France’s government ignores France’s majority opposition to nuclear power
Adjournment speech – Fukushima 6 months on – Australia’s Nuclear Free Alliance, Spokesperson Scott Ludlam, 14th September 2011,”.……Another guest who we were very fortunate to host at Seven Mile was Andre Lariviere, of the French network to phase out the nuclear industry-a network of 900 groups in France. We tend to think of the French as being the happy atomic country or as Andre puts it, the nation of the happy atom.
It is not the case. It has not been the case for a long period of time. A recent poll-I am quoting from a Reuters article of April this year-carried out in late March, subsequent to the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, found the 57 per cent of respondents were generally in favour of dropping nuclear energy, with 20 per cent strongly in favour of the idea. So the footprint of the nuclear industry in France has taken on this profoundly anti-democratic side in that most of us here in Australia probably think the French are pretty happy with their clean, green nuclear industry generating 70 or 80 per cent of their electricity. It is absolutely not the case.
The French government will ignore that poll, as polls here in Australia about nuclear power and uranium mining have been ignored, because it is inconvenient. But the French have just suffered another accident, a blast at a reprocessing facility in the south of France that has killed one worker and put a number of others in hospital. There does not appear to have been a significant radioactive release, although you always have to take government officials’ proclamations with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, an explosion at a reprocessing plant dealing with plutonium and some of the material that has now showered the north-east part of Japan is still a cause for serious concern. I suspect it will not improve the polling numbers the next time a poll is taken in France.
The French are absolutely not alone in opposing nuclear power by various margins. In Japan, 82 per cent of Japanese favoured building more plants in Japan, or maintaining existing ones. That was a poll that was taken in 2005. Subsequent to the Fukushima disaster, somewhere between 41 per cent and 54 per cent of the Japanese people now support scrapping or reducing the numbers of nuclear power plants… http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/content/speech/adjournment-speech-fukushima-6-months-australias-nuclear-free-alliance
India: thousands of anti nuclear protestors spurred on by France’s accident
this was not a struggle by a selective group of people. “Authorities are giving a colour that it is a struggle by fishermen against a nuclear project. But the fact is that all sections of people are participating in it,”
France nuke blast fuels Koodankulam agitation, New Indian Express, 14 Sept 11, TIRUNELVELI: As news about the explosion at a nuclear site in Marcoule, southern France reached the fasting agitators in Idinthakarai, the call to shut down the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) almost reached a feverish pitch.
The activists were quick to point out that this was just another example of the danger that nuclear reactors could pose to the community. Today’s agitation saw as many as 127 people, including 25 women, continuing their indefinite hunger strike at Idinthakarai in Tirunelveli district.
Apart from these 127, another 11,000 joined the relay hunger strike at the venue on Monday and a large number of people from neighbouring Thoothukudi and Kanyakumari districts also arrived and participated in stir. Continue reading
Polluting industries’ front groups – Australia’s Climate Sceptics
(includes video) Rogues or respectable? How climate change sceptics spread doubt and denial, Independent Australia, 14 Sep 2011, Professor Ian Enting takes a look at the front groups and published texts of Australia’s climate sceptics. He says, “most prominent pseudo-sceptical scientists are…gathering together to provide apparent respectability to front organisations that are designed to spread confusion”..…
The reality is that the most prominent pseudo-sceptical scientists are …..gathering together to provide apparent respectability to front organisations that are designed to spread confusion.
This is the message from Merchants of Doubt : How a Handful of Scientists Obscured Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.
Authors Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, backed up by documents obtained in the course of tobacco litigation, show that not only was greenhouse denial using the same misinformation techniques as the tobacco industry, but that it was often the same groups and the same people. These anti-science activities hide behind names such as “Friends of Science”.
In Australia we have a similar phenomenon, with the additional twist of often using names that aim to capture a “martyr for science” image. They present themselves as being ignored by an entrenched establishment, when in reality they are ignoring or distorting the accumulated scientific knowledge.
An early starter was the Lavoisier Group — a single issue organisation similar in structure and name to organisations like the Bennelong Society (on indigenous affairs), the HR Nicholls society (on industrial relations) and the Samuel Griffith Society (on constitutional matters and support for the monarchy). But for the Lavoisier Group, the “martyr for science” ethos is a bit of a stretch — Lavoisier was executed for his activities as a tax collector.
The latest entry is the Galileo Movement , again co-opting the name of a “martyr for science” for an anti-science activity. The Galileo Movement’s founders funded the previous visit to Australia by Viscount Monckton. The movement’s “Independent Climate Science Group” includes Monckton, Bob Carter, S. Fred Singer and Ian Plimer as well as Garth Paltridge.
