elections were held which saw success for democratic nationalists. Prominent among these was Mohammed Mossadeq, a 70 year old reformist from a patrician background elected on a ticket of nationalising the oil industry. By 1951, he was Prime Minister.

Western "democracy" - tanks
correct the election result,
Tehran 1953

Prompted by alarmed British Premier Winston Churchill, the USA actively undermined Mossadeq, who continued to plan to sequester BP's assets in his country. In 1953, the CIA and MI6 sponsored a military coup d'etat which deposed Mossadeq and placed him under house arrest for the remaining 14 years of his life. The Shah's powers were reinstated, the Majlis downgraded and the Iranian secret police, SAVAK, instituted a regime of torture and suppression of anyone suspected of the vaguest opposition to Pahlavi. While the Shah and his Queen courted the western mass media with a film-star like existence, Iranian democracy was savagely crushed. The only outlet for expression became the mosques, where even many religious leaders were harassed or driven into exile - including a cleric from the city of Qom, Ruyollah Khomeini.


Ex-Premier Mossadeq was tried and
confined for life after the coup

Over the next 25 years, the Shah's regime was slowly worn down until in early 1979 it collapsed and Ayatollah Khomeini returned from France to head a new regime. An initially pluralist revolution was quickly subverted by religious radicals and the leftist elements led by Bani-Sadr were suppressed. Yet even then Iran never quite became the monolithic Islamic dictatorship it is portrayed as in the West. The Majlis continued to be elected, although candidates are now vetted by the "Council of the Guardians of the Islamic Republic" as opposed to by the Shah. Women continued to have the vote and by the late 1990s reformists were gaining ground. Iran also played a generally supportive role towards the USA during the 1990-1 Gulf War crisis, even although the Americans' rush to defend Kuwait from Saddam Hussein contrasted sharply with their readiness to supply Iraq with arms for its long and bloody war of aggression against Iran from 1980-1988.

In 1997, President Khatami was elected on a platform of constitutional government and legal reform. Women's rights increased, with many in the cities undertaking the so-called "Lipstick Jihad" where they pushed dress code increasingly to a point of meaninglessness. The press and media became more and more plural, and some rapprochement with the USA was sought.

Following the 9/11 attacks on the US, the Iranians quickly condemned the event, with the government banning the revolutionary slogan "Death to America". In the streets, thousands of Iranians held candlelit vigils as a mark of respect for the American dead. Khatami sent envoys to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan to persuade it to side with the US invasion and to accept democratic elections. The Iranians arrested and handed over scores of suspected al-Qaeda operatives to the USA and even offered to deport Osama Bin Laden's son, Saad, in 2003 - an offer that Bush rejected, to the bewilderment of the Iranians.

But all became clear shortly after when, in return for all their gestures and actions of goodwill to the USA, Bush rounded on Iran and declared it to be part of his spurious "Axis of Evil", allegedly in league with Iraq and, even more bizarrely, with North Korea. Without a shred of evidence to back his claims, Bush then trundled his tanks into Iraq, unleashing years of mayhem and over 100,000 deaths - a higher rate than anything seen under Saddam - and repeatedly menacing Iran,now just a short Humvee ride away for the huge American forces based out of Bagdhad.

Unsurprisingly, when Iranians next went to the polls, anti-American candidates performed well and the conservative President Ahmadinejad, renowned for his anti-corruption drives when he was mayor of Tehran, was elected. The gulf between the American government and Iran soon widened further. Although in 2009 the new US President Barak Obama initially offered talks, many analysts speculate that with his recent drubbing in the mid-term elections, the chances of him undertaking a military operation have grown. He has certainly left his options open following America's partial withdrawal from Iraq, possibly with Israel as his proxy.

It can only be hoped that Obama is dissuaded from such a dreadful, self-serving course. Iran is an ancient nation which does not respond positively to the posturings and threats of others. America and the West are living with the consequences of our own hypocrisy of calling for democracy as long as it gets the "right result". It is not the first time - as Spain in 1936, Chile in 1973 and Gaza in 2006 show clearly - and it may not be the last. They may or may not hate us, but it has certainly left our victims confused and sceptical about us. And in many cases bloodied and dead as well.

Does that answer your question, Mr Blair?

NOW WATCH A VIDEO ABOUT THE COUP - BASED ON STEPHEN KINZER'S BOOK, "ALL THE SHAH'S MEN"

What was wrong about "What the Green Movement got wrong"?

