Inside the Youth-Led Fight for a Demilitarized Future

Over the past two months, Raytheon/RTX — which develops and sells weapons systems used by the Israeli Defense Forces — has seen stock prices skyrocket and company executives discuss the rise in violence as a financial opportunity.

According to UMass Dissenters organizers, the company is deeply entrenched at the college through recruitment practices and the Isenberg School of Management, which has a close educational and financial partnership with the weapons manufacturer. 

A UMass Dissenters organizer discusses the growing youth-led antiwar movement and how they are organizing against weapons manufacturers and the war in Gaza.

SCHEERPOST, By Alessandra Bergamin / Waging Nonviolence, 17 Dec 23

In January 2020, Dissenters — a grassroots, youth-led antiwar movement — began with the mission to connect violence against Black and brown communities in the U.S. to the systems of oppression that fund, arm and enable global militarism. While born from the legacy of the U.S. antiwar movement, Dissenters takes an intersectional approach that connects global wars with corporate elites, local police, border walls, surveillance and prisons. Operating across the country through campus chapters, training fellowships and a strong social media presence, Dissenters has been organizing for college divestment from weapons manufacturers, ending campus recruitment from military-affiliated companies and disbanding campus police departments.

Since Oct. 7, in the aftermath of the Hamas attack and the subsequent siege of Gaza, Dissenters chapters have doubled down on antiwar organizing, holding local and national rallies, sit-ins, student walkouts and training events both on and offline. One campus chapter — at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst — has organized protests, disruptions to sports games, and a sit-in at the chancellor’s office to pressure its university to cut ties with the weapons manufacturer Raytheon, now known as RTX. 

Over the past two months, Raytheon/RTX — which develops and sells weapons systems used by the Israeli Defense Forces — has seen stock prices skyrocket and company executives discuss the rise in violence as a financial opportunity. According to UMass Dissenters organizers, the company is deeply entrenched at the college through recruitment practices and the Isenberg School of Management, which has a close educational and financial partnership with the weapons manufacturer. 

I spoke with Bre Joseph, a UMass Amherst senior and organizer with the campus chapter of Dissenters. We discussed organizing college students against weapons manufacturers, the radicalizing impact of activist arrests, and the lessons learned from successes and setbacks.

In relation to the siege on Gaza, what are the main goals or demands of the UMass Dissenters chapter?

Number one is that the school must divest and cut ties with weapons manufacturers like Raytheon, but also Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and so on. Our second demand is that the administration must call for an immediate end to Israel’s siege on Gaza and end U.S. funding. A third demand is that the administration must replace weapons manufacturers with jobs working toward a demilitarized future. 

I think that third one acknowledges that — while moving away from Raytheon as a campus partner would technically decrease opportunities afforded to UMass students — the onus is on the campus to replace jobs that increase death and violence with jobs that are sustainable and help the earth. We’ve heard students express this on an app called Yik Yak where you can post anonymously. It’s usually unserious, but every now and then I’ll open it and see people say, “I’m an engineering major, and I’m tired of having Raytheon pushed down my throat as an employment option. I don’t want to build bombs. I don’t want to make money for this company that’s killing people. I want better options.” That’s really been our goal from the beginning — get those jobs out and center a demilitarized future instead of militarizing it further.

How does intersectionality both inform and impact Dissenters’ organizing? ………………………………………………………………..

How has UMass Dissenters organized to inform and mobilize students on the connections between the campus and weapons manufacturers? 

In terms of education, we have a document that we’ve made public via our Instagram and emails we’ve sent out to interested students really detailing UMass’s connection to Raytheon — and detailing Raytheon’s connection to the IDF and the war on Palestinians. At our weekly meetings, we’ve also had things like teach-ins for interested students. We’ve also crashed Raytheon information sessions to do this thing we call “being the common sense,” where we ask recruiters: “What exactly would students be building? What exactly is making the company money?” We ask the questions they don’t really want to answer but that they need to to be held accountable…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/17/inside-the-youth-led-fight-for-a-demilitarized-future/

December 18, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

COP28 — The End Of The 1.5°C Fantasy

what the world got from COP28 was more like an endorsement of the status quo that reflects the ongoing state of play rather than accelerating it.

We must not allow broiling temperatures, more powerful storms, more frequent wildfires, and the disappearance of rain forests to become the new normal.

 https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/16/cop-28-the-end-of-the-1-5-degree-c-fantasy/

In Paris at the end of 2015, the world rejoiced when the national representatives from around the planet agreed to try really, really hard to keep average global temperatures from increasing more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Of course, in the 1800s when the Industrial Revolution began, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was around 300 parts per million. In 2015, carbon dioxide levels were on the verge of breaking the 400 ppm barrier. Today, with COP28 now in the rear view mirror, the world is experiencing carbon dioxide levels of 420 ppm.

In order for all the happy talk in 2015 to mean anything, CO2 levels should have been declining since then. The fact that they have risen instead means the promise of the Paris climate accords was a mirage. Pessimists at the time suggested the good news was an illusion and history, unfortunately, has proven those “the glass is half empty” types correct.

