Biden and Business As Usual - Liberal Delusion Number 119

 One week out from the US Presidential election and, not entirely unlike last time, the so-called progressive wing of the Establishment, the liberals and social democrats, their sponsors and media mates, have perhaps a little more cautiously than last time more or less called it for Joe Biden. Trump is toast, disintegrating faster than bone spurs in an X-ray machine.

Yet, while yesterday's Rasmussen national poll giving the incumbent Trump a 1% lead is still something of an outlier, most other polls, while giving Biden a lead of around 7% on average all show things tightening. With the impact of the efforts by Republican governors to effectively disenfranchise poor and black voters over the last two years, a tack seen on balance as favouring Trump, and the robust efforts to impair voting by mail in this virus-ridden poll, the result may yet be much, much closer than the broad left, and some traditional conservatives, might like to wish. 

Certainly, it is far too soon to call the result – especially once you factor in the massive pile up of Democrat votes in relatively few big states set against the need to balance that with wins in smaller states to tilt the winner-takes-all maths of the Electoral College (the body that actually elects the President). As we know from 2016, the President does not need a majority of votes cast to carry the college. He just needs to come close and come ahead in the right places.

Taking a hunch, Biden on balance may probably win; and yet his victory will be a truly hollow one; less the routing of far right, neofascism and rather more the temporary stopgap Hindenburg provided against Hitler’s Nazis in their 1932 contest. That even now the outcome is actually still in question with Trump averaging the support of around 9 in 20 voters demonstrates that this vote will not conclude anything in spite of all the pious hopes of liberals for the USA to return to being “a normal country” and of their counterparts everywhere for “politics as usual”, a resumption of the comfortable spin of two sides of the same capitalist coin taking buggins turn at squandering people’s hopes and dreams and our planet’s resources and biosphere alike.

Biden’s legacy is toxic – from his active  backing of crime legislation that has incarcerated almost 3 million predominantly black people to work for free on behalf of the military and big corporations in a form of modern slavery under Bill Clinton to fostering the continent-wide fracking rolled out under Obama. Like many liberals his stance is that of a chameleon, from cold blue to hot red and back again depending on circumstances. And, in Biden’s case, it seems to also be who he listened to last - Bernie or Barack, Kamala or Hillary.

Trump has made much play of Biden’s memory issues. Some have seen this as a 74 year old man trying to disingenuously portray a 78 year od man as “past it”. But in truth Joe’s memory lapses extend far back in time to much younger days: this is a man who in his first run for President, way back in 1988, forgot to credit Bobby Kennedy when he used his words to invoke patriotism, forgot to mention he was quoting UK Labour leader Neil Kinnock when he asked why his wife was the first in her family to go to college and who somehow forgot that rather than topping his law class, came 74^th out of 86 and, in a strikingly Trumpian outburst, told a questioner he almost certainly had the higher IQ.

Biden’s 1988 primary candidacy collapsed with his hubris and lies, but this year it seems the Democratic National Committee was so fearful of a truly transformational candidacy in the shape of Bernie Sanders that they set aside everything. From Joe’s economy with actualite through his son’s unquestionably dodgy dealings in Ukraine to the outstanding, un-investigated claim of sexual assault by him on a young female intern working in his office in the 1990s, it doesn't matter - all that does is that he isn't Trump.

And it shows.

Biden was credited as the winner of the final debate last week: most polls found him to have stood up to Trump, though relatively few were enthused by him. The debate was seen as treading water and unlikely to shift more than a handful of voters. And yet a throw away comment by Biden in the closing moments may yet prove to be disastrous.

Asked about climate change, Biden seemingly boldly announced he would close down the oil industry. Unsurprisingly, Trump suggested this was the big news of the night, leaving Biden stumbling to correct himself that this would be done “over time.”

