Tearing up my Green Party card? 26 April 06

as far as I’m concerned - by not throwing their support behind Al Gore in 2000 (which would have put him over the top). Al - author of EARTH IN BALANCE. Don’t those Greens read???

It was a decisive moment in the late great planet earth, and earth lost.

Of course I also blame everyone who voted for Bush—but at least many of them were just uninformed. They didn’t know.

Oh well, we goofed on that one. Sorry, Earth. Maybe some distant planet in a galaxy far far away will do better. We should send them a message—“Sad Lessons from Earth.”

because you have a dilemma. Firstly the need to be honest and stand for what you think is right and secondly the fact that the minor minor parties don’t achieve much (discuss – do they shift the ground?).

So, in a way, I’m a ‘green’. But, they’re not going to get elected, so, I support another party that might and is greenish (‘splitta!’). It’s a compromise, and it does mean the party I supports isn’t the one that I truly agree with (but you’re lucky if you find that party). I’ll watch what you do :)

Like you, I wouldn’t have considered voting for Conservative before but I probably will now based on what David Cameron is saying. I think he is genuine; but he will have to live up to it.

In recent days I have seen Gordon Brown talk about the environment, but I don’t believe he is credible at all. Whenever there is a direct conflict between economic values (e.g. airport expansion), social welfare (subsidised heating fuel for the needy & more oil production) & the environment – I believe Gordon Brown will always place the environment last.

We really need to frame our decisions about pretty much everything within the context of the environmental impacts, and climate change in particular. With that in mind, we can then consider social and economic objectives.

I would like to believe that the leader of a party that is even more pro-market and libertarian than New Labour wants to take the action that is required to save us. According to the Guardian, Cameron voted against the climate change levy, as it was a stealth tax on business. He had shown no interest in the environment until the leadership campaign. From then on he has employed a greenwash campaign BP would be proud of, which is frankly patronising and insulting. There is quite a difference between the photo ops and the actual lifestyle of this old Etonian.

Is it possible that he sees the environment as a way of repositioning the party as Blair felt he had to do with his New Labour project as he sees this as a way of differentiating two identical options for the swing voters in marginal seats?

In his leadership acceptance speech he said that he wanted to build more roads and reduce emissions! In another speech he used the words green policies and regulation in the space of five words. He talks about green growth which seems just as difficult and mis-leading and therefore dis-honest to the electorate as plain old growth in a finite world. This all seems like the same rhetoric we get from Blair or Beckett.

Cameron talks about the “need to intensify the search for an effective equitable international agreement to succeed the current Kyoto targets from 2012.” Why didn’t his old school-tie chum, Zac remind him on his polluting plane flight to re-enact ‘White Fang’ that he need search no more as apparently Contraction and Convergence is in his manifesto – which makes it about as meaningful as the fact that it is in New Labour’s and their out of date commitment to reduce emissions by 60% by 2050.

Why doesn’t he mention C & C? Is it because it would dispel the myth that life can go on as before in the lucky West whilst the South suffers and that the electorate would be told things that would make the leaders unelectable? As I say I to want to believe, but find it quite difficult after Blair and New Labour and before that Thatcher and her acolytes. Let’s hope Cameron is uniquely different. Problem is, he is not the leader of the Green Party or even a green Tory party, but a very blue right wing free market, pro-business, anti-regulation party; whose record on the environment according to FOE up to 2004 was the worst in the EU. Can a breed of leopard actually change their spots?

Admittedly Cameron has raised the profile of climate change. So much so that Brown purportedly raised it with the IMF and World Bank, the same weekend that he demanded that Opec pump more oil for the British motorist. The only serious policy has came from a backbencher, Colin Challen. The front pages in ‘The Independent’ (and very few other Nationals) have as much to do with their zeal for reporting the terrible revelations of the state of our warming world and Colin Challen’s intervention, as the electioneering of a leader trying to distance himself from frequent ignominious election failure.

If Brown’s International Clean Energy Fund is as cynical and damaging to the majority world as his other initiatives to reduce poverty then they are in trouble, since they have been about deregulating their markets and privatising them.

Having had personal experience of those woeful meetings in dingy rooms I would agree that if left to the Green party we are in trouble. Zac recognised that the Green Party were never going to have power or influence. But the idea that the Tories are going to advocate carbon rationing, which would go completely against their belief in personal freedoms is wishful thinking in the extreme.

Historically, radical political change has come from the demands of the people. (Politicians do not change the status quo). Which is rather difficult for our movement as the people haven’t historically demanded less. However surely it is better to trust in them than our political elite. This wish may be just as fanciful and optimistic, but wouldn’t we be better off trusting the people rather than the politicians. Shouldn’t we try and trust that the people will do the right thing and demand change if they are told the truth, rather than go along with the politicians in the hope that they will change. If you get too close to politicians then it becomes more difficult to criticise their contradictory actions.