Channel 4 in the UK has just shown a very lengthy, two-part mockumentary provocatively titled "What the Green Movement Got Wrong" . Unlike a previous programme of this ilk, The Great Global Warming Swindle, it did not particularly challenge climate change, but rather tried to show that green campaigns, when successful, have done more harm than good. Three examples:

- malaria in African slums could be reduced by making the chemical toxin DDT available to spray inside houses "in small quantities", but campaigns by Greens in the 1980s to have DDT stopped from being heavily used in agriculture had led to outright bans of DDT in many countries. This in turn left people living in squalid shanty towns vulnerable to mosquito bites and malarial infection - all because of the greens. At least, that was what the scientist Dr Florence Wambugu, who had previously worked for agri-chemical giant Monsanto, was given free rein to argue. (The programme skated over the fact that Greenpeace dropped its opposition to small scale use of DDT nearly a decade ago).






The real solution to malaria - DDT powder or slum clearance?

  On the other hand, just how safe is DDT, even at low levels and especially over any protracted period? Rather than DDT, wouldn't proper investment in clearing the slums and providing decent accommodation to the people living there be better?

- genetically modified food: the successful green campaign in the European Union to ban the sale of genetically modified (GM) foods was contrasted with how widely used it is in the USA - 70% of foodstuffs in many regular restaurants in the USA are GM and declared "delcious" by a contributor. Meantime, African farmers were shown harvesting low nutrition sorghum, grown as it is resistant to drought. Much better if they could grow GM crops designed to provide better nutrition in such bad climatic conditions.

Yet, given the contrast between the health of the average American and that of the average EU citizen, perhaps the jury is out on this for now. And as for the farmers, would a better solution not be found in reforming the trade system that denudes Third World countries of its food? GM could have untold consequences for other crops.

- nuclear power: Mark Lynas, who has written powerful articles on global warming, including the book "Six Degrees", visited Chernobyl, wistfully reflecting on the dreadful legacy of the 1986 disaster. It was an old reactor, he concluded. The new ones would be much safer, he was sure. The nuclear industry had cleaned up its act since 1986 - the implication being that Chernobyl and Three Miles Island could never happen again.

More than that, because the greens had spearheaded a reaction to these disasters which led to the cancellation of planned nuclear reactors, governments instead commissioned more coal powered electricity, leading to millions of tonnes of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. A former Greenpeace activist, Patrick Moore, was put up to denounce the "anti-science" of the green movement. But there again, he is now a paid lobbyist for the nuclear power and logging industries, so could he be trusted to say anything else?

Another view, summarily dismissed in the programme, would be that given the hugely uneconomic cost of nuclear reactors, governments have shied away from building the things. The argument presupposes a choice limited to coal or nuclear, ignoring the clean alternatives - such as solar, wind and waver power- which greens argue for in place of both these different but dirty and dangerous forms of energy production. It is bizarre to hold the green movement responsible for the decisions of others.

Channel 4 devoted 2 hours to this misleading polemic. Like previous efforts in this field, it was full of holes, half-truths and dissimulation. Greenpeace set out the very real corporate lobby interests of those contributing to the programme in the guise of "new environmentalists", allegedly able to see the science and weigh up realistically what is needed for the future. Others in the green movement were portrayed as wild-eyed evangelists, proselytising for a mythical past and hostile to anything modern. "The greens can dish it out, but they can’t take it," Lynas smirks, evidently revelling in his self-assigned moniker of "turncoat".

Lynas may or may not still have as alarming views of our likely future as he has expressed often enough, but if he thinks his efforts this evening in any way will assist the long battle to stop global warming, he is sadly deluded. Even if a complaint to OfCom, the broadcast regulator, of being badly misled by the producers from one of the contirbutors is upheld, at least some damage will have been done.

Channel 4 has a remit to be controversial and, of course, any and all sides of any debate have a right to be aired. But there needs to be a distinction between what is presented as documentary fact and what is simply the personal opinion of individuals - in the latter case, where is the balance? Will the green movement now be given two hours to put a counter-case? Or will this supposedly objective film be left standing for unquestioned use as propaganda by those who wish to carry on as usual?

Everyone involved in this enterprise should be searching their consciences. Self-publicity and audience ratings can come at a high cost to others - and to the planet.

Channel 4 - what is it up to?

Half-life Huhne and the Dirty Deal

The British Coalition Government is a real cacophony of incoherence when it comes to the rather vital issue of global warming.