It is true we need to shut down oil, but the fact is Joe Biden has no particular interest in doing so. Nor does he have much understanding of what might replace it. Where Bernie Sanders (or the Green Party Presidential candidate Howie Hawkins) might have talked about transitioning jobs in oil into renewables, Biden betrayed his lack of knowledge and even belief in the need to change by having little to nothing to say. It was after all, under the Obama-Biden Administration that the plug was effectively pulled on the previously burgeoning US renewables industry in favour of opening up the country to fracking - so much so that his now running mate, Kamala Harris, sued them unsuccessfully in her capacity as Attorney-General of California to stop them drilling off the seismically sensitive Pacific coast.

In the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, once a Democratic bastion but in many counties now with a registered Republican majority, Biden’s confusion and slipperiness may be his undoing. For this is where liberal managerialism comes unstuck – it was precisely its detached elitism, foisting fracking on poor communities and now after they have made some modest economic gain from it in spite of their environmental catastrophes deciding to shut it down, that turned voters away from the likes of Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump. 

Biden had established a narrow lead with the prospect of winning the state's vital Electoral College votes back, but on the ground Trump’s campaign by all accounts is reaping a swift dividend from Sleepy Joe’s apparent wish to now shut down the very industry he and Barak Obama imposed on the state. The very latest Pennsylvania statewide poll, out tonight, gives a 2% advantage to the President.

Donald Trump is an appalling, nasty, greedy, sociopathic narcissist. It is truly difficult to find any redeeming features in the man at all. Yet like Hitler, he has fed on genuine grievance and directed it to his advantage, however dissembling and disingenuously. Unlike Hitler, he has no ideology and is not as well organised, but that is not to say that, once he is gone, someone more coherent won’t emerge at the head of his huge and still very much intact base vote and the armed militias he has told to “stand by”. 

That the Democrats have singularly failed to destroy him and his creed is proof enough that they have yet again failed to even begin to understand the forces that created him in the first place – because they and the corrupt elitism they represent and buttress are perhaps the primary force. They, like New Labour under Blair in the UK,  saw so many working class Democrats as having nowhere else to go and so eminently betrayable to the corporate interests that have bought the Dems lock, stock and barrel – so much so that a movement like Sanders’ socialist one was seen as a threat rather than the once-in-a-generation transformational opportunity that it was.

And if in the end Joe Biden just squeaks in, with a half-baked programme, a promise simply to not-be-Trump and a Supreme Court soaked in Tea Party bigotry, the next four years are already lost and the next forty seriously at risk.

FRACKING: No One Could Possibly Have Guessed This Would Happen...

Lancashire's future? Fracking has caused significant earthquake damage in the USA

 So tonight Cuadrilla have had to halt fracking operations at their Preston New Road site for the third time in two weeks after a third tremor abpve the 0.5 Richter scale trigger. The increase seems exponential - from 0.5 to 0.8 to 1.1 and while still relatively minor, their increasing power in such a short time has to be bad news for the shale-peddling carbonistas.

The area surrounding the site near Blackpool in Lancashire has seen 27 seismic events captured by the British Geological Survey in just 11 days. This compares to just two others in the entire rest of the UK over the same period - one in North Wales and one in the Norwegian Sea off the Shetlands. There were no seismic events in Lancashire in the 89 days prior to Cuadrilla commencing drilling.

While most of these are small, the incremental impact on the area if operations continue as planned for many years becomes sadly all too predicatble.

The only crumb of comfort in this could be that this litany of problems for Cuadrilla knocks future plans across the UK on the head and, quite aside from the appalling environmental impact of fracking, makes the whole project financially unviable for the profiteers who are prepared to sacrifice our country and planet for the sake of their bank balances.

Of course, the Greens and environmentalists who warned of this years ago, before fracking permits were opened up by the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary Ed Davey during the Coalition government, were denounced as hysterical fantasists and Luddites.

After all, who could possibly have guessed this would happen...?!

