Pictured here is the nuclear power plant Gösgen, one of five nuclear reactors in Switzerland.
In the wake of Fukushima a “stress test” of European nuclear reactors was proposed, in line with the “stress tests” applied to banks during the financial crisis. That “stress test” of banks being important in that it firstly reassured the markets and the public that most were still solvent. It also had a secondary role though – to scare the Beja$us out of the bankers and get them to be more careful in future. One would be forgiven for thinking that this would be the goal of the European Nuclear stress test…right?….no!
Firstly, the UK government has announced that it will be excluding terrorism as among the things to consider in the stress test. They’ve also excluded Sellafield, much to the annoyance of the Irish government, using the lame excuse that it doesn’t generate any power (but does contain the bulk of the country’s dangerous nuclear waste!)…..of course the fact that “suspected” terrorists have already been caught creeping around Sellafield, suggests that terrorism at Sellafield is a major risk and concern. Granted anyone who looks foreign and has a foreign accent is probably a suspected terrorist to these xenophobes who guard the place, but they won’t be that jumpy if the place was making ice-cream cones now would they!
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Did the Royal Wedding set a new record for greenhouse gas emissions produced by a one-day event? A while back, in an article about a bizarre scheme to let people in Britain offset their carbon emissions by paying for birth control in Madagascar, I wrote:
I might take this a little more seriously if the money were used to reduce the birth rate among rich Brits. Just think how much lower England’s emissions would be if aristocrats and bank directors were limited to one spoiled child each. How many Bentleys and Jaguars could be taken off the road if the Royal Family stopped reproducing altogether?
The Royal Wedding confirms my judgement.
The New Zealand environmental research group Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research has prepared a rough estimate of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the merger of the Windsor and Middleton families.
The results indicate that the activities on the day of the wedding could be responsible for an estimated 2,808 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) in greenhouse gases, for the scope of emissions calculated. Emissions due to travel by crowds lining the streets might amount to another 3,957 tonnes of CO2e and the Royal Airforce flyover might add another 1.95 tonnes of CO2e.
Total: 6,767 tonnes. Read the rest of this story »
The journal Nature recently reported that modern methods of measuring animal populations are too simple and often do not take into account the complexity of what influences species numbers. Professor Stephen Hubbell, from California, and Professor Fangliang He, from China, found that existing mathematical models for measurement were flawed: present figures overestimated rates by up to 160 percent, showing that calculations must be updated and made more accurate.
Nevertheless, Hubbell maintained although species extinction caused by habitat loss is not as dire a problem as initially believed, the global extinction crisis is still a real threat.
“We are not in quite as serious trouble right now as people had thought,” Hubbell told Smithsonian Science on May 18. “But that is no reason for complacency. I don’t want this research to be misconstrued as saying we don’t have anything to worry about.” He maintained, “Nothing is further from the truth.”
While there were predictions in the early 1980s that as many as half the species on Earth would be lost by the year 2000, Hubbell explained, “Nothing like that has happened. However, the next mass extinction may be upon us or just around the corner. There have been five mass extinctions in the history of the Earth, and we could be entering the sixth mass extinction.” Read the rest of this story »
The Guardian reports that the famous Amazon rainforest activist José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva has been killed in an ambush near his home in Brazil.
Six months after predicting his own murder, a leading rainforest defender has reportedly been gunned down in the Brazilian Amazon. José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo, are said to have been killed in an ambush near their home in Nova Ipixuna, in Pará state, about 37 miles from Marabá. According to a local newspaper, Diário do Pará, the couple had not had police protection despite getting frequent death threats because of their battle against illegal loggers and ranchers.
Da Silva said in a speech at TEDxAmazonia in November last year that he was afraid loggers would try to kill him:
“I could be here today talking to you and in one month you will get the news that I disappeared. I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment … because I denounce the loggers and charcoal producers, and that is why they think I cannot exist. [People] ask me, ‘are you afraid?’ Yes, I’m a human being, of course I am afraid. But my fear does not silence me. As long as I have the strength to walk I will denounce all of those who damage the forest.”