As a practised Brown-watcher I’d completely missed that latest news about Brown and OPEC until I read your post Ian.

What gets my goat isn’t what parties green campaigners belong to, it’s this continual pro-Brown bias among the environmental and development NGOs.

Which means one hardly ever learns now from campaign groups about his true hypocrisy over oil or aviation, or zeal for free trade.

The recent Guardian/ICM poll shows the public rate Brown as a less likely green leader than Blair. Still many campaigners remain mired in their admiration for Robin-Hood-in-a-suit.

Mark, this is one of the most interesting and potentially most important posts on your site – ever! There is no more important task than trying to figure out the most effective way to get fundamentally green policies adopted at local, national and international level. Do we create a new green political force or try to adapt an existing political party to green ends?

I speak as an old leftie and as a Green Party (GP) member, as of last Spring. I could never join the Labour Party let alone the Conservative Party (rash assertion?). My decision to join the GP was based, of course, on their green policies but also on the socialist thread running through their philosophy.

You make some good points with which I agree. Of course we need to have green policies adopted as mainstream – the new common sense if you like – a sign of the new “carbon consciousness” – something we really need. You are aware of contradictions in Tory policy. Good media interrogators of Cameron soon have him sounding really quite traditional on economic policy. Here he has something in common with Brown – they show little sign of moving away from the assumptions of conventional, classical – dare I say bourgeois – economics and all the non-green assumptions that are contained therein. For example they largely ignore externalities and do not seriously consider natural capital. Lovins and Porritt come to mind.

I guess from the link you provided you saw the Robert Macfarlane piece in last Saturday’s Guardian here http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1759001,00.html Here’s a taste to tempt readers to read the whole thing:

“The reason that Cameron has moved so quickly to mix green and blue – to turn the Tories turquoise – is, of course, in order to soften his party’s image. Environmentalism has been chosen as the emollient cream which, when rubbed into the rough face of post-Thatcherite Conservatism, will render it instantly compassionate.”

And I couldn’t help noticing Cameron’s turquoise tie on last night’s C4 News!

I think the crux of the matter is this. Can we realistically expect capitalism as it exists today to adapt and accommodate to green priorities or will we have to change to a fundamentally different economic system if we are to go really green? Here I’d be interested to know how many are aware of and have read “Green Alternatives to Globalisation – A Manifesto” by (the late) Mike Woodin and Caroline Lucas. That includes you Mark!! This manifesto expands my understanding of what being deep green means. We know about the individual action of living in a tepee in a Welsh valley. That’s one way of being deep green and only a very limited number can follow that route. Another way to go seriously green – and this can apply to many – is to follow the slow, local, renewable, off-grid approach, all elements of which are compatible with a mature, sophisticated, multifaceted form of sustainable socialism.

If we look at capital and the corporations there are signs of movement. I’ve used the term “enlightened capital”. I’m not very comfortable with it but it serves a purpose. Take an obvious example. BP are seen as, and present themselves as, enlightened and green(ish). Their recent run of ads proclaiming they are now “beyond petroleum” can be read as a sign that things are changing. But they are still big oil, doing some pretty awful things in some places and, with others, exploring for more of the black stuff. And their most recent ads are for their Ultimate fuel products. Get us to feel good about them then turn round and sell us more petrol and diesel for our vehicles.

As for the Tories the same ambivalence applies. OK Cameron is saying and doing some good green things. But he has opposition from the likes of John Redwood and a Tory Euro MP. He may be barely tolerated by others who are keeping quiet at the moment because as Blair did for the Labour Party Cameron might make the Conservatives more electable.

And I have to ask what chances there are of the Tories adopting Contraction and Convergence (C&C). This is a policy which has equity at its core and carbon rationing (CR) still smacks of wartime privation.

I’d be interested to know what the serious big hitters who straddle the worlds of Tory politics and big corporations think of Cameron’s greenness, C&C and CR. Where, for instance, are the statements from John Major and the Carlyle Group that they’ve “got it” on AGW/CC?

The Frank Luntz approach to politics is well embedded. He was on the TV the other day doing some research for, (I think), Channel 4 news. This should act as a warning to us. We are surrounded by representations of reality which are well off the mark. We all need an active BS detector.

I accept the Green Party is small and embryonic. But consider the successes, two very impressive Euro MPs, two GLA members who are able to punch well above their weight, successes around the country in, for example, Brighton, Oxford and Kirklees. For me the key thing here is I trust the Greens and have no ambivalence about their integrity.

Really significant changes in mainstream party policies on green issues are unprecedented. Realignments, I’m thinking of the Gang of Four breakaway, don’t deliver what they promise. But of course change is possible. Consider the progress made on equal opportunities by the GLC.

It is unclear to me how things will pan out with the political parties. It may be fanciful but what would happen if there were significant defections from the big three to the Green Party? That would change the balance.