Source: British Geological Survey  https://earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/earthquakes/recent_uk_events.html

Capital Crimes: Honesty Doesn't Sell Cars

Volkswagen, the so-called "Peoples' Car" company originally created by the Nazi Deutsche Arbeitsfront in 1937, is in crisis.

Once an apparent byword for trust and reliability, it has been revealed to have been deliberately falsifying the level of emissions from its diesel cars by a factor of up to forty times (yes, that's 4,000%) in US Environmental Protection Agency tests. Special software designed to identify when their cars are subjected to pollution tests alters emissions to mislead the regulator - and the buying public. Over 11 million cars are affected worldwide and VW in the USA are setting aside over $6.5 billion to pay anticipated compensation, with fines expected to be two to three times that. Half a million cars - Volkswagen and Audis sold between 2009 and 2015 - are already being recalled with many more to follow.

The company's European vehicles are likely to be just as polluting, but European tests are less rigorous so, in the view of one commentator today, there is less need to falsify outcomes. Europe may be just as badly affected by the deceit though - one early analysis suggests that over half the additional one million tonnes of emissions released by the rigged vehicles will have been on this side of the Atlantic.

With its shares falling 23% in value in one day as predatory investors anticipate lower profits as customers desert the brand, the company is rushing to shore up its battered reputation with about as devious a statement as you might expect:
"Volkswagen is committed to fixing this issue as soon as possible. We want to assure customers and owners of these models that their automobiles are safe to drive, and we are working to develop a remedy that meets emissions standards and satisfies our loyal and valued customers."

  their automobiles are safe to drive
  their automobiles are safe to drive

...except of course, they are not safe at all. That's the whole point about falsifying pollution emissions.

Save the planet - and its people!

Sure, they won't crash or blow up or anything so blatantly dangerous. Rather, insidiously, invisibly, they are helping to kill the life on our planet, poisoning our atmosphere, sickening our kids and killing our elderly.

All carbon fuel emissions are damaging to the environment and the creatures inhabiting it, which includes human beings - all of us. But while petrol is bad enough with its carbon dioxide outputs, diesel is even worse. Although marketed as "clean" because its particulates are largely invisible and it produces less carbon dioxide, it produces much more nitrogen oxide. This is a far more damaging gas when it comes to global warming as well as highly carcinogenic and as such a serious threat to human health. Many British cities, including most of London, Glasgow and Manchester have higher than legal levels of nitrogen dioxide emissions under EU regulations, but no decisive action has been taken to stop this in spite of the impact on people.

Bear in mind that around 60,000 early deaths in the UK are attributed to pollution every single year with about a quarter of these linked to diesel exhaust emissions and you can see the scale of this problem. But we have a UK Government which is subsidising carbon-packed fracking at the very same time as imposing new taxes on clean, renewable energy (now ludicrously and cruelly subjected to a carbon tax in spite of having nil carbon emissions).

That's right - it's really not safe to drive.

Put into this mix the drive (no pun) of VW and all private companies to maximise their profits (legally their sole objective) and wheezes like the US emissions falsifications become routine.

We are often told of course that capitalism is an engine of creativity, that it will find the solutions to all our problems and if nothing else consumer power will force companies to clean up their act and the planet. Yet isn't this just another marketing ploy, this time to sell us the concept that there is no alternative? Nothing works allegedly other than a system that commodifies everything and extracts surplus value from the work of the mass majority of people in order to maximise the profits of the few (owners).

The reality?
Capitalism pushes its participants to exploit, not conserve; to compete not co-operate; and to lie rather than be open - VW's crime in this context is simply to be caught out rather than doing what it did. Because, under the imperative of maximising the return for its shareholding owners, fixing the testing mechanism rather than investing millions in real fuel efficiency becomes the logical thing to do.

We've never trusted vehicle sales reps for a reason. It's because, in our economic system, honesty doesn't sell cars.