Monckton’s extravagant claims were described by John Abraham earlier in this series. Monckton’s recent testimony to the US Congress has been extensively refuted by a larger group of scientists…. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2011/environment/rogues-or-respectable-how-climate-change-sceptics-spread-doubt-and-denial/
Climate change experienced by indigenous Alaskans
Observations of Climate Change from Indigenous Alaskans, USGS 13 Sept 11, Personal interviews with Alaska Natives in the Yukon River Basin provide unique insights on climate change and its impacts, helping develop adaptation strategies for these local communities. Personal interviews with Alaska Natives in the Yukon River Basin provide unique insights on climate change and its impacts, helping develop adaptation strategies for these local communities.
The most common statement by interview participants was about warmer temperature in recent years. It was observed to be warmer in all seasons, though most notably in the winter months. In previous generations, winter temperatures dropped to 40 degrees Celsius below freezing, while in present times temperatures only reach 25 C or 30 C below freezing. Moreover, in the rare case that temperatures did drop as low as they had in the past, it was a brief cold spell, in contrast to historic month-long cold spells.
The considerable thinning of ice on the Yukon and Andreafsky Rivers in recent years was the topic of several interviews. Thin river ice is a significant issue because winter travel is mainly achieved by using the frozen rivers as a transportation route via snow machines or sled dogs. Thinning ice shortens the winter travel season, making it more difficult to trade goods between villages, visit friends and relatives, or reach traditional hunting grounds. One interview participant also discussed how the Andreafsky River, on whose banks their village lies, no longer freezes in certain spots, and several people have drowned after falling through the resulting holes in the ice. ….
Vegetation patterns were also observed to be shifting due to the changes in seasonal weather patterns, and this leads to increased difficulty in subsistence activities. Interviews showed the unpredictability from year to year on whether vegetation, particularly salmonberries, could be relied upon. Those interviewed spoke of a change in the range of species of mammals (moose and beaver) as well as a decrease in the number of some bird species (ptarmigan). This is of special concern because of the important role these animals play in the subsistence diets of Alaska Natives. Many also rely on hunting or trapping for their livelihoods. … http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article_pf.asp?ID=2931
Senator Scott Ludlam speaks on ANFA, uranium, Aboriginals, and Navajo
In 2008, a five-year cleanup plan of the Navajo lands was proposed and implemented by the US EPA, which estimated that 30 per cent of all Navajo still lack uncontaminated drinking water. It is an experience that is familiar to Aboriginal people here in Australia
Adjournment speech – Fukushima 6 months on – Australia’s Nuclear Free Alliance Spokesperson Scott Ludlam 14th September 2011“…….I had the enormous good fortune before I departed for Canberra to spend Sunday, 11 September at Seven Mile Camp on the outskirts of Alice Springs at a meeting of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance-ANFA ……. I spent my time there in the company of a number of people: Uncle Kevin Buzzacott, who has spent the latter part of his life fighting nuclear dispossession of the land of his people by the Olympic Dam uranium mine at Roxby Downs in central South Australia; Mitch, whose sense of humour and fierce wit and passion for her people leave an indelible trace on the memory of anybody who spends time with her; the indestructible Barb Shaw, who has unfortunately spent far too much of her time having to fight the negative impacts of the Northern Territory intervention that was so unwisely carried forward by this government; and Aunty Isabel and Bunny Naparrula, who travelled down from Tennant Creek to speak to that group of people about this Commonwealth government’s shameful proposal to continue the Howard government’s radioactive dispossession of their people with the proposed imposition of a radioactive waste dump which would collect the Commonwealth obligated nuclear material which principally resides at the moment at Lucas Heights in central South Australia-though there is also a certain amount at overseas reprocessing sites in France. They do not want that material there, and they have led an extraordinary campaign, which I have been privileged to be a part of, to prevent that material being dumped in a shed on a cattle station on their traditional land so that the Commonwealth government can wash its hands of it and walk away.
ANFA has been going since 1997. It was formed in Alice Springs in response to the Howard government’s unleashing of the uranium sector to vastly more disappointing results than I imagine they were anticipating and in particular in response to the challenge of the proposed Jabiluka mine in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. ANFA, which was formed as the Alliance Against Uranium, has stayed very strong since then. That ANFA meeting was an amazing gathering of people whom you might consider some of the most marginalised and disadvantaged in the country. Aboriginal communities, activists, elders and some of the new leaders coming through gather once a year-this is the fourth one that I have had the extreme good fortune to attend-to share their stories of dispossession and of that e campaigns that they have waged and in many cases won against foreign and domestic uranium mining companies and against the extraordinarily misguided ambitions of successive Commonwealth governments in seeking to leave this toxic time capsule of radioactive waste on their country. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 