Finally, at the risk of sounding harsh, I’d like to consider your threat to leave the Green Party along with other policies and ideas you’ve adopted. I take it you are still pro more nuclear. I’ve spent a chunk of time reading up on this. More nuclear is emphatically the wrong route. All the arguments are well rehearsed; the clean up figure was £56bn, then £70bn and is apparently heading for £100bn. News from Finland is worrying. The new nuclear power station is 12 months in and already 8 or 9 months behind schedule! They have discovered the concrete used so far is “too wet”. John Large’s warnings come to mind. The Guardian is covering all this. Then there is the Lovelock business. I’ll say no more. And now rejecting the Greens in favour of the Tories. Wooaah!

I think we have very different understandings of how Tory policy might fit with CR. I can’t see a fit at all. Anything called rationing surely indicates a need for us to be forced to use less precisely because we are not volunteering to forgo consumption and travel. And as for the fit with C&C – well … where is groundswell of opinion in progressive circles for this far less in the world of Tory priorities?

You of all people know the nature of the problem we face. It is therefore understandable that you seek solutions – now! But do I detect a hint of desperation? Are you in danger of clutching at straws?

Mark, please don’t leave the GP. Do try to influence Zac and his new chums. Let us know what is happening in Tory Party circles. Best of luck.

Douglas Coker

I’ve never understood why so many environmentalists choose to work through the GP – formerly Ecology Party – in our first-past-the-post parliamentary system. In England, only one true new party has managed to break through and achieve a lasting and significant number of Commons seats in the last 300 years. Does the GP help reform that system, or split the vote over it?

In the major parties, individual politicians have their pet issues as it is, e.g. those passionate about transport or the environment tend to be chosen for those briefs. So I wouldn’t expect Ken Livingstone to be an expert on the NHS.

What we see with Zac and Cameron is very encouraging. Cameron is now coming out in favour of carbon taxation and road pricing, and is backing a policy switch to support a London congestion charge. Even though the Tories will be Johnny-come-lately compared with Labour and the Lib Dems on the overall principles.

This illustrates that one of the most effective ways an environmentalist can expend his or her energies is to help educate politicians and activists in the major parties about climate change and sustainability. Which may be easiest if you can work within those parties.

Lastly, I’d agree that the Tories wouldn’t favour DTQs/CR, but eco-taxes and charges can achieve a similar result, and resources taxes are a key part of green economics, are they not?

This discussion made me think how weird politics are now as I could vote for every party at different levels …

Green for the MEP (European level) – Caroline Lucas

Conservative at national level – David Cameron

Labour at London level – Ken Livingstone

Liberal Democrat at local level !

... but that is the way the politics is evolving. At the latest Soil Association Conference, all 3 of these politicians were sharing the same platform ..

http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/848d689047cb466780256a6b00298980/1f65495061d9bb0f802570ed0057c6e1

Apologies that this in not to do with whether Mark should tear up his Green card; but I’d be interested in any views as to the impact of Chernobyl.

Norbert drew our attention to Michael Crichton’s latest contention about how environmentalists get us into a “state of fear” etc. A key example is that with Chernobyl, the true figure, so Crichton claims, is that 50 people died (see link below from a speach in November 2005).

http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/complexity/complexity.html

For an event which released the radioactivity of 400 Hiroshima bombs, I really do not find this credible. From a recent Guardian article (http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,,1760930,00.html) it seems as though that in the “past few weeks four major scientific reports have challenged the WHO which believes that only 50 people have died and 9,000 over the coming years”.

I would be interested in others opinions as to what the true figures might be given the weight of evidence.

My impression is that, like many intellectuals before him, Crichton is blind to aspects of the truth because he wants to “prove” his theory. He actually makes some interesting points about fear, and complexity – but then over-extends his case. This is rather like the Cambridge intellectuals of the 1930s who supported the Soviets, but were blind to the purges etc., or the Sinofiles who supported the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s China despite the attrocities.

Best,

Peter

Here in the US I once actually registered Green but I will never do that again, after they lost 2000 for us and basically sealed the doom of our planet. I had an ongoing ‘discusssion’ with a very good friend of mine during the campaign in 2000. He decided to throw his lot in with the Greens, and while I admired the principles, I think that insisting on ideological purity can end up backfiring badly. My friend was drinking the koolaid that Bush and Gore were the same thing —but hindsight shows that they are polar opposites. The real problem is that it’s more than an intellectual debate; we can now see that civilization’s future is at stake, and if any one person could make a difference, it would be the US president. Has anyone been to any US Green meetings? What are they saying among themselves regarding 2000?

There was an interesting ‘right of reply’ in the Guardian about this question, from somebody working for a medical charity supporting people in the area around Chernobyl. Unfortunately I cannot find it on google. They argued that the real scandal was that nobody had done a thorough and detailed study, to find out how many people had died or become ill, and why.