No Wind Turbines to Spoil the View

The British Government, which once upon a time audaciously and falsely claimed it would be the greenest government in history finally today slipped aside the very little last shred of its minuscule fig leaf and revealed its truly appalling dark side - it has opened up half of the UK's land, including national parks and major cities, for applications for fracking  licenses. If granted, oil and gas companies such as Cuadrilla hope to drill for shale gas by pumping huge quantities of water and chemicals under ground to force the fuel upwards.

The proponents of fracking claim it is safe - but we know from numerous studies  now that there is both anecdotal and scientific evidence that this is far from the case, with water courses poisoned, minor earthquakes and major disruption and damage to the environment. Both energy companies and the Government admit that the heavily state-subsidised process will not lead to reduced costs to the consumer. Nor will it cut carbon emissions at a time when global warming is reaching and breaking through more and more dangerous thresholds infinitely earlier than anticipated - both May and June of this year, for example, were the warmest May and June since records began and 2014 is set to be the warmest year on record. After what scientists had warned would be a temporary pause in warming, the seas, the largest carbon "sink" in the planet, have suddenly begun to warm exponentially - with serious threats to marine life and to global warming-inducing emissions.

North Dakotan fracking looks like a city from space

Greens and environmentalists have offered a range of alternatives especially around investing public funds in developing cleaner energy as Germany is successfully doing, with ownership in community hands and generation decentralised to both protect supply and undercut the oligopolistic powers of huge energy firms. An energy mix focused on solar, wind and wave energy, as well as supplemental sources such as waste and biomass, and perhaps above all, energy conservation (we waste about 40% of our energy), would be both clean and free us from needing to pay either big energy companies AND the likes of Vladimir Putin for our power.

By contrast, the Coalition, with Labour's blessing, are open to drilling in places like the centre of archaeologically highly sensitive York, or in supposedly exceptional circumstances (no explanation of what these might be is given) in the middle of our precious national parks. The Government has tried to portray the decision on national parks as protective, as pro-fracking Communities Secretary Eric Pickles will have the power to veto applications approved by local authorities - what it doesn't mention is that he will also have the power to over-rule local authorities who don't find circumstances sufficiently exceptional to justify fracking.

The irony of this advocating of massive fracking, which will involve potentially tens of thousands of wellheads popping up across the country, is that the very MPs backing it are in large measure the same ones who complain about wind turbines blotting the landscape.

Well, if they have their way, at least that won't be a worry in the future landscape of our once-green-and-pleasant land.

Well-heads and access roads across the Wyoming landscape

Inside The Mind of Ed Davey

The gasman cometh...

So, our Energy Secretary, Lib Dem Ed Davey, is to deliver a rant today (the plan appears to be for it to be a sort of spontaneously angry one) in which he will attack climate change deniers in the Tory Party as "wilfully ignorant, head-in-the-sand, nimbyists" whose "diabolical" dealings have left us prey to the vicissitudes of the extreme weather events of recent weeks. These are, Mr Davey will screech, the result of the global warming that these Tories deny.

Well, indeed, except Mr Davey needs to take a step back and rather than criticise the allies he and his party have been making common cause with for the last four years, perhaps he should take a look in the mirror. What goes on inside that head? How can one man face so many ways at the same time?

He decries the corporate power of the Big Six, but then defends their right and need to make huge profits. He talks about supporting green energy, but puts obstacle after obstacle in its way while signing up to "incentives" for dirty fuels, whether loans for French owned EDF to build nuclear plants, or payments to local councils and communities to encourage fracking to take place.

But of course Mr Davey, as covered here last year, has expressed his amorous feelings for shale gas most fulsomely (see "Having it both ways") and under his watch and with his blessing, the Coalition have now opened up England to be fracked into oblivion by French oil companies and Tory Party donors. Plans are in motion to release around 130 billion tonnes of shale gas into the atmosphere (via various uses) from English wells over the next four decades and beyond. Not only will this damage the countryside, it will do nothing to reduce our carbon emissions - the very cause of man made global warming he professes to be so concerned about.