There was much celebrating in Dubai when the final communique from COP28 contained an historic phrase that proclaimed for the first time ever that the nations of the world should focus on “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.” That is the first time in 28 tries that the words “fossil fuels” have been included in such a statement, which is pretty astonishing when you realize these annual events are about global warming. It has taken 28 years and millions of written and spoken words to acknowledge that fossil fuels are the problem. A young activist from India may have helped as well.

Sultan Al Jaber is being celebrated for getting those words into the final document after they were omitted from a prior draft and for standing up to his oil-soaked colleagues who felt betrayed by that language. But David Wallace-Wells, a science and climate writer for the New York Times, is not one of those who is cheering. In fact, he says what the world got from COP28 was more like an endorsement of the status quo that reflects the ongoing state of play rather than accelerating it.

Global sales of internal combustion engine vehicles peaked in 2017, he writes, and investment in renewable energy has exceeded investment in fossil fuel infrastructure for several years running. In 2022, 83 percent of new global energy capacity was green.

“The question isn’t about whether there will be a transition, but how fast, global and thorough it will be. The answer is: not fast or global or thorough enough yet, at least on the current trajectories, which COP28 effectively affirmed. To limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius now requires entirely eliminating emissions not long after 2040, according to the Global Carbon Project, whose ‘carbon budget’ for 1.5 degrees Celsius will be exhausted in about five years of current levels of emissions. For 1.7 degrees Celsius, it’s just after 2050, and for 2 degrees Celsius, 2080. And despite Al Jaber’s claim that COP28 has kept the 1.5 degree goal alive, hardly anyone believes it’s still plausible.”

In fact, Wallace-Wells writes, most analysts predict a global peak in fossil fuel emissions at some point over the next decade, followed not by a decline but a long plateau — meaning that in every year for the foreseeable future, we would be doing roughly as much damage to the future of the planet’s climate as was done in recent years. The expected result will be that by the end of this century, average global temperatures will have risen by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“Not so long ago, this was a future that terrified us, but now we are not just coming to accept that future and, in some corners, applauding it as progress. Over the last several years, as decarbonization has made worst case scenarios seem much less likely, a wave of climate alarmism has given way somewhat to a new mix of accommodation and optimism.”

Imagining 3°C At COP28

At COP28, Bill Gates described anything below 3 degrees as a “fortunate” outcome. A few months earlier, former President Barack Obama struck a similar note in describing how he’d tried to talk his daughter Malia off the edge of climate despair by emphasizing what could still be saved rather than what had been lost already through global inaction. “We may not be able to cap temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, but here’s the thing, if we work really hard, we may be able to cap it at two and a half.” Scottish data scientist Hannah Ritchie gives a shot of optimism to those caught in a panic about warming and environmental degradation in a new book called “Not the End of the World.”

Wallace-Wells tries to remain guardedly optimistic but believes COP28 will be remembered as the moment the world finally gave up on the goal of limiting warming to degrees and encourages his readers to think what passing that threshold will mean.

“Global warming doesn’t proceed in large jumps, for the most part, and surpassing 1.5 degrees does not bring us immediately or inevitably to 2 degrees. But we know quite a lot about the difference between those two worlds — the one we had once hoped to achieve and the one that now looks much more likely. Indeed, in the recent past, a clear understanding of those differences was responsible for a period of intense and global climate alarm.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 Degrees Celsius,” published in 2018, collated all the scientific literature about the two warming levels. Between 1.5 and 2 degrees C, it estimated more than 150 million people will die prematurely from the air pollution produced by the burning of fossil fuels. Flooding events that used to arrive once a century will become annual events.

Most scientists believe that amount of warming would be a death sentence for the world’s coral reefs. And many believe that, in that range, the planet will lock in the permanent loss of many of its ice sheets, which could bring, over centuries, enough sea level rise to redraw the world’s coastlines.

If warming grows beyond those levels, so will its impacts. At 3 degrees, for instance, New York City could be hit by three 100 year flooding events each year and more than 50 times as many people in African cities would experience conditions of dangerous heat. Wildfires would burn twice as much land globally and the Amazon would cease to be a rain forest but become a grassland. Potentially lethal heat stress, almost unheard of at 1.5 degrees, would become routine for billions at 2 degrees, according to one recent study, and above 3 degrees would impact places like the American Midwest.

“In some ways, these projections may sound like old news, but as we find ourselves now adjusting to the possibility of a future shaped by temperature rise of that kind, it may be clarifying to recall that, almost certainly, when you first heard those projections, you were horrified. The era of climate reckoning has also been, to some degree, a period of normalization, and while there are surely reasons to move past apocalyptic politics toward something more pragmatic, one cost is a loss of perspective at negotiated, technocratic events like [COP28]”

Was 1.5°C Just An Attractive Fantasy?

Perhaps it was always somewhat fanciful to believe that it was possible to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Wallace-Wells suggests. As Bill McKibben said recently, simply stating the goal did a lot to shape action in the years that followed the Paris climate accords by demanding we all look squarely at what the science told us about what it would mean to fail.