I have read many reports from people in the area which would suggest a far higher death rate than just 50, particularly amongst the thousands of men who eventually contained the disaster with hardly any protection, standing on top of the radiation-spewing reactor shell with bare hands, or spending long periods in villages that had been evacuated. Like you, I wonder whether ‘no evidence of high death rates’ simply means that nobody has properly collected the evidence?

Incidentally, I wonder whether the WHO also underestimate the number of global warming victims at present. The 150,000 death figure, though terrible enough, is widely quoted as the probable death toll from global warming. But it isn’t. It is the probable extra death toll from infectious diseases which become more common as temperatures rise. It takes no account of all those people dying in floods and drought-induced famines, as in East Africa today, and Niger and southern Africa last year. Surely, if bad droughts are twice as widespread as in 1970 now, half of those victims should be counted as global warming victims?

Almuth Ernsting

sorry to have been out of the loop for a while guys, but work situation has demanded in intense input for a while. I intended to make a comment the first time this came up, but electronically ‘bit my tongue’.

I visited Kiev in 1988 as part of a cultural exchange tour and happened to get to talk to several families their who had relatives in the medical profession. Their view then was that there was a huge amount of radiation-related illness around the whole region: Thyroid cancers, Lukemia, and related bowel disorders. At the time (still under Gorbachev) they were being ordered to record any deaths that were not absolutely obvious as radiation-related as ‘natural causes’. It seems that the local communist party did not want the true scale of the effects to come out. I suspect that in the following 20 years, there has been a compound under-recording. I have only this anecdotal evidence.

From 1994-2000, I managed a tourist attraction in North Wales and on several occasions we hosted visits for UK-based charities which were bringing kids over from the radiation-affected region of theb Ukraine for breaks of up to 4-5 months in order to give them a cleaner environment in which to help their immune systems recover. Some of these kids were in a pitiful state, but were all cheerful and excited, like kids everywhere. Their visits still reduced several of my staff to tears however.

In our area of North Wales well over 1000 miles from Chernobyl, the mountains captured the fallout from the cloud system which had swept round in an arc from Eastern Europe, through the usual heavy rainfall. We still today have tens of thousands of sheep which cannot be sent for slaughter because they are still too radioactive. Farmers have to move them to lowland pastures for several months, out of the areas where radioactive Caesium is still present in large quantities in the top soil and vegetation, to allow the element to be excreted from their systems before they can be sold into the food chain.

In truth, Chernobyl is one big, multi-generational experiment in what happens to an ecosystem when exposed to long-term, high-level radioactive particle contamination. It is still in the interests of a number of parties that the full scale of the impacts is not delved into too deeply, since the Nuclear Industry in several countries is on an economic knife edge as it is. Not just generation: but the far more expensive long-term disposal problem as well (for which the bill to the UK taxpayer alone remorselessly heads towards £100bn).

Yes, our biological evolutionary safety mechanisms may help us to survive an increase in radioactivity in our environment over the longer term, but to accept that risk as a price worth paying for cheap power generation is utterly inhuman, especially if the risk can be avoided by the implementation of greater energy efficiency and the use of alternative forms of energy generation.

Well, that’s exactly what I meant with nobody having properly studied what happened to people in the Chernobyl area. Like you say, the real scandal is that the people who died were simply not counted! My city is twinned with Grozny and there have been many visits from very sick children here. And, of course, far more people could have died if so many men had not sacrificed themselves (whether voluntarily or not) to contain a lot of the radioactivity still in the reactor – without thousands of people going into deadly dangerous conditions at the time an even larger area could have been polluted. I referred to those first because of anecdotal reports that many if not most of those men have died – and they were thousands, who would have received possibly lethal doses of radioactivity. Just thinking of those men shows you how bizarre the WHO figure is, but of course there are all the local people, including children, too.

I don’t think I said anything to downplay this suffering – this would have been the opposite of what I was thinking. It is extremely distressing to hear of the survivors’ stories and ro read of those who died, and the stories of mothers giving birth to stillborn or severely disabled children in far higher numbers than before.

I personally don’t think that there is a debate as to whether nuclear energy is safe – of course it isn’t, since it has already killed very many people and is likely to kill many more in future. There is a debate whether a fossil-fuel and nuclear-energy free future is possible, and within the time-scale needed to prevent the worst climate catastrophe. It comes down to how optimistic or pessimistic you are about the answer – but that really has nothing to do with downplaying the suffering caused by Chernobyl or pretending this won’t happen again.

Almuth Ernsting

Hello Ian,

How can we educate the people to realize that less is better for their future and the future of their children. Starvation is worse than having less.

The idea of embracing sustainability can reduce anxiety and create a stable world and this should make for a happier peaceful society.

I agree with you that it starts with the people.

Best Wishes,

Dan

Thank you for that post Colin. And Mark, I for one would appreciate a declaration from you as to your current stand on nuclear.