In addition, the Government under his stewardship of energy policy (and that of his former party colleague Chris Huhne) has committed to building a whole series of new and long term oil and gas powered electricity power plants. This "dash for gas" ties us  in to continuing to burn massive quantities of carbon fuels for decades into the future and makes it nigh impossible to meet our carbon reduction targets for 2050 - a vital milestone if we are to play our part in the global struggle to contain warming at levels that don't threaten to overwhelm humanity.

Similarly, Mr Davey's department has slashed funding and the feed-in tariff for community owned renewable energy schemes (a sharp contrast to the fracking premia). And his "green deal" scheme for energy conservation, as well as having its funding cut, has been a disaster - a Green Party scheme adopted by the local council in the single district of Kirklees had as of last year insulated over 50,000 houses to barely a dozen under the national Government scheme.

So Mr Ed should perhaps calm down - and get some help for his shale addiction before he turns on the dinosaurs in the Tories - after all, some of them almost certainly will in time form the base material for future shale gas, so a little more respect please. Moreover, unlike many of these corporately sponsored backbenchers, he clearly understands the need for action on global warming and as Energy Secretary is just ever so slightly better placed than most of us to do something about it.

Except that he hasn't. And if fact, his actions are likely to have made things that bit worse.

On the other hand, maybe if we can harness the gales of hot air that is so frequently emitted in large quantities from this man's mouth, we could slash our fuel requirements at a stroke.

No Fracking Please, We're British, say Greens

Press Release from Cllr Andrew Cooper, Green Party national Energy & Environment Speaker and lead Eurocandidate for Yorkshire & The Humber.

“No Fracking Way” say Greens

Or - Maybe the Bulgarians, Romanians and Leo Sayer know something we don’t!

 

Around the world, Greens are supporting local communities in their campaigns against fracking in their neighbourhoods. Across Europe, fracking is banned in Northern Ireland, France, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania. There are further bans in areas of Spain and Switzerland. (1)

 

In Australia, veteran popstar Leo Sayer has even done a song about it called No Fracking Way! (2)

 

Andrew Cooper, Kirklees councillor and Green Party Energy spokesperson, said, 

“Maybe the Bulgarians and the Romanians know something we don’t! Maybe it’s not a coincidence that both their countries ban fracking – along with many EU states. And they’ve stayed at home in their droves, in their green and pleasant lands!

 

“Fracking wouldn’t get anywhere without serious Government support, tax breaks and other subsidies, hence today’s transparent ‘sweetener’ to councils.

 

“As the Green Party has always said, the greatest potential for energy savings is in insulation and energy efficiency. Doing the oil industry’s marketing for them shows Government has no interest in helping householders control their energy demand. They simply want to smooth the way for massive environmental exploitation by oil giants.

 

“Government supposedly believes in ‘localism’ and allowing Councils to make their own decisions. But when Council funding is drastically cut by central government and they are then offered money to accept fracking on their land, it is clearly nothing less than ‘bribery’.

 

“Government has today backed environmentally damaging shale gas extraction just as it has scaled back support for people to insulate their homes.

 

"“They’ve dropped the pretence that fracked gas will reduce fuel bills for householders and they are doing nothing for households in fuel poverty.

 

It is also significant that this policy is not being applied to renewable energy installations demonstrating the governments growing lack of commitment to the green economic sector.

 

 1.   http://oilpatchasia.com/2013/10/9-countries-or-regions-that-ban-fracking/

 2. Leo Sayer's anti-fracking song for the Australian campaign - Pretty good!!  http://v.gd/BAdbQa

 3.  Green Leader Natalie Bennett’s youtube interview on today's govt fracking 'bribe', where she does brilliantly! http://v.gd/hOUQQe

Lib Dems & Fracking - Having It Both Ways

"I love shale gas" - Lib Dem Energy Secretary Ed Davey, 10 July at the APPG on unconventional gas and oil."It is fantastic for energy security...and the environment."

