Australia’s nuclear hypocrisy
Unholy Trinity
ON LINE opinion by Bill Williams 28 July 09
“……………………………..the moral and political quagmire created by our ongoing export of the raw ingredient for nuclear weapons fuel, uranium. The not-so-subtle identification of China as our most likely aggressor in the White Paper’s purview ought to raise questions about the role our uranium will play in that nation’s anticipated rearmament…..………..The capacity to produce nuclear power intrinsically involves the capacity to produce fissile material usable for nuclear weapons. A world free of nuclear weapons will be more readily achieved and sustained in a world in which nuclear power generation is phased out. Bomb-making ingredients will be harder to acquire and more conspicuous to seek. This will substantially deter proliferation, while facilitating timely detection and intervention, focusing scarce intelligence resources on needles, not haystacks.
With the weapons’ retirement age fast-approaching, Australia can contribute to real progress in abolishing these apocalyptic anachronisms, by putting some real spirit into driving the NWC agenda, by politely withdrawing from the US nuclear umbrella and by reducing the flow of raw material into the nuclear fuel chain.
Act now on climate change or pay later: expert
Act now on climate change or pay later: expert
ABC News Jul 27, 2009
The Climate Change Institute in Canberra has warned that Australia must think beyond the emissions trading scheme, if it wants to have an impact on global warming.Climate change experts are meeting at a summit at the Australian National University to discuss Australia’s response to the threat of global warming.As the Federal Government and Opposition battle it out over the detail of an ETS, Climate Change Institute director Will Steffen is advising Australians to embrace the renewable energy technologies that are available now, rather than wait for advances in the field.
“What we need to do is start getting the emissions trajectory down as soon as we can, the longer we wait to do this, the more we run the risk, the science says, of crossing some of these tipping elements of triggering some abrupt changes,” he said…………………….
“The other issue of course that came out quite strongly particularly from the economics community is that the longer we delay on the issue the costlier it’ll actually become.”
Act now on climate change or pay later: expert – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Chinese energy is greener than ours
THE AUSTRALIAN 27 July 09
“………Ferguson’s government and others in the developed world are being asked to comprehend ……………They have been repeatedly warned by the International Energy Agency that, even if the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries collectively reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2030, they cannot put the world on track to achieve stablisation of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million………….Martin Ferguson could have also cited a set of startling Chinese green power statistics in his mid-July speech to the Queensland Resources Council
By 2020 China aims to have installed 300,000MW of hydro power (equal to 80 Snowy Mountains schemes), 30,000MW of plants fuelled by agricultural waste, 1800MW of solar power and more than 50,000MW of wind farms (about four times what will be needed here to meet the Rudd renewable energy target).This will involve spending $US33billion ($40.3bn) a year on renewable energy.Everything about the Chinese effort is mindboggling. For example, it now employs 600,000 people (twice the population of Canberra) installing solar hot-water heaters in a $US2bn a year business. Its electric bicycle business is worth more than $US6bn a year.Nor are its efforts to reduce the environmental impact of its coal-burning generators to be underestimated.
Since 2005 China has required all new large power plants to use at least high-efficiency, super-critical technology and since 2007 it has shut down smaller, inefficient plants with a capacity of 14,380MW (more generation capacity than in NSW).This is allowing China to leapfrog the less efficient coal technology that is dominant in the developed world, including Australia.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 