The Dubai consensus that renewable energy should triple by 2030 is one sign that, in some areas, impressive change is possible. “But for all of our temperature goals, the timelines are growing shorter and shorter, bringing the world closer and closer to futures that looked so fearsome to so many not very long ago,” Wallace -Wells cautions.

The Takeaway

We must not allow broiling temperatures, more powerful storms, more frequent wildfires, and the disappearance of rain forests to become the new normal. We need to keep the vision that emerged in Paris in 2015 alive and intact, even if it was largely a fantasy. We need to keep the pressure on governments and fossil fuel companies to sharply reduce their carbon emissions by honoring the spirit as well as the letter of closing statement from COP28.

The struggle is far from over. Every tenth of a degree of increase in average global temperatures prevented will avoid untold suffering for millions of humans.

There is another consideration here. Much of the turn toward extreme right wing governments around the world from the United States to the Netherlands, Italy, New Zealand, and the UK is directly connected to a desire to keep black and brown people from becoming unwelcome immigrants. It is in the selfish best interest of wealthy nations to control climate related migration by controlling global temperature increases. If we think climate migration is rampant now, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

December 18, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nuclear power – a ‘dangerous distraction’ from real climate action

A ‘dangerous distraction’ COP plot to triple nuclear power by 2050 decried

 https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/12/17/a-dangerous-distraction/–By Jon Queally, Common Dreams

Climate campaigners scoffed Saturday at a 22-nation pledge to triple nuclear power capacity by mid-century as a way to ward off the increasing damage of warming temperatures, with opponents calling it a costly and “dangerous” distraction from the urgent need for a fossil fuel phaseout alongside a rapid increase in more affordable and scaleable renewable sources such as wind and solar.

The Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy—backed by the United States, Canada, France, the Czech Republic, and others—was announced as part of the Climate Action Summit taking place in Dubai as a part of the two-week U.N. climate talks known as COP28. 

While the document claims a “key role” for nuclear energy to keep “a 1.5°C limit on temperature rise within reach” by 2050 and to help attain the so-called “net-zero emissions” goal that governments and the fossil fuel industry deploy to justify the continued burning of coal, oil, and gas, critics say the false solution of atomic power actually harms the effort to reduce emissions by wasting precious time and money that could be spent better and faster elsewhere.

“There is no space for dangerous nuclear power to accelerate the decarbonization needed to achieve the Paris climate goal,” said Masayoshi Iyoda, a 350.org campaigner in Japan who cited the 2011 Fukushima disaster as evidence of the inherent dangers of nuclear power.

Nuclear energy, said Iyoda, “is nothing more than a dangerous distraction. The attempt of a ‘nuclear renaissance’ led by nuclear industries’ lobbyists since the 2000s has never been successful—it is simply too costly, too risky, too undemocratic, and too time-consuming. We already have cheaper, safer, democratic, and faster solutions to the climate crisis, and they are renewable energy and energy efficiency.”

When word of the multi-nation pledge emerged last month, Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and co-founder of The Solutions Project which offers a roadmap for 100% renewable energy that excludes nuclear energy, called the proposal the “stupidest policy proposal I’ve ever seen.”

Jacobson said the plan to boost nuclear capacity in a manner to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis “will never happen no matter how many goals are set” and added that President Joe Biden was getting “bad advice in the White House” for supporting it.

In comments from Dubai, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said that while nuclear is not “going to be the sweeping alternative to every other energy source,” he claimed that “science and the reality of facts” shows the world “you can’t get to net-zero 2050 without some nuclear.”

Numerous studies and blueprints towards a renewable energy future, however, have shown this is not established fact, but rather the position taken by both the nuclear power industry itself and those who would otherwise like to slow the transition to a truly renewable energy system.

Pauline Boyer, energy transition campaign manager with Greenpeace France, said the scientific evidence is clear and it is not in favor of a surge in nuclear power.

“If we wish to maintain a chance of a trajectory of 1.5°C, we must massively reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the coming years, but nuclear power is too slow to deploy in the face of the climate emergency,” she said. 

“The announcement of a tripling of capacities is disconnected from reality,” Boyer continued. Citing delays and soaring costs, she said the nuclear industry “is losing ground in the global energy mix every day” in favor of renewable energy options that are cheaper, quicker to deploy, and more accessible to developing countries.

In 2016, researchers at the University of Sussex and the Vienna School of International Studies showed that “entrenched commitments to nuclear power” were likely “counterproductive” towards achieving renewable energy targets, especially as “better ways to meet climate goals”—namely solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower–were suppressed.

In response to Saturday’s announcement, Soraya Fettih, a 350.org campaigner from France, which relies heavily on nuclear power, said it’s simply a move in the wrong direction. “Investing now in nuclear energy is an inefficient route to take to reduce emissions at the scale and pace needed to tackle climate change,” said Fettih. “Nuclear energy takes much longer than renewable energy to be operational.”

Writing on the subject in 2019, Harvard University professor Naomi Oreskes and renowned author and psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton observed how advocates of nuclear power declare the technology “clean, efficient, economical, and safe” while in reality “it is none of these. It is expensive and poses grave dangers to our physical and psychological well-being.”