"In recent years, shale gas production has transformed the energy market in the US, though at the cost of significant local environmental damage and pollution of water tables...(Because of different geology and fiscal policy)there is no realistic prospect, therefore, of a 'shale gas revolution' in the UK." - Lib Dem official policy paper, Green Growth & Green Jobs, 24 August.

The fracking controversy in the UK is driven by one key factor - after some years of refusal or at least prevaricating on a decision, late last year the Government decided to permit it to go ahead, and it has increasingly featured as a key component of planning for future enrgy supplies. As blogged before, the Coalition's claim to seek to be the "greenest Government in history" has long since fallen by the wayside as it cut the renewable energy feed-in tariff and virtually abolished community-owned clean energy schemes. Using vast quantities of water to force shale gas and oil out of the ground beneath our feet has become a major objective of Government energy policy as we follow the United States in seeking out yet more carbon fuel, seemingly oblivious to the environmental impact.

To date, the only significant UK-wide political party to oppose fracking has been the Greens - the Green MP, Caroline Lucas, was arrested for blocking the road during a peaceful protest at the Balcombe test site earlier this week. Green leader, Natalie Bennett, has also spoken at the site and Greens across the country have been involved in arguing against fracking. By contrast, with a few, largely self-interested local exceptions, Tories, Labour and UKIP have welcomed the process, awed by the massive development of it in the USA and dismissive of the impact of both extraction and use of yet more global warming gases.

And as for the once supposedly "greener-than-the-Greens" Liberal Democrats?

Well, today, as a poll shows massive public opposition to fracking (with three times as many preferring wind farms to those supporting fracking), the Lib Dems have finally issued a statement condemning fracking. It turns out that, although they are part of the Coalition, they are opposed to this particular policy.

Now, at least. They didn't say anything earlier, perhaps waiting to see which way the wind blew in terms of popular opinion.

As for tomorrow, who knows where they will stand? Presumably, we will get a clearer idea of what they actually think after they have expelled the Energy Secretary Ed Davey from their party. After all, it was Mr Ed (Lib Dem) who gave the go-ahead for fracking, just as his predecessor, Chris Huhne (Lib Dem), approved new nuclear power stations after years of saying they didn't work, were too expensive and too dangerous. Mr Davey sees fracking as "useful" and thinks it it is "fantastic for energy security...and the climate." Although he has said the environment should be protected, it isn't clear how and he has signed up to trying to bribe local communities with a share of fracking revenues to try to stymie opposition.

What, they aren't going to expel Mr Davey? And they're not going to change the Government's policy? No, because, in spite of the rhetoric, the Lib Dems continue to support "limited" fracking - but of course, do nothing to explain what limited means. Watch this space, depending on where you are in the country.

Surely the Lib Dems aren't trying to have it both ways by pretending to be in Government and in Opposition at the same time?

Fracking Greed and Money

Don't drink the water! - from "Gasland" - view trailer here.

"It's two factors - greed and money."

The words of a resident of a Texan town that ran out of water, partly from drought but also because of the huge quantities of water drawn from the local aquifer by an oil company undertaking fracking in the area.

Pollution of water supplies by fracking - highlighted most dramatically by flaring kitchen sink taps in the film "Gasland" - is often cited as a major fear of those opposed to fracking for gas. But the process of hydraulic fracturing itself uses massive quantities of water, pumped into the shale to force gas out. In any scenario where there is pressure on water supply, fracking can only compound it. And with global warming leading to warmer and warmer summers, even countries with traditionally moderate climates like the UK will likely face fracking-induced droughts - with the additional threat that the water that is still available might be poisoned in any case.

This video, from The Guardian Newspaper, tells the story of the Texan town that ran dry...





Originally published in The Guardian 11 August 2013:   Texan drought sets residents against fracking 
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Next video: Fracking explained in 2 minutes. 