Douglas Coker

Hi Colin,

I had written a rather decent response to you but I deleted it because there was new information I came across which led me into thinking there was something missing and rather important. In fact, I need more time to develop my latest thoughts which is why this response is in 2 parts.

This first part is based on pure technical logic and will be an important “prerequisite” to understand Part 2 more clearly. Part 2 is open ended about the “human element” and how our “value systems” are more important to eliminating nuclear risk than whether more nuclear plants are built or not. This is Part 1.

The sole reason the nuclear issue keeps coming up is that it does have a low net carbon impact on the climate as compared to a coal power plant. Yet, the danger of managing nuclear reactions and nuclear waste can never be underestimated. Your response about Chernobyl clearly reminds us of the horrors of nuclear contamination. The idea that avoidance of both climate change and avoiding using nuclear reactions to obtain energy is completely accepted and this is not disputed as an ideal goal to achieve. I support this ideal goal as the best focus to have and I am sure most everyone on this blog agrees.

But it cannot simply end here when nuclear options become difficult to defeat with clean alternative energy. The “current” debate is more from the idea that the prospects of climate change are much more risky than even managing nuclear energy. So, it is not acceptable to build numerous coal-power plants (which we know are climate killers) as a solution to prevent nuclear plants from being built. I think common sense would dictate that allowing Greenland to melt and sea levels to rise plus all the other attributes to what climate change really means suggest it is more risky to allow climate change to happen than even to risk the horrors of nuclear contamination.

This is the “conditional factor” climate change risk imposes on nuclear energy risks. When only given these 2 choices, the prudent person would choose the lesser of 2 evils and embrace nuclear options if it can prevent climate change.

So, it appears we have only 2 possible choices. Either we can reduce climate risk through totally clean options avoiding nuclear and coal or we accept limited nuclear energy development when forced by politics and circumstance in order to prevent a coal plant to be built instead.

When considering these 2 choices, I consider the success of preventing climate change would require an even higher acceleration of reducing emissions, increasing earth’s reflectivity, and all other prudent actions which even add a “safety factor” above and beyond the current uncertainties which could cause us to fail.

Considering the most ideal choice of a perfect world and focusing on climate success, I would submit that not only would we have to prevent new nuclear power plants from being built, but we would have to decommission existing nuclear plants as well. Both new and existing electrical power that replaces all existing nuclear and coal power plants must be based on non-carbon energy sources or the carbon securely sequestered. Can we really do this? I am not sure but I think it may be very difficult to achieve.

Considering the other end of the spectrum, an aggressive approach on using nuclear to gain climate success would suggest building new nuclear plants and replace all coal plants with nuclear plants as well. This seems extreme but what if this is needed to be successful with the climate. Hopefully, I think we can do much better than this. My point here is to emphasize the conditional relationship we have between climate success and the net carbon emissions from using coal or nuclear options.

My main theme in this first part is to elevate the discussion about nuclear to the correct level and this transcends the simplistic idea of taking sides. The question of being for nuclear or against nuclear is one dimensional and therefore outdated from our recent perspectives on climate issues and quite useless by itself to be an effective tool to develop a comprehensive nuclear policy.

I think intuitively, we have to settle for some sort of compromise on how we address this issue. One element undeniable is that even if we could eliminate all nuclear energy instantly today and into the future and even if we had totally clean solutions to replace them with, we still have nuclear issues with the wastes we have already accumulated.

My current belief at the moment is that we may have to embrace a multitude of options and some of them may be accepting the lesser of 2 evils and allowing more nuclear power plants only when politics or circumstances present us with no other choices except a coal power plant.

My premise in this first part is that we defeat nuclear with clean alternatives but never accept a coal plant as an alternative. In my opinion, most new centralized power plants can be defeated and I know of many ways this can be done. In fact, I would like to see a reduction in electrical demand to defeat an old coal plant located in my local area and I am involved in efforts to get this plant closed.

In Nuclear Part 2, I will make a premise on pragmatic grounds in that we may have to accept additional nuclear plants or keep existing nuclear plants in operation for quite a long time. Based on this compromise, I will explore ideas on how we may be able to contain the nuclear risk better through technical means. This is very relevant in that Chernobyl was such a very poor design and inherently an unsafe facility which was further aggravated by bad management.

The 2nd Part will also touch into something very relevant to reducing and eliminating nuclear risk through technical means and this has to do with “human values”. In fact, without a correct value-system, we may have difficulty preventing further nuclear contamination regardless if we develop more nuclear energy or not.

Interestingly, this nuclear dialogue has led me back to a theme we discussed before on this blog. Sometimes, no matter what the climate focus is, it seems to keep coming back to our own core “value systems” as being at the very heart of the climate problem and also at the very heart of the solution.

What I hope to achieve in Part 2 is a sort of enlightenment. We have to get beyond our limited polarized thinking and synthesize something greater. This nuclear issue will not go away and the climate problem forces us to advance the nuclear dilemma to another level of thought. I hope future discussions will lead to how we develop a value-based consensus which can lead to a more responsible nuclear policy.