“There are now more than 450 nuclear reactors throughout the world,” they wrote at the time. “If nuclear power is embraced as a rescue technology, there would be many times that number, creating a worldwide chain of nuclear danger zones—a planetary system of potential self-annihilation.”

December 18, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste. Fifty years of searching, still nowhere to dump it.

by Rex Patrick | Dec 15, 2023,  https://michaelwest.com.au/nuclear-waste-fifty-years-of-searching-still-nowhere-to-dump-it/—

The Department of Defence has engaged a former Defence Deputy Secretary as a highly paid consultant to find a place on Defence land to store submarine nuclear waste. Rex Patrick takes a look at a search for the impossible.

In his role as a Defence Department Deputy Secretary, he was tasked with finding a place on the same lands to store low-level nuclear waste, and he couldn’t find any, so why would he have more luck as a consultant? Was he not paid enough?

Assuming the US Congress shortly approves the transfer of Virginia Class submarines from the US Navy to the Royal Australian Navy, Australia won’t get its first nuclear submarine until sometime around 2033. According to evidence provided to the Australian Senate by our Defence Department, the first nuclear-powered submarine will be second-hand and have a remaining reactor life of 20 years.

That means the first Australian reactor will be decommissioned around 2053; 30 years from today.

One might think that three decades is plenty of time to sort this problem out. But if past experience is anything to go by, the search for a suitable high-level nuclear waste site is already running late.

Australia has been searching for a site for a National Radioactive Waste Management Facility (NRWMF) site since the 1970s;

and after 50 years, it still hasn’t found a spot on which to safely establish such a repository.

In 2012, the Parliament tried to kick the whole low-level waste site selection process along by passing the National Radioactive Waste Management Act 2012. Since July 2014, the Commonwealth has spent approximately $109 million (ex GST) trying to find a site, only to have the Federal Court, in July this year, set aside the Minister’s decision to locate the NRWMF at Kimba in South Australia.

Low-level radioactive material remains scattered at more than 100 sites across the country, with many of the sites not constructed for long-term waste management.

It’s a half-century-long saga of public policy and administrative failure with no resolution in sight.

The search for a high-level waste site

In March this year, Deputy Prime Minister Marles (please don’t call him Defence Minister – he likes the DPM title better) announced that the Albanese Government were looking at a Defence site for the storage of AUKUS waste.

What wasn’t detailed then, and is only public now through Freedom of Information, is that in February this year, the Government set up an integrated site review team, led by former Deputy Defence Secretary Steve Grzeskowiak.

The Review team includes Defence representatives from the Australian Submarine Agency, Security and Estate Group and Joint Logistics Command. It will be supported by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, the Australian Radioactive Waste Agency and Geoscience Australia.

For his work in leading the Review, Grzeskowiak’s company SG Advice Pty Ltd has been awarded a $396,000 contract that commenced on 27 February 2023 and runs through to 31 December 2023.

It is not clear why Defence does not have this capability within its own organisations (as you will see shortly, it has done these activities internally in the past).

So, the outcomes of the review are expected around now.

No room at Woomera

The Defence Department manages a vast and complex Defence Estate of over 2.8 million hectares. It’s claimed to be the largest landholding in the Commonwealth with 70 major bases, 100 plus training ranges, and more than 1000 leased or owned properties.

Yet when the Morrison Government were looking for a site for low-level waste, Defence was adamant that the Defence Estate was not the right place. According to Defence, not a single hectare was suitable or available for such a facility.

Back in February 2020, with the Government knowing it had botched the NRWMF site selection process, further legislation, the National Radioactive Waste Management Amendment (Site Specification, Community Fund and Other Measures) Bill 2020, was introduced into Parliament.

The dominant purpose of the Bill was to have the Parliament select Kimba as the NRWMF site because if the Parliament selected the site, the Courts couldn’t intervene. The Senate wasn’t buying into it – it didn’t want to be the fix-it place for the then Government’s screw-ups. It wasn’t going to take away the rights of indigenous to appeal the site decision to the Federal Court.

During the Senate Inquiry into the Bill, when Defence was asked if there was a suitable place on Defence land for a site, for example, the vast Woomera missile test range, they gave evidence that they had no land whatsoever on which to locate a low-level waste site:

“In May 2017, the then Department of Industry, Innovation and Science sought Defence’s advice to determine if a suitable location for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility could be found within the Defence estate.

“The request identified four Defence owned sites, which comprise a collection of separate parcels of land as potential locations for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility. Two of those sites lie within the Woomera Prohibited Area. One site lies outside of but in proximity to the Woomera Prohibited Area. Based on the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science’s site selection criteria, the Defence assessment determined that the siting of the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility at any of the four sites identified in the request could not be achieved.”

In short, Defence couldn’t find anywhere in the 122,188 square kilometres of the Woomera Prohibited Area, an area twice the size of Tasmania, to put a low-level waste facility.