Frozen Britain's Future - Fracking or Feldheim?

Outside it is snowing steadily; the birds huddle miserably on the bare branches as the falling flakes cover too quickly the food put out a short time before. Yet again, the TV news revels in making much of cars stuck in drifts and kids sledging in what just a short while ago would have been completely unseasonal weather.

But, after over a decade and a half of virtually no snow at all, Britain has now had three years of bitingly cold temperatures and winters with a vengeance. After some years of children growing up having seen no snow at all, or a light dusting at best, now we are told to expect days and days of frozen weather in spite of yesterday being the first official day of Spring.

The cause of this is something foretold for many years by environmental campaigners and Greens - and rather cryptically acknowledged by the Coalition Government a couple of years ago without any official admission - see this post from December 2010.

Perhaps not as dramatically as in some scenarios, including the ludicrous one posited by Hollywood in The Day After Tomorrow, the Gulf and Jet Streams have shifted increasingly southwards for more and more prolonged periods, ending the centuries old near-guarantee of mild air from the Mexican Gulf warming Britain throughout the year providing us a 5 degree centigrade temperature increase that our latitude (on a par with much of Scandinavia and Russia) would not otherwise permit. The trigger for this is, ironically, global warming - as the overall temperature of the planet increases, the Arctic ice sheet has begun to recede further and further at speeds much faster than even the most pessimistic predictive scenarios suggested just a few years ago. This has meant that an increasing flow of colder water has poured into the Atlantic and, as cold trumps hot, the Gulf and Jet Streams have shifted increasingly southwards. The result will be, as we have seen these last few years, increasingly extreme weather - much warmer summers and much colder winters, heavier rainfall when it happens, prolonged drought when it doesn't and much more powerful gales as cold water falling below warm churns up the air currents above.

Gone south - the Jet Stream (red/orange) at 0600 this morning

And so what was predicted for decades and even centuries from now is happening around us. But the Government remains as complacent as ever, even declaring action on global warming to be something for later on given the depth of current economic woes. It ignores the very real threat to our survival now manifesting itself ever faster around us and as the window for action closes down it simply turns away and closes the door.

And yet all around us is the potential for recovery: like few other countries, Britain has a huge potential for developing and using renewable energy. Particularly wave, hydro and wind power - all of these could be deployed around our country and in the sea off our shores. And developments in photovoltaic technology, such as groundbreaking nanomesh cells, mean that even in our climate, solar panels could produce a substantial part of our energy needs. It is possible - other countries are acting faster; Germany for example is working hard to develop its renewable sector which has more than trebled in supply in the last decade to 20% of energy needs and in a pioneering effort, in May 2012, over 50% of the energy needs of the largest economy in Europe came from solar energy farms alone. 

This is not only possible - anyone with an even vaguely impartial viewpoint would see that it is essential. Our carbon fuel supplies, as well as damaging the biosphere that allows us to exist, are becoming scarce - there is less oil and gas available from easily exploited sources at a time when demand is growing from emerging economic giants like India, China and Brazil. North Sea oil and gas fields are becoming depleted and the only future sources of carbon fuel nearby are to be had only by either deepwater drilling in the north-west Atlantic using the same dangerous technology as BP's Deepwater Horizon deployed so devastatingly in the Gulf of Mexico, or alternatively using the noxious process of fracking under populated areas of northern England - the recent Blackpool earthquakes standing as chilling reminders of the potential impact of this method of dirty drilling.

