Australia: Climate change action? Nuclear-free? 2013 is the critical year
Unless a new nuclear disaster occurs, the global nuclear lobby is set for a pretty successful 2013. Japan is to re-invigorate its nuclear industry, China is going ahead with a big nuclear plant, Fukushima is off the media radar, and the world is being subtly conned into loving low level radiation, and new gee-whiz nuclear reactors.
And yet – “If You Don’t Fight, You Lose” – so we antinukes press on, both against nuclear energy/nuclear weapons, and for real action on climate change. I, for one, want my grandchildren to know that I tried.
Matters nuclear would seem to be taking a holiday for the holiday season. Except for Lucas Heights Opal nuclear reactor being shut down due to the fire yesterday (08/01/13) – there would be little to report.
Bank hoax Am I the only one who wasn’t very keen on Johathan Moylan’s hoax pretending to be a press release from ANZ bank – about Whitehaven Coal share price? Seems to me that falsifying bank information, however daring, is a criminal offence, and can only lower public opinion of the environmental movement.
Climate The Australian media marks the new year with its usual huge emphasis on sport and trivia. Except now, for the bushfires, but we don’t connect them to global warming, now, do we? Especially as three East coast Liberal governments don’t really believe in global warming.
On the nuclear front – Australia now gets a new burst of pro nuke propaganda, with these main themes:
- Low level radiation is pitched as not harmful, (and nuclear solves global warming, too) – this headed by University of Adelaide’s pro nuclear front department “The Environment Institute” headed by Barry Brook and Ben Heard.
- China is touted as soaring away with new nuclear power, (though its own Environment Minister is dubious about its safety) Japan‘s government is all out for nuclear power – they’ll need Australian uranium again.
- New nuclear reactors touted. The Age Business section (8/01/13 )gives practically a full blown advertisement article on Thorium reactors – (no mention that they need plutonium fuel, too, and barely a mention , of their toxic wastes, their weapons proliferation danger, security hazards, – and not mentioned at all – their commercial non viability. Being small, they’re economic only if sold in mass quantities – which is highly unlikely)
Australia’s new weather demands a new politics
Events have not been kind to the likes of Abbott, Bolt and Plimer. The current heatwave – so severe that the Bureau of Meteorology has been forced to add a new colour to its temperature maps – is just the latest event in a decade of extraordinary weather: weather of the kind that scientists have long warned is a likely consequence of man-made global warming.
Tony Abbott says he’s currently on standby with his local fire brigade but as his opposition to effective action on climate change is likely to contribute to even more extreme events in the future, this looks like the most cynical kind of stunt politics.
Australia’s new weather demands a new politics; a politics capable of responding to an existential threat.
Heatwave: Australia’s new weather demands a new politics http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/08/australia-heatwave-weather
Climate change clashes with the myth of a land where progress is limited only by the rate at which resources can be extracted George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, 8 January 2013 I wonder what Tony Abbott will say about the record heatwave now ravaging his country. The Australian opposition leader has repeatedly questioned the science and impacts of climate change. He has insisted that “the science is highly contentious, to say the least” and asked – demonstrating what looks like a wilful ignorance – “If man-made CO2 was quite the villain that many of these people say it is, why hasn’t there just been a steady increase starting in 1750, and moving in a linear way up the graph?”He has argued against Australian participation in serious attempts to cut emissions.
Climate change denial is almost a national pastime in Australia. People such as Andrew Bolt and Ian Plimer have made a career out of it. The Australian – owned by Rupert Murdoch – takes such extreme anti-science positions that it sometimes makes the Sunday Telegraph look like the voice of reason. Continue reading
Hotter world climate is the background to Australia’s unprecedented heat wave
‘
‘Clearly, the climate system is responding to the background warming trend. Everything that happens in the climate system now is taking place on a planet which is a degree hotter than it used to be.’’As the warming trend increases over coming years, record-breaking heat will become more and more common, Dr Jones said.