If at first you don’t succeed …

The origin of Defence’s position was a study carried out in 2017. The results of the study, which looked at four sites in detail, were communicated by letter stating:

“My department has also undertaken a review of 223 additional Defence-owned sites (not identified in the report, in consultation with key stakeholders at Defence, to ascertain whether any other sites could be considered for the NRWMF. The outcome of the review and broad consultation is that there are no Defence-owned land sites, (greater than 100 hectares) that would be suitable for this purpose.”

The letter was signed off by the then Deputy Secretary of Estates and Infrastructure, Steve Grzeskowiak.

That’s the same bloke who Defence has now to find a location on Defence sites for high level nuclear waste.

In 2017 Grzeskowiak was adamant there were no suitable Defence sites for hosting nuclear waste, but is now being paid a $396K to come up with a different view.

If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again, or so the saying goes.

Maybe it’s all okay though. Defence might have suddenly become warm to the idea that they can host a facility, and a well-paid independent contractor might just be the person to come up with the answer they want.

Former secretaries never retire, they just go on contract

But how did Defence find their retired Deputy Secretary to give a sole source contract to?

It was easier than you could imagine.

It turns out Grzeskowiak was already working for Defence. He retired from the Department in August 2021, but a year later, he picked up not one but two lucrative sole-sourced contracts; one for professional services at $230K and another for ‘External Member’ services at $341K. Those contracts will keep him on Defence’s books until the middle of 2024.

With the addition of the nuclear waste site review contract, SG Advice, with Grzeskowiak the sole owner, has picked up a total of $967K worth of consultancy work from the Department he so recently ‘retired’ from.

No one in the Senior Executive Service ever really retires (Kathryn Campbell and Mike Pezzullo might be the rare exceptions), they just go on contract. Ka-Ching!

December 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

COP 28 and the nuclear energy numbers racket

By Sharon Squassoni | December 13, 2023,  https://thebulletin.org/2023/12/the-nuclear-energy-numbers-racket/

Nuclear energy made a big splash at the COP28 climate meeting in Dubai with a declaration by 22 countries calling for a tripling of nuclear energy by 2050. It seems like an impressive and urgent call to arms. On closer inspection, however, the numbers don’t work out. Even at best, a shift to invest more heavily in nuclear energy over the next two decades could actually worsen the climate crisis, as cheaper, quicker alternatives are ignored for more expensive, slow-to-deploy nuclear options.

Here’s what the numbers say:

22: That 22 countries signed the declaration may seem like a lot of support, but 31 countries (plus Taiwan) currently produce nuclear energy. Notably missing from the declaration are Russia and the People’s Republic of China. Russia is the world’s leading exporter of nuclear power plants and has the fourth largest nuclear energy capacity globally; China has built the most nuclear power plants of any country in the last two decades and ranks third globally in capacity. Thirteen other countries that have key nuclear programs are also missing from the declaration: five in Europe (Armenia, Belarus, Belgium, Switzerland and Spain), two in South Asia (India and Pakistan) three in the  Americas (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico), South Africa (the only nuclear energy producer in Africa), and Iran.

5: Five of the countries signing the declaration do not have nuclear power—Mongolia, Morocco, Ghana, Moldova, and Poland. Only Poland’s electricity grid can support three or four large nuclear reactors—the rest would have to invest billions of dollars first to expand their grids or rely on smaller reactors that would not overwhelm grid capacity. Poland wants to replace its smaller coal plants with almost 80 small modular reactors (SMRs), but these “paper reactors” are largely just plans and not yet proven technology. One American vendor, NuScale, recently scrapped a six-unit project when cost estimates rose exponentially. In any event, none of these five countries is likely to make a significant contribution toward tripling nuclear energy in the next 20 years.

17: The 17 remaining signatories to the nuclear energy declaration represent a little more than half of all countries with nuclear energy, raising the issue of how much support there really is for tripling nuclear energy by 2050.

3x: The idea of tripling nuclear energy to meet climate change requirements is not new. In fact, it was one of eight climate stabilization “wedges” laid out in Science magazine in 2004 in a now-famous article by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala of Princeton University. A stabilization wedge would avoid one billion tons of carbon emissions per year by 2055. In the case of nuclear energy, this would require building 700 large nuclear reactors over the course of 50 years. (In 2022, there were 416 reactors operating around the world, with 374 gigawatts-electric of capacity). In 2005, to reach the one-billion-ton goal of emissions reduction would have meant building 14 reactors per year, assuming all existing reactors continued operating. (In fact, the build rate needed to be 23 per year to replace aging reactors that would need to be retired.)  Given the stagnation of the nuclear power industry since then, the build rate now to reach wedge level would need to be 40 per year.

10: Average annual number of connections of nuclear power plants to the electricity grid, per year, over the entire history of nuclear energy. Between 2011 and 2021, however, the average annual number of nuclear power reactors connected to the grid was 5.

42 GWe: New nuclear energy capacity added from 2000 to 2020.

605 GWe: New wind capacity added from 2000 to 2020.

578 GWe: New solar capacity added from 2000 to 2020.  Growth in renewables has vastly outpaced that of nuclear energy in recent years.