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The recent people’s revolutions in the Middle East have been playing on all 24 hour rolling news for the entire world to see at the click of a button. There has been such an excess of reports from embedded journalists crouching behind burning tanks that these images have come to partly define my expectation of what today’s revolutions look like.
If I was alive in the 1960’s I probably would have looked to the Chinese Cultural Revolution with their stoic faces and red flags. If I was alive during the revolutions in the 1970’s I might have imagined a revolution to look like the Iranian Ayatollah’s eyes staring me down. And until this past year, revolutions for me have been characterized by a man with plastic bags facing down armoured tanks in Tiananmen Square. But the revolution I want to talk about has been a silent, bloodless revolution, happening right on our doorstep and influencing all aspects of our everyday life.
I am referring to the Green Revolution. Read the rest of this story »
A closer look on the documentaries The Big Uneasy, Planeat, Gasland, The Pipe and the short film Winds of Change.
Over the last few years there has been an explosion in documentary film making, quite a number of them on environmental issues. Of course for a fan of such things the difficulty is getting to see them. Fortunately, The UK Green Film festival is on right now in Glasgow’s GFT, and other cities UK wide. I’ve tried to catch a few of these films and thought I’d give a run down on some of the ones I’ve seen, and my thoughts on the many issues they’ve raised.
Firstly, I’ve noted that the GFT is unusually busy this week. This is good as it shows there is clearly an appetite for these sorts of documentary films. But, as came up in a Q & A session with one of the directors of Planet Eat Or Shlomi, there is a bit of a dilemma here. The directors of these films want to promote the message in the movie as much as possible, and get as many people to watch it as they can. Probably the easiest way of doing that is to stream it online. But equally they also want to raise revenue. Not that any of them are in it for profit (breaking even would be nice!) but there is a danger with the streaming of documentaries on the internet, thro websites such as Top Documentaries , will kill the golden goose. Of course, if we all stopped watching these films online, then given that so few cinemas show these sorts of documentary films, much less of us would get to see them, other than hoping and waiting for them to be broadcast in a local art house cinema, or possibly on TV (and you can forget about the major networks in the US ever broadcasting one of these films) . I don’t know the answer to that one, DVD sales are one idea, thought not ideal (can end up costing the producers more to make and distribute the DVD’s than they make back…and don’t get me started on carbon footprints here!) but like I said, it’s a dilemma.
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According to a recently published study by Dan Hoornweg, a lead urban specialist at the World Bank, Rotterdam is one of the "dirtiest" cities in the world. The European city releases around 29,8 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per capita every year and as a result Rotterdam gets a top position among the 100 different cities examined.
The study looks at how much CO2 and methane emissions the citizens and the industries inside the city borders generate every year. Hoornweg and the other co-authors base their study on 100 different cities from 33 different countries around the world. The study, titled "Cities and greenhouse gas emissions: moving forward", shows that the emissions varies greatly between poor and rich cities around the world. The per capita greenhouse gas emissions vary with more than 15 tonnes in wealthy industrialized cities such as Sydney, Calgary, Stuttgart and several major US cities to less than half a tonne in poorer cities such as Nepal, India and Bangladesh.
According to the study the top 9 "dirtiest" cities in the world are: (1) Rotterdam in the Netherlands with 29,8 tonnes per capita, (2) Austin in USA with 24 tonnes, (3) Denver in USA with 21,5 tonnes, (4) Washington DC in USA with 20 tonnes, (5) Minneapolis in USA with 18 tonnes, (6) Calgary in Canada with 18 tonnes, (7) Menlo Park in USA with 16 tonnes, (8) Dallas in USA with 15 tonnes and (9) Stuttgart in Germany with 12 tonnes per capita.
This study helps strengthen activists calls for "climate justice" to help stop the huge inequality between rich and poor nations that fuels a climate of mistrust and sabotages efforts to secure a climate deal.