Many thanks, Colin, for your story on Chernobyl. I also saw on a news program here on the same day I read your post about a brewing problem we have here on leaking nuclear waste entering the ground water.

This story, your story, and my interest in technical solutions have inspired a more deliberate focus on this issue. In the news story I briefly mention, the need for a technical fix to stop the leakage is being done at great expense involving money, time, plus a high tech focus. It also involves competency. Without this, the technical solutions can be compromised which led me to ponder over the issue of “human values” because a lack of values is at the heart of why so many errors are occurring which are adding costs and delays to the successful completion of this project. Much more will be shared on this story in Part 2.

Kindest Regards,

Dan

The researcher was from the general area. She did ethnographic research (actually talking to people), and found that the official stats were way low, and that lots of people who had cancers specifically related to radiation exposure (I think thyroid is one of them) plus other disorders were not included in the stats.

However, what she also found is that people closest to the accident area with highest rates of these deaths & diseases had LESS FEAR of the radiation & its effects, than those who live far away and did not show a very marked increase in deaths/diseases due to radiation. She also had stats on the actual level of radiation in various areas, and they were still very high in the areas closest.

I wish I had the paper to give a clearer picture.

Another problem is difficulty in establishing cause & effect (the problem of random cancer clusters, science requiring 95% certainty, & low numbers, etc), which makes it easy for officials to downplay problems even in areas where people are living in very toxic conditions & dropping off like flies.

All I can say is everything has a cause, and I don’t see why cancer should be any different….just because we cannot always establish association at 95% confidence does not mean something does not have a cause.

Thank you for your responses. I am becoming increasingly convinced that the solution to the electrical generating problem lies in turning our entire fuel extraction, generating and distribution strategy and infrastructure on its head and starting with the principle of meeting the needs of each individual user.

Before anyone jumps up and down and claims I’m suggesting that we all go cold and hungry and have to cope without plasma screen TV’s and cordless waffle-makers may I explain. This is a distributed generation philosophy, not just a strategy.

Our exisiting centralised generating system ignores all the energy wasted in the extraction, refining and transport of fossil fules and merely adds them to the GDP figure as a sign of economic output (uh?). Then it utilises a network of huge generating plants which waste about 40% of the fuel energy through heat losses and lose even more through transmitting electricty through the distribution network. Worse still, about one third of the power plants, the oldest, dirtiest and least efficient third is kept on standby to meet peak surges in demand.

So if you invest in making an efficiency saving at the coal mine, or the power plant, the overall effect diminishes as you move down the chain to the end user. If you make the light bulb or the appliance at the end more efficient, you MULTIPLY the effciency savings as you go back up the chain.

Instead of buffering the system through having a ‘spinning reserve’ and pumped storage systems (like Dinorwic over the hill from our house http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/pumped.htm)

how about placing the buffering at USER LEVEL.

In every home, having a device about the size of a large suitcase that is wired into the mains just after the main isolator which would replace the meter. This would include a high performance (Li-ion polymer or better) battery pack, a smart meter which scanned the grid supply for the best available price at any time and an intelligent microprocessor which measured demand in the home 24/7. This unit would ‘learn’ what the user’s energy patterns were and would store enough energy to meet the top 1/3rd of demand peaks during the week, recharging itself off-peak at the cheapest price located by the smart meter.

This unit would save the householder money on peak rate power and would enable an enormous buffering and smoothing effect across local and regional networks. Over time, household appliance manufacturers would build smaller versions of these devices into their equipment and these appliances would communicate with the household power management programme on the home PC through a digital signal via the earth wire circuit. The battery store on the family plug-in hybrid car and the battery electric shopping vehicle parked in the garage, as well as the lawnmower etc. would also add to this buffering effect.

More efficent appliances can save 10% power usage. Smart appliances and in-house buffering could save a further 20%.

Now let’s add in micro generation. Roof-top windmills of 1-1.6Kw output. Plus solar PV and solar hot water (etc. etc.) about 25-30% of current domestic electricity demand could be met this way.

Now lets move to the neighbourhood level. Commercial premises, offices, hospitals and schools could have larger wind and solar collectors, as well as CHP units, running off locally produced biogass from kitchen, green, food and sewage wastes. Community scale hydro and wind generators also support local demand. These larger inputs can be managed by a local grid management system that controlls them as part of a micronet.The hosts of course, get paid for surplus power they sell into the local grid.

Now we move up to the larger plants feeding cities and the national grid. Large windfarms, deep current marine turbines, offshore tidal lagoon systems, geothermal plants, biomass/residual waste CHP plants with biological CO2 exhaust scrubbers producing biofuels as a by-product. These plants meet the balance of the large scale demand, which is now significantly less beacuse of the redesign of the system.