10: Average annual number of connections of nuclear power plants to the electricity grid, per year, over the entire history of nuclear energy. Between 2011 and 2021, however, the average annual number of nuclear power reactors connected to the grid was 5.

42 GWe: New nuclear energy capacity added from 2000 to 2020.

605 GWe: New wind capacity added from 2000 to 2020.

578 GWe: New solar capacity added from 2000 to 2020.  Growth in renewables has vastly outpaced that of nuclear energy in recent years.

15 trillion: In US dollars, the cost to build enough NuScale reactors (9,738 77 megawatt-electric reactors) to triple nuclear energy capacity, assuming existing reactors continue to operate.  There are less expensive SMRs, perhaps, but none further along in the US licensing process.

13: An unlucky number in some cultures, but this was the time from design to projected operation of the NuScale VOYGR plant. Nuclear power plants have to be “done right,” and cutting corners to speed deployment is in no one’s interests. The design-and-build phase for a country’s first nuclear reactor, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, is 15 years. If the great expansion of nuclear energy is supposed to occur in more than the 22 countries that signed the declaration, this lead-time cannot be ignored.

The climate crisis is real, but nuclear energy will continue to be the most expensive and slowest option to reach net zero emissions, no matter how you cook the numbers.

December 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

400,000 Ukrainians Killed In Action Explains A Whole Lot

U.S. intelligence contacts have expressed shock as to just how far from reality the narrative being pushed by the Biden administration is from what’s happening in Ukraine and its real war losses.

BY TYLER DURDEN, FRIDAY, DEC 15, 2023 

Authored by Mike Fredenburg via The Epoch Times,

How many casualties has Ukraine suffered?

How many causalities has Russia suffered?

Answering these questions is critical to determining the best and most moral path forward for Ukraine and the United States.

Estimates of Ukrainians killed in action (KIA) range from a low of just over 30,000 to a high of over 400,000.

Obviously, these two estimates can’t be reconciled. And it really, really matters to the people of Ukraine which one is closer to the truth. While 30,000 deaths is tragic, anything approaching 400,000 KIA and the accompanying hundreds of thousands of causalities is a humanitarian catastrophe that makes talks of continuing offensive operations next year, or even believing in a stalemate, wishful thinking that will result in even more fruitless Ukrainian deaths.

Unsurprisingly, since the war began, the United States and its allies have unswervingly pushed the narrative that Russia is incurring far more casualties than Ukraine. This casualty narrative was critical to maintaining any plausibility that Ukraine could defeat a country that has four to five times more men of military age and that was recently rated as having the world’s most powerful military. Hence, given the need to maintain the plausibility of a Ukrainian victory, it isn’t surprising that NATO intelligence asserted that the battle of Bakhmut saw Russia losing at least five soldiers KIA for every one of Ukraine’s.

However, since the fall of Bakhmut to Russia, the failure of the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive, and signs that Ukraine’s military is nearing collapse, we’re no longer hearing about five-to-one casualty rates. Still, the most recent estimates from United States and British officials claim that Russia has suffered 120,000 KIA while Ukraine has suffered “only” 70,000 KIA (more than the United States suffered in over 10 years of the Vietnam War).

But not everyone agrees with U.S./British casualty estimates for an army that started the war by mobilizing early 1 million men in arms and, over the course of the war, mobilized another estimated 1 million. Among the growing number of those who don’t agree is the former director of the Joint Operations Center at Supreme Headquarters Europe and one of the key leaders in achieving the legendary victory in the mass tank battle of 73 Easting, retired U.S. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor.

In a recent interview with myself, Col. Macgregor agreed that while estimates putting Russian KIA at as high as 50,000 to 60,000 are defensible, most estimates for Ukrainian KIAs are not.

In what many will undoubtedly find shocking given the countless stories disparaging Russia’s military skills and capabilities while uncritically fawning over Ukraine’s military prowess, Col. Macgregor puts Ukrainian KIA at over 400,000 out of the 2 million Ukraine has mobilized.

Col. Macgregor arrived at this shocking number using a wide variety of sources, including contacts within U.S. intelligence and contacts on the ground in Ukraine and Poland who have intimate knowledge of what’s really happening in Ukraine.

In particular, he noted that his U.S. intelligence contacts have expressed shock as to just how far from reality the narrative being pushed by the Biden administration is from what’s happening in Ukraine and its real war losses.

Likewise, Col. Macgregor’s Ukraine contacts relayed to him accounts of thousands of wounded Ukrainians being left to die on the battlefield, growing numbers of Ukrainian commanders and troops refusing orders to conduct suicide attacks against heavily fortified Russian positions, Ukrainian soldiers surrendering en masse to Russia, hospitals overflowing with Ukrainian wounded, and many other accounts that testify to horrendous casualty rates that contradict the narrative pushed by Western media.

Additionally, Col. Macgregor’s contacts have analyzed satellite imagery showing a massive expansion of Ukrainian cemeteries and countless tens of thousands of fresh graves. Other open-source intelligence analysis has also documented in detail Ukraine’s massive expansion of cemeteries that will soon allow Ukraine to reportedly bury 1.5 million more people. And a Russian analyst using death notices and other open-source intelligence has come up with Ukrainian KIA estimates of over 300,000.