Continued dependence on carbon fuel leaves us tied to foreign suppliers as well - and vulnerable. A fact that would leave many people with sleepless nights is that Britain rarely has more than three or four days supply of fuel of any sort available (and a similar supply of food much of the time, at least in retail outlets). This week, our gas supplies are down to just 1.4 days - barely 34 hours stand between us and millions going cold in this late winter weather. And set against this are potential problems with the Norwegian pipeline that supplies much of our domestic gas and price hikes of over 100% in the last 6 weeks by Russian and Arab gas suppliers, eager to profit from the need of ordinary people - even to the extent of keeping fully loaded super-tankers at sea, ready to sail to wherever in the world has the highest current price for gas; three Qatari tankers, each with 12 hours national liquefied gas supply on board, are currently heading for British shores. Rationing has become a real possibility, creating cost, discomfort and even danger for people across the country.

Just imagine for a moment a Britain supplied 100% by renewables - as Germany is on track to being by 2050 at least in terms of electricity generation. The energy would be virtually limitless in supply, locally sourced, cheaper than now, involve no destructive drilling or mining, generate no pollution and free us from any dependence on overseas energy. Additionally, it would hopefully disentangle us from the wars that our politicians so eagerly send our troops into in order to secure carbon fuel.

So why, when it seems so easy, is it not happening? Why are we allowing Germany to leave us in the shade when we have so much potential? Why do we look to carbon-addicted USA as our example when it is so clearly faltering and failing so badly and turning so readily to the gun to secure its energy needs when eminently clean and peaceful sources are available in abundance?

The German township of Feldheim has achieved 100% renewable energy;
and full community energy ownership, meaning consumers pay 30% less.

Well, there is another narrative - its not just about energy technology; even more it's about economics and ownership.

Germany is not only different in terms of its energy sources. It is also different in terms of who owns them. Over half of the rapidly emerging renewable sector there belongs to individual people rather than to big business (which holds less than a 10% share - with various community and public bodies holding the balance). By contrast in full-on capitalist Britain and the USA, with our so-called Anglo-Saxon neoliberal economic model prizing big business above all else, anything that undermines corporate control of something as valuable and potentially profitable as the energy supply is simply not to be contemplated - one reason the British Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition abolished the community renewable energy feedback tariff and other schemes that supported small scale ownership of renewable energy.

As we see with the current gas price hike, scarce energy is profitable energy - so don't expect the free market to deliver big scale investment in renewables any time this side of Doomsday. As Obama's America fracks itself and our world into oblivion, Britain joins in a show of bizarre macho-market pomposity that eschews anything European or mildly communitarian at an ultimately dreadful cost to all of us.

The biting winds of March may yet bring our carbon addiction into a painfully clearer perspective. When the thaw comes in due course, we can only hope that it melts frozen minds as well as freeing the green buds  to spring finally into the life that humanity is increasingly putting at risk.

DEMOCRATISING ENERGY - WHO OWNS WHAT IN THE GERMAN RENEWABLE ENERGY SECTOR
(chart from the Institute of Local Self-Reliance)

Dragonfly In Oil - a study in "humanity"

From the Tar Sands of Canada - this is how we power our way of life, our cars, computers, holidays, homes...

Alberta in Canada once boasted one of the most beautiful wildernesses in the world. But then came the exploitation of the Tar Sands, part of the dirty oil drive which, by the appropriately named process of fracking, has made North America energy independent for the first time. The remains of millennia of decay, the matter of the carbon fuel now extracted and burned to power the world's greatest polluters - the human species - spew into our air and silently, invisibly poison our future. 

But earlier, much earlier in the process of extraction and refining, the spills and detritus of drilling and fracking the oil from the virgin soil have already claimed the most delicate of creatures, in the pursuit of profit and human profligacy happily destroying as mere "collateral damage" the precious, living and vibrant children of nature. Forests have been felled, ground stripped of its topsoil and heated water flushed deep down to force millions of barrels of oil out the ground: coating and trapping the once free and beautiful dragonfly in a shroud of black.

"Let us not, however, flatter ourselves  overmuch on account of our victories over nature. For each such victory, nature takes its revenge on us.”

                  Blake & Engels, quoted in The Rise of the Green Left (Derek Wall)

(with thanks to Calvin "Spiralling" Smith for drawing attention to this)