Intermittency of supply is no longer a problem, because there is a deep and distributed level of power buffering across the entire system at user level.

So if we take (using crude percentages) the present system, we start with 100% of the fuel energy value. Of this, about 20% is lost through extraction, refining and transport energy losses. 10% is wasted on maintaining the reserve generating capacity. A subsequent 40% is lost through generation losses, a further 10% is lost through transmission and another 10% through inefficient appliances and machinery at the users end.

so that’s 100 x -20% =80, 80 x -10%= 72, 72 x -40% = 41.2, 41.2 x -10% = 37.08, 37.08 x -10% = 33.372 That’s 2/3rds of the fuel’s energy wasted.

In a distributed, multi-renewables source system, we work the other way round.

Current user demand = 100 units. Appliance/ lighting etc. efficiency improvement of 10% = demand reduced to 90%. On site micro-generation produces say 25% of demand 90 x -25% = 67.5. Local community scale generation and micronet management can deliver a further 40% of power demand : 67.5 x -40% = 40.5. This is the demand on the wider grid and major power plants but, because of distributed local buffering, you can also take out the spinning reserve as demand spikes are largely smoothed out, (except for e.g. protracted spells of cold weather when one could start up stand-by gas-fired plant), a further say 15% : 40.5 x -15% = 34.425.

So there you are: the same standard of living and comfort (hopefully much better if home insulation and buildings thermal performance is also improved) for 1/3rd of the current generating capacity. And mixed renewables can therefore be developed to meet this without problems of grid instability. Jobs lost in the mining, oil and generating industries can be replaced in manufacturing, supply and service industries based on Energy services companies and maintenance for huge numbers of small power plants and equipment.

The knack is to make the change in about seven years, which is all the time we have left. Given visionary leadership and the right regulatory framework, the private and social economy sectors can deliver this, but some big oil and big energy vested interests stand in the way and they must be made to come on-side, or be made irrelevant through informed consumer choice. Perhaps the politicians will also catch up eventually (though I have to applaud Ken Livingstone, again, for his new energy strategy for London).

Yes there will still be many skilled, highly paid jobs in the nuclear industry: decomissioning old plant and dealing with storage of the present mountain of waste for the next 100 generations.

best to all

Colin

Thanks for all the interesting responses.

In haste, rather than comment overall on nuclear, and various options etc., I would just like to make a plea for scientific honesty, and for us to be on the look-out for people, especially intellectuals (rather than journalists), of bending facts to fit their grand theories.

I think we can all be prone to it to a certain extent, but it seems clear to me that Michael Crichton is guilty of it. He quotes the “50 people dead” situation for Chernobyl – yet this particular report also anticipates a further 9,000 will die. Why doesn’t he mention that?

... and then this report appears to be conservative (though from a respected authority), why doesn’t he take into account other estimates?

The worrying thing is that I think that there are any number of myths that are propogated by powerful groups around the world (governments, big business etc. using propaganda / PR); particularly to do with environmental pollution where it is difficult to pin-point the blame & culprits. For example, I think we are going to hear a lot more about flouride pollution – but that is a different story – see www.fluoridealert.org).

Also, agreed with Almuth’s point is that we need to study these things more and find out the real figures. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are whole classes of toxic chemicals and pollutants that are affecting the environment (especially the atmosphere) that we are not studying at present.

Best,

Peter

For instance, Teddy Roosevelt was a “preservationist” (earlier term for environmentalist) & made quite a bit of land off-limits to development. Nixon was pres when the EPA & associated environmental laws came into existence (he was either for them, or didn’t oppose them).

And the idea of “conservation” should resonate with “conservative,” you’d think.

As for liberals, they’ve been primarily concerned about jobs and high pay—so that could go against environmental issues.

And (hate to sound like Norb & Jimbo), people who have met their basic needs for food & shelter might more likely become interested in “quality of life” issues, such as clean air & water & greenspace. The rich are notoriously more NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) than the poor, or at least they have more clout to address their NIMBY concerns.

I would think many rich would start getting on the NOPE (“Not On Planet Earth”) bandwagon, once they realize NOPE serves NIMBY.

And then business people should be concerned with profits (you’d think), and thus concerned about environmental harm threatening those profits, not to mention inefficiency & waste.

Now I’ve just made myself wonder why more “conservatives” and “the rich” are not jumping full force on the environmentalist bandwagon, even pulling it. Unless they’re just…uninformed.

Centralized power systems can be improved from the user end and having more diversified micropower can defeat the need for most new power plants and even get rid of existing ones.

Since the “ideal” case is to avoid both coal and nuclear, then the best focus should be always to avoid a large centralized power plant of any type.

Best Regards,

Dan

Hello Dan, The schools would be a start. Apparently climate change is being touched on in citizenship classes. My partner just happened to be passing a classroom at her University when the teacher trainers were being tought about global warming for citizenship and they asked her to speak as an expert beacuse she said she was an activist. Completely ludicrous. We tried to set up a more detailed session for teachers but couldn’t find a teacher in our area intersted enough to help.