But for Col. Macgregor, it’s the totality of the reports he has seen, his understanding of historical casualty rates, his personal military experience, and information from his sources that has brought him to the conclusion that Ukraine’s KIA is a magnitude greater than what’s commonly being reported.

These numbers, coupled with the fact the war could have been avoided had President Volodymyr Zelenskyy been knowledgeable and wise enough to understand that U.S./NATO promises of victory were completely unrealistic and couldn’t be relied upon, have led Col. Macgregor, who has fond memories of growing up in a Ukrainian immigrant neighborhood, to believe that the war is an absolute disaster for Ukraine that could have and should have been avoided.

“In humanitarian terms, this tragedy has resulted in the Ukrainian nation being destroyed in a war that never needed to be fought,” Col. Macgregor said…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Given the strong evidence that Ukraine is suffering country-destroying casualties, talk of a stalemate, much less of successful offensive territory-gaining operations, is more about face-saving than any realistic chance of Ukraine avoiding losing.

Hence, the only moral path forward for the United States is to tell President Zelenskyy it’s well past the time to sue for peace and that he must accept neutrality and the loss of the regions that seceded from Ukraine in 2014.

This is a bitter pill to swallow for Ukrainian nationalists and those in the United States who hoped Ukraine would do far more damage to Russia, but the alternative is accelerating Ukraine’s diminishing chances of remaining a viable nation-state, a whole lot more fruitless Ukrainian deaths, and peace terms substantially worse than those that can be negotiated today.  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/400000-ukrainians-killed-action-explains-whole-lot

December 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Staying in Gaza as an act of love: Stories from the Catholics who risk their lives to serve

“These are our people and we will not abandon them.” Selfless acts like these have earned the small Christian communities in Gaza the respect of all those living in Gaza.

Jeffery Abood December 15, 2023,  https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2023/12/15/gaza-israel-catholic-churches-246728?pnespid=t7VpGntebvMdwqbN9jG9FpKNvhOyTJJuMvXjkPUztB1mpgpXs8W0TdlrA_YDiged3nSYb4fJyw

Tens of thousands of Gazans are pressed against the border with Egypt at Rafah. Told that this was a safe place for them to flee, they are still under attack. Almost the entire population has been displaced by the fighting—1.9 million people, according to latest United Nations figures. Gazan health authorities say that more than 18,000 people have been killed since the fighting began; about 70 percent of the casualties are women and children. More than 49,000 people have been wounded.

How can we recover a sense of their individual sacredness that might lead to a stronger demand for an end to this violence and suffering? Perhaps if more people had the opportunity, as I have, to visit Gaza and meet with the Gazan people, they would have a different perspective about the violence raining down on the innocent people living in Gaza.

Media headlines often invoke only negative images whenever Gaza is mentioned. Yet just beneath these headlines, like a seed waiting to sprout, are inspiring examples of love and faith in humanity. It is vital we recognize and build on these, as love stands as the only force capable of ultimately ending the violence.

Gazans are incredibly warm and loving. My visits to Gaza reminded me of growing up in a Lebanese household and the warm hospitality for which Middle Easterners are famous. Family has always been at the center of their lives.

In fact, these robust and loving family connections are one of the main reasons Gazans have been able to endure 17 years of a brutal military blockade. Another reason is their deep faith. The sacred beliefs of both Muslims and Christians living together in Gaza provide a stable bedrock upon which they all depend.

Some recent instances of people embodying both this love and faith can be seen amid the ongoing bombing campaign in Gaza.

A common assumption is that people only remain in Gaza, and especially in the north, because they have no other choice. Yet, despite the very real dangers to themselves because they are remaining in an active war zone, some make the conscious decision to stay as an act of love.

Holy Family Parish in Gaza City is situated on a campus that houses the church, a school, three convents and a home for severely disabled children. Every few years, amid periodic bombing, the various religious orders living and working in Gaza receive evacuation orders.

Yet, despite many having the passports that would allow them to leave, the women religious in Gaza, many of whom come from abroad, choose not to. Instead, according to Father Mario Da Silva, a priest once assigned to the parish, they say, “These are our people and we will not abandon them.” Selfless acts like these have earned the small Christian communities in Gaza the respect of all those living in Gaza.

During the bombing in 2014, the Sisters at Holy Family faced a harrowing situation where they had to carry all the disabled children under their care (about 60) into the church’s courtyard. Their hope was that Israeli warplanes would notice them and refrain from dropping their bombs. The tactic proved successful then. However, a few weeks ago, the warplanes not only inflicted damage on Holy Family but also bombed nearby St. Porphyrius Church, killing or maiming nearly 100 people sheltering there.

In an interview with the Catholic news site Crux, Father Francis Xavier Rayappangari, commissary of the Holy Land in India, said he had recently spoken with the sisters at Holy Family.