While temperatures vary on a local and regional scale, globally it has
now been 27 years since the world experienced a month that was colder
than average
Get used to record-breaking heat: bureau,
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/get-used-to-recordbreaking-heat-bureau-20130108-2cet5.html#ixzz2HXDV5Yj7
January 9, 2013 Ben Cubby Environment Editor Temperatures off the charts as Australia turns deep purple
US posts year of record high temperatures The heatwave that has scorched the nation since Christmas is a taste of things to come, with this week’s records set to tumble again and again in the coming years, climate scientists said.
The hottest average maximum temperature ever recorded across Australia – 40.33 degrees, set on Monday – may only stand for 24 hours and be eclipsed when all of Tuesday’s readings come in. Previously, thatrecord had stood since December 21, 1972.
‘The current heatwave – in terms of its duration, its intensity and its extent – is now unprecedented in our records,’’ the Bureau of Meteorology’s manager of climate monitoring and prediction, David Jones, said. Continue reading
Company that built Fukushima nuclear reactors now leading the cleanup work
NYTimes: Japan’s cleanup denounced — “A disgrace… absolutely irresponsible” — Company that built all six Fukushima reactor buildings is leading ‘decontamination’ http://enenews.com/nytimes-japans-cleanup-denounced-disgrace-absolutely-irresponsible-company-built-all-six-fukushima-reactor-buildings-control-decontamination
January 8th, 2013
Title: Japan’s Cleanup After a Nuclear Accident Is Denounced
Source: NYTimes
Author: HIROKO TABUCHI; Makiko Inoue contributed reporting
Date: January 7, 2013
The decontamination crews at a deserted elementary school here are at the forefront of what Japan says is the most ambitious radiological cleanup the world has seen […]
Recent reports in the local media of cleanup crews dumping contaminated soil and leaves into rivers has focused attention on the sloppiness of the cleanup.
[…] the central and local governments have handed over much of the 1 trillion yen decontamination effort to Japan’s largest construction companies. […]
Kajima also built the reactor buildings for all six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, leading some critics to question why control of the cleanup effort has been left to companies with deep ties to the nuclear industry. […]
“What’s happening on the ground is a disgrace” -Masafumi Shiga, president of Shiga Toso, a refurbishing company based in Iwaki, Fukushima
“This isn’t decontamination — it’s […] absolutely irresponsible” -Tomoya Yamauchi, an expert in radiation measurement at Kobe University
See also: Gundersen: Truly appalling nuclear event in Japan — A lot of people are very, very concerned (AUDIO)
The Fukushima nuclear cleanup is in itself a disaster, too
Fukushima Cleanup Workers Have Been Dumping Contaminated Debris Into Rivers http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-radiation-cleanup-still-primitive-22-months-after-the-tsunami-2013-1#ixzz2HX4rP6eZ Michael Kelley | Jan. 8, 2013, After a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck Japan on March 11, 2011, officials promised to use cutting-edge technology from across the globe to mount the most ambitious radiological cleanup humanity has ever seen.
But it appears that the $11.5 billion, multi-decade effort has become part of the nuclear disaster. Continue reading
The way forward – 100% renewable energy
100% Renewable Energy – The Only Way Forward, The Energy Collective Anna Leidreiter January 8, 2013 It is a fact that non-renewable energies will, by definition, run out. It is also a fact that in the meantime, dependence on these energy sources is causing multiple existential global crises. If human beings are to preserve modernity and planetary habitability, we must soon shift to 100% renewable energy in all sectors. A fossil-free energy system is the only way forward as it results in socio-economic development and regional value creation.
The world’s leading scientists have issued a mandate that we must change our energy system to a sustainable one based on conservation, efficiency and renewable energy in the near future or risk losing planetary habitability. The energy transition is not a lifestyle choice; it is an essential way to combat climate change and save our planet. Continue reading
Thorium nuclear reactors just the latest con job by the nuke lobby
Thorium nukes are just the 21st century version of “too cheap to meter” that the nuke lobby was pushing in the last century. They always have some amazing technology just around the corner, but it’s just a smokescreen to distract from what they are trying to sell now.
Learn a few facts and you won’t be so easily duped:
Thorium: Back to the Dream Factory
Benefits of thorium as alternative nuclear fuel are ‘overstated’
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 