The councils could do far more to link refuse collection and recycling to sustainability. At least they can be lobbied. If you have a local FOE group, they seem to be invited to meeting regarding council policy and sustainability.

Obviously the government could do far far more and should be written to as well as your local MP.

The media are one of the biggest culprits for perpetuating the growth myth and are failing in their duty to report the truth. Medialens.org are very good at highlighting the dreadful hypocrisy. They concentrate on the broadsheets who should no better. Thes papers have mainly stopped questioning the veracity of global warming but they are all pro-business and report global warming like it is happening on another planet. They have lifestyle sections that are little more than shopping and apsirational catalogues. They have travel sections where mention might be made of easing your concionce with some trees. Write to the Editors to tell them this must all change. The BBC1 and ITV News is utterly appalling. Even Nesnight and Channel 4 are guilty of offering balance, which means denying it. These people must not be allowed to get away with it. They rarely reply, but they might read it.

Corporations need to be challenged. They can be written to, boycotted, leafleted (like McLibel) or a buy a share and turn up with your questions at their AGM.

Finally I suppose it’s a bit like not taking someone to task when they say something racist, but when friends, family and colleagues say something that it is no longer sensible in our globally warmed world they should be confronted. Discussing it must become part of everyday life. Then perhaps people might start questioning why action isn’t being taken by all of the above.

Finally come on the campaign Against Climate Change and Stop Climate Chaos March in London on November the 4th.

It’s a mammoth task to turn around the free market propaganda of the last sixty years but we’ve all got to start somewhere.

Kind regards, Ian.

Thanks Colin, You have helped open my eyes to what happened at Chernobyl.

I am planning to visit the Greenpeace exhibition on this next week …

http://www.oxotower.co.uk/Fallout.html

Well, if you are the person with the vision, then the visionary leadership may well have to come from you.

Get out there and do it if you can make the economics work!

I suspect the best place to start is in one of the new housing developments which is springing up, allowing some fresh thinking in a complete district.

See this month’s professional engineering magazine for intelligent white goods, which work along similar lines (sensing when the grid has demand outstripping supply in order to reduce spinning reserve).

Though the battery idea has probably not been embraced elsewhere as the specific cost is higher than other forms of energy storage. It would be more economic to store it some other way – but if it does not make the major part of the cost of the controllers, then maybe the way forward (also beware of heavy metals).

Likewise it is dependant on keeping the costs of the controllers down. An assumed cost of £1000 per household would be something like £20bn nationwide, which would finance most of the building of generation capacity we would need for the next 20 years or so

If you can make the economics work, you’ll be able to find the finance to put it into practice – in which case you should lead the revolution!

Best Regards Martin

Working on a number of things. Principally Wales Sustainability Reinvestment Trust. This is a financing mechanism for a number of related sustainable development activites. We are also working with Land for people ltd. who are utilising a community land trust structure for affordable local housing; member organisations of Sustainable Energy Wales and Cylch: the Wales community recycling network.

The battery buffer store idea may become viable if there is sufficient demand to get advanced Lithium ion polymer batteries into very large scale production. Amortising the capital cost into new build/refurb financing is one way; rental through an ESCo is another. The cost of new centralised generating plant will not stay static in real terms, so there should come a point where comparative economics work in favour of distributed buffering. The effect would be largely indirect, because there would also be savings in heavy grid infrastructure with a much higher percentage of power being generated and stored close to point of use.

It is possible that this may be a strategic rather than just an economic decision. Distributed generation networks should be inherantly more resilient to storm damage and rely less on large fuel flows so national energy security may well be a consideration.

If Bush nukes Iran, the economics would change overnight. Someone of course could well come up with a better idea; it’s just that some of us think it is worthwhile trying to promote this concept, in the face of a lot of indifference and the protection of the status quo by certain institutions.

wish us luck

cheers

Colin

Further evidence of the under-reporting of the effects of the Chernobyl disaster.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article623413.ece

Colin

I cannot see that the article reveals any additional information regarding the effects of the Chernobyl explosion.

I only see that someone has decided to conduct an investigation into allegations made by activist groups.

Do any data demonstrate that the incidence of any radiation-caused disease has increased? The US National Cancer Institute (http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2003/results_single/sect_01_table.04_2pgs.pdf) says that the incidence of thyroid cancer in this country is 8.9 per 100,000 per year and that the survival rate (5-year) is 93.8%. What has the historical rate of the disease been in the allegedly affected area and did the rate increase significantly after the explosion?

I have read that thyroid cancer rates increased in the Republic of Georgia after the explosion. However, the historical rate had been quite low, probably because of limited measurement, so the increase may have been the result of increased surveillance rather than an actual increase in the incidence of the disease.