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, flanked by Liberal Democrat pseudo-greens Nick Clegg, the Deputy PM, and Chris Huhne, Energy & Climate Change Secretary, assured the public that this will be the "greenest government ever."  In a sharp contrast with the vast majority of Conservative MPs, many of whom question the existence of global warming let alone remedial action, Huhne has pledged that the government will cut carbon emissions by an ambitious 10% in its first year.

That was in May. Now, their claims are looking decidedly suspect. Over the summer, the Coalition has decided to axe the Sustainable Development Commission, which was responsible for identifying energy cost and carbon savings in government activities, even although it achieved £70 millions in savings for an annual running cost of just £3 millions. This was a bizarre decision attacked by veteran environmentalist Jonathan Porrit as a purely ideological move. Considering that the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, heavily subsidised by the public purse, has survived relatively unscathed (in spite of paying £5 millions in performance bonuses to managers last year), his criticism may hold some fairly heavy water.

Turning conventional wisdom on clean energy on its head, the Coalition has committed itself to supporting eight new nuclear power stations, to be operational by 2018.  After clearly opposing nuclear energy as late as mid-May, Huhne underwent a change of heart, finding room for nuclear in Britian's energy mix, a revelation now dutifully shared by his party members, never ones to let principle get in the way of a good pay cheque. The Lib Dems had stood on an anti-nuclear platform, but have deleted their "no to nuclear power" website and taken down Huhne's video forcefully proclaiming his total opposition to nuclear energy. Just in case you missed it, here it is:

Although the Lib Dems' rush to radioactivity is likely a product of their Stockholm syndrome-like association with Tory Party atomic fetishists, a consequence has been the abandonment of any strategy for developing clean, renewable energy. For example, although the Government claims to wish to develop offshore wind farms, it has cancelled a job-creating project to develop port facilities to service the planned wind farms at a loss of 60,000 jobs and the manufacturing infrastructure required for the future.

Now this week, Huhne and his colleagues have announced the Green Deal, a scheme to insulate energy-inefficient rented properties. This will somehow happen with no public funding required - DIY superstore B&Q among others will provide insulation kits on a buy-now-pay-later basis: the cost will be recouped over as many as twenty years through higher energy bills. Although the rented sector will be the first target, the aspiration is to cover as many as 14 million buildings, domestic and commercial, over the next decade to the tune of £90 billions, all of it met from people's own pockets - not a penny of public money will be committed, making it highly unlikely that any significant progress will be made.

The ideological streak running through all this is evident. Clean, alternative energy has been sacrificed on the altar of supposedly unavoidable public spending cuts - and public funding of energy efficiency measures has been slashed in favour of expensive nuclear and carbon-based projects.

For example, within days of coming the power, the Coalition ended the Low Carbon Buildings Programme, which provided grants to install alternative technologies such as heat pumps and solar power. At the same time, a pro-nuclear energy tax regime has been created and the decommissioning costs of our current nuclear plants will continue to be 60% state-funded (£1.7 billions per annum) even although they are privately owned. Likewise, another £1 billion of public money will go towards the discredited, voodoo science of carbon capture in an attempt to create clean coal-powered electricity. From 2011, there will be money allocated to the new Renewable Heating Incentive with a focus on renewable energy, but this is still partial and substantially lower than the resources going elsewhere. The fact is that in spite of his protestations to the contrary, by the logic of Mr Huhne's own argument in the video, the public will end up subsidising these new nuclear reactors to the tune of tens of billions.

There was a real alternative: the Green New Deal, formulated by environmental experts and economists in 2009 and adopted by the Green Party for the general election earlier this year. This would have invested in a nationwide programme of free insulation to bring all UK buildings up to standard within five years. It would have created hundreds of thousands of jobs, cut the costs of householders by an average of £260 per year, and significantly reduced Britain's carbon footprint. It would also, by keeping people in work, have reduced the costs of unemployment and generated tax income which this government will never see. A successful pilot scheme had been introduced by Green Party Councillors in Kirklees in the north of England.

2010 has been the second warmest year on record. The drought in Russia is now driving up food prices and across the planet the climate emergency is growing. We do not have any time for the luxury of massaging the egos of Huhne and his likes in this country or elsewhere. Their craven desire to cling to expensive, dirty energy to the sole benefit of big business and their hollow words on being the greenest government ever must be exposed relentlessly as nothing other than a huge and dangerous deceit.