“In the convent, there are three sisters and 60 residents, including handicapped and mentally challenged children and bedridden older people, who have no food, water, medicine, electricity or gas. Communication from outside is cut off, and the entire area is surrounded by the [Israeli] army.”

Regarding the current situation of the nuns, he further relayed, “Sometimes some generous and courageous people [in the neighborhood] bring something for them to eat. Whatever they receive from outside, the sisters first serve the residents. If there is anything left, they eat. Most of the time it is just one meal a day.… One day they had just one loaf of bread shared among the three…. The other day it was just an orange, and the three sisters shared it among them.”

In the Kuwaiti Hospital—similar to all Gaza hospitals, including Al-Ahli, the Anglican hospital—there were also Israeli military orders to evacuate. Many hospital directors, doctors and staff, most of whom are Muslim, have publicly stated that they refuse to abandon their patients, who due to their fragile medical status cannot be evacuated. They have chosen rather to put their own lives at a very real risk and stay.

In a separate interview, one doctor at the hospital stated, “Where should we evacuate these children? They are attached to ventilators. They are completely dependent on them and it is impossible to move them. If you want to kill us, kill us while we continue working here. We will not leave.”

The hospitals as well as the churches report receiving small amounts of aid from local residents, both Muslim and Christian, who contribute whatever food and basic supplies they can spare for patients or others seeking refuge. These acts are amazing examples of generosity from people who are in just as precarious a position. More than that, they are examples of bravery, as the simple act of crossing the street to deliver this aid can result, as it has with many others, in being killed by Israeli snipers.

In a recent email, a parishioner from Holy Family expressing his unshakable faith said, “I wish this would end very soon, because we are drained [from] seeing the suffering of all these innocent people, who are living with us in an open-air prison. We see cruel fire falling from the sky and can have no hope. We only know God will listen to all our prayers.”

Currently, the sisters of the various communities, as well as a priest from the Institute of the Incarnate Word, are caring for 700 displaced people, including 100 children and another 70 disabled children and adults with various neurologic and birth disorders at Holy Family.

Sister Nabila Saleh, the principal of the Rosary Sisters School in Gaza, told Aid to the Church in Need that it would be logistically impossible to move the elderly, children, sick and those with disabilities. She explained: “We will not go and leave our people. We are here to accompany them; we cannot possibly abandon them.”

So, despite the order for all civilians in Gaza City to evacuate to the south of the Strip, she stressed her decision to remain with the community in the parish “until the end,” knowing full well what that could mean.

In focusing only on the negative images depicted by the media about Gaza, we miss these beautiful and inspiring acts of love. We see people’s decisions to stay for others even when they are faced with their own likely deaths. This kind of dedication is only possible when the seeds of faith sprout out of a resilient love for both God and for others.

In failing to see that, we also fail to see the presence of the only force more powerful than any bomb, the only force that can and will ultimately win over hate and violence: love. In honor of that truly sacrificial love, it is crucial for us, as advocates of justice and peace, to actively pursue a genuine pro-life stance, and work for an immediate ceasefire before these beacons of faith, love and light are snuffed out.

Jeffery Abood is a member of the leadership council of Churches for Middle East Peace. He can be reached at jabood@att.net.

December 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Sad Clown with the Circus Closed Down*: Zelenskiy’s Demise

When it comes to love for the limelight and delusions of grandeur, Zelenskiy outstrips most politicians and not least of all Putin. Almost all politicians are egoistic, but Zelenskiy is narcissistic.

Zelenskiy’s inexperience and ego likely played pivotal roles in his disastrous decision-making.

Zelenskiy himself remained mired in personal corruption as the Pandora Papers demonstrated

Zelenskiy’s failures also have made him eminently expendable

by GORDONHAHN , December 11, 2023,  https://gordonhahn.com/2023/12/11/sad-clown-with-the-circus-closed-down-zelenskiys-demise/—

Introduction

         Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zeleneksiy appears to be at the end of the line politically and perhaps biologically. Portraying himself as a fighter for peace, anti-corruption, and full democratization when he ran for and won the presidency in 2019, he proceeded to lead the country into war, further corruption, and de-republicanization (authoritarianization).

On both a personal and global level this is high tragedy. A superb comedian and actor stars in a television fictional series as the president of Ukraine, rises in popularity, wins the country’s presidency on a peace platform, and leads the country into a catastrophic, easily avoidable war that threatens the survival of his country and himself.

The unreality of Ukraine refracts in our century of simulacra and disinformation through this icon moved from the television screen to real life politics, and the tragedy of it all is sold as a heroic triumph on the road to universal democracy, peace, and brotherhood.

In the real world, however, there is a rub. The country is historically divided along every conceivable line (ethnic, linguistic, cultural, political, ideological, economic, and social), an almost accidental state cobbled together by communists but claimed by hapless republicans and determined ultra-nationalists. Thus, Zelenskiy becomes president of a fundamentally divided country further riven by schism as a result of two ‘revolutions’ – really revolts – and a civil war compounded by foreign (Russian) intervention.

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Zelenskiy’s emergence and victory are as surreal as the Maidan regime of which he assumed leadership. 

December 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment