“Greenpeace activists secretly entered a French nuclear site before dawn and draped a banner reading “Coucou” and “Facile”, (meaning “Hey” and “Easy”) on its reactor containment building, to expose the vulnerability of atomic sites in the country,” AJE reports.

Greenpeace’s point with this action was to highlight the vulnerability of nuclear plants and to criticize France’s failure to have proper safety procedures against terrorists. “This action shows just how vulnerable the French nuclear plants are,’ said Sophia Majnoni d’Intignano from Greenpeace in a statement. D’Intignano said that French nuclear plants are considered safe just because it is believed that they can withstand a flood or an earthquake. “But those aren’t the real risks for our nuclear industry,” D’Intignano said. “It’s the risk of [an] external, non-natural attack, like the risk of terrorism.”

Safety experts have warned about the threat of terrorism to nuclear reactors before. The Italian nuclear engineer and safety expert Cesare Silvi says that the threat of terrorism is one of the reasons why he left his former pro-nuclear stance for solar and other renewable energy sources.

I am sure many of us agree that it would be a good idea to have a strong protection against outside threats, such as terrorism, at our nuclear power plants. And I am also sure that many people would claim that their country’s nuclear safety is in good standard. But apparently this is not the case for nuclear plants in France, and potentially other countries as well. For example, the UK government excluded terrorism as one of the things to consider when they participated in the European wide nuclear stress tests after the Fukushima accident. In fact, most nuclear operators around Europe never stress tested their plants vulnerability against technological or human threats such as a nuclear reactor being struck by a large aircraft.

In a 1500-page long “manifesto”, published on the web shortly before the two attacks, Breivik described his religious and fascist conspiracy theories. In addition to the average islamophobic, undemoratic and nationalistic rantings about Muslims taking over Europe and whatnot he also had a section called “Green is the new Red – Stop Enviro-Communism”. According to Breivik global warming is just a eco-Marxist plot, or a “Anthropogenic Global Warming scam”, with the end goal of creating a world government:

“You might know them as environmentalists, enviro-communists, eco-Marxists, neo-Communists or eco-fanatics. They all claim they want to save the world from global warming but their true agenda is to contribute to create a world government lead by the UN or in other ways increase the transfer of resources (redistribute resources) from the developed Western world to the third world. They hope to accomplish this through the distribution of misinformation (propaganda) which they hope will lead to increased taxation of already excessively taxed Europeans and US citizens.”

Considering the fact that Breivik for several years was a member of the Norwegian Fremskrittspartiet (FrP/FpU), a far-right political party that strongly push the idea of climate change being “exaggerated”, the news of him being a climate denier really doesn’t come to any surprise. But it does show what kind of “endorsements” other and more mainstream climate deniers have. No wonder the two conservative and climate denying talking heads Glenn Back and Bill O’Reilley tried to downplay the terrorist attack in Norway and distance themselves from Breivik. For example. In his radio show Glenn Beck likened the dead Norwegian children on Utøya to Hitler youth. And Bill O’Reilley criticized the media for labeling Breivik as a Christian terrorist and foolishly tried to claim that such a thing was “impossible”.

Brad Johnson, from the liberal think-tank and blog Thinkprogress, writes more about Breivik’s crazy environmental conspiracy theories and links them to the rhetoric used by American conservatives:

“Although Breivik’s conspiracy theories are insane, they are in line with mainstream opinion among American conservatives. He cites Christopher Monckton’s speech before the Minnesota Free Market Institute in 2009, accusing President Obama of trying to cede United States sovereignty to the United Nations through climate treaties. Monckton — a rabid conspiracy theorist who claims his opponents are Nazis — was a Republican witness before Congress on global warming in 2010.”

If you are interested in reading the climate ramblings of a madman and a mass murderer, Brad Johnson has published the whole manifesto excerpt from Breivik’s climate denying chapter here.

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!

For those in the UK who don’t know, contrary to what his Gerriness the Baron of Northstead would have you believe, Sellafield is probably the major bone of contention in Anglo-Irish relations. The view from Dublin is that, London took its “ultra safe” nuclear rubbish bin and because it was so safe they pushed it as far away from London as they could…..right opposite our coastline! Hence Irish annoyance over this exclusion of Sellafield from this stress test.

The stress test will also apparently not include such factors as mega-Tsunami (potentially generated by the Cumbre Vieja) or future sea level rise due to climate change. While one can say that the risks from either of these two, the former in particular, are indeed a very low risk in any one given year, but you have to remember that most of the UK nuclear sites are coastal, most have had an active plant on site for 50 years, and that the decommissioning will lead to waste still being on site in a 100 years time. And of course the industry plans to add further reactors to said sites. Thus given the long period of time in which radioactive material will be on site (centuries), this sort of raises the probably of such a calamity affecting these sites at some point in the future from “unlikely” to “not that unlikely”. Now I’m not suggesting there’s any need to panic, these are long term problems, which needs long term solutions. A simple committent to moving the waste from existing reactors off site as soon as that’s possible (preferably into deep storage) post-decomissioning, and building future reactors a little further inland (10-20 km’s should do it) would solve both of these problems. But the industry seems aghast at even these measures. Indeed it’s unclear to what degree the issue of flooding will even be considered in the stress tests. This is particularly significant when you bear in mind the 1999 La Blayais flooding incident which almost led to a loss of diesel generators (much like at Fukushima) at a French nuclear plant.

At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious here, but isn’t the whole point of a stress test that it be stressful? If we exclude such factors as I’ve mentioned the end result will be a stress test that all plants will pass with flying colours. Greenpeace will naturally scream “STITCH UP!”, the public will not be assured, nor will the financial institutions (whom nuclear industry will be seeking loans off, if new reactors are to go ahead) and the nuclear industry will go back to puttering in its sandbox with its EPR and MOX toys….until the next accident or financial crisis! Nothing worthwhile will be achieved, and no doubt the nuclear cheerleaders will lap it up with glee and appear on this blog to remind us how only 2 men & a dog were killed at Chernobyl or how great the LFTR (Kool-aid fuelled reactor) is.

The thing that puts me off nuclear power is the constant “helicopter parenting” we see from governments on the topic. If any other industry had made the same litany of monumental (and costly) screw-ups they’ve made it would have been killed off through government regulations ages ago. Fifty years after the first “commercial” reactors went online the nuclear industry is still living with its parents who have to sub it a few bob now and then. Isn’t it about time for nuclear power to flee the government nest and go get a proper job?

The nuclear industry, like the banks, is in desperate need of some “tough love” from regulators. This means a stressful stress test, that will see the shutdown of a few of our older power stations (which truth be told probably never should have been built in the first place) as well as getting the industry to ditch silly boondoggle ideas like MOX, Fast Reactors and fuel reprocessing, while forcing them to start cleaning up the waste issue and get things like deep geological storage moving a pace (with the exception of Sweden and Finland there has been practically no movement on this issue!). This would of course mean lay-offs in some sectors of the nuclear industry, some big contractors being stung badly, but of course it would also mean more jobs in other areas. In essence it might serve to scare the industry straight.

Even thought the “stress test” results haven’t been published yet, the fallout is already underway. My suspicion is that the German government’s decision to announce its phase out of nuclear power plants (again!) is probably an attempt by Merkel (in an election year) to head off the inevitable wave of bad publicity that the stress test will generate (some German plants will fail, but not enough to stop the Greens yelling FIX!, and the result will be to cause more public unease than reassurance).

Indeed Germany is perhaps a warning to the rest of the world nuclear industry of what’s in the future if they don’t mend their ways and start washing the dirty linen in public. While I reckon some countries (notably the UK, see my thoughts on UK energy here) can probably get by without nuclear, I’m not convinced this applies to all nations, and Germany is top of my list. I’m not sure Germany can meet its energy needs without being heavily dependant on imports of some sort (some of which will inevitably be Shale gas from Poland and French nuclear power) or fossil fuels (coal) without resorting to nuclear power. However, the nuclear industry in German has now made itself such a pariah that this is simply not an option any more. Regardless of the technical arguments, the German public simply will not support new nuclear construction – period!

And in fairness to the German nuclear industry, they aren’t that bad, indeed it’s often been the foul ups of Germany’s neighbours (the French and British) or those further afield (Japan and Russia) who’ve gotten them a bad name. But the point that Germany proves is that there is a tipping point to public patience on the nuclear issue. Push any public beyond that tipping point and that public support will just collapse. And at that point it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are, or what industry says or promises, the public response will be a firm No Nukes! You can go on Newsnight, put on you’re best Boris Karloff voice and tell everyone that without nuclear “the lights will go out”, follow it up with an evil laugh, and the public still won’t care. You can give out about windfarms all you like and claim that coal kills a Gazillion people a year and it won’t matter, the point where such scare tactics, never mind logical debate, would have worked will be in the distant past.

All in all its possible that these “stress tests” will be about as useful as the ones offered by the Church of Scientology! And the only people who benefit from a tame nuclear stress test are a pile of vested interests and Kool-aid drunk nuclear cheerleaders. In the longer term even the nuclear industry itself will lose out.

I belong to a Melbourne-based Climate Action Group called the Yarra Valley Climate Action Group (YVCAG) which is very active in public education through public meetings, participation in public demonstrations and by providing a series of very well-referenced Climate Emergency Fact Sheets on its website. Thus people confused by the vehement and dishonest denial by climate sceptics can use the YVCAG resource and discover what top climate scientists and top scientific bodies think about the accelerating global warming crisis by consulting “Climate Emergency: what top world scientific experts say“.

Our local Climate Action Group is variously linked to scores of like-minded Climate Action Groups around the Continent and Commonwealth of Australia through two umbrella organizations, namely the Climate Emergency Network and the Climate Movement. However our efforts at public education are negated by the Power of Money. Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter with coal exports currently worth A$55 billion per annum; about 92% of Australia’s electric power comes from fossil fuel burning; and the Australian coal industry is worth in total about A$100 billion annually – with the coincident reality that Australia resolutely ignores the disproportionate impact it is having on the Earth’s environment through its world-leading annual per capita Domestic and Exported fossil fuel-derived CO2 pollution.

Thus consulting the US Energy Information Administration database we obtain the following information on “annual per capita fossil fuel-derived carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution” in “tonnes (t) per person per year” for Australia and other major polluters (2004 data): 19.2 (for Australia; 40 if you include Australia’s coal exports; 2007 value about 47), 19.7 (the US), 18.4 (Canada), 9.9 (Japan), 4.2 (the World), 3.6 (China), 1.0 ( India) and 0.25 (for Bangladesh). Of course “annual per capita fossil fuel-derived CO2 pollution” is but one – albeit a very important – indicator of climate impact. The Germanwatch Climate Change Index 2008, a comparison of the 56 top CO2 emitting nations, takes other parameters into account in ranking. In this ranking of 56 top CO2 emitting nations, Sweden and Germany are #1 and #2 for greenhouse responsibility, while shale-oil-rich Canada (a US ally), coal-rich Australia (a US ally), the USA and oil-rich Saudi Arabia (US-linked) rank #53, #54, #55 and #56, respectively (Source) .

However the 2 major Australian parties ( Labor and the Liberals, collectively known as the Lib-Labs and together commanding about 90% of the Australian vote) are resolutely committed to the Coal Industry and remorselessly ignore Australia’s disproportionate contribution to global CO2 pollution and global warming. This Culture of Ignoring also extends to Ignoring of the consequences our participation in all post-1950 US Asian wars (so far associated with 25 million Indigenous Asian excess deaths); Ignoring of horrendous genocidal crimes of Australia’s great allies the UK and the US (from the British-imposed Indian Holocaust involving 1.5 billion excess deaths in the period 1757-1947 to the real 9-11 atrocity, the 9-11 million violent and non-violent avoidable deaths in the Bush wars, 1990-2008); and Ignoring of passive mass infanticide in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories (about 1,000 under-5 year old Indigenous infants dying every day) and horrendous child sexual abuse at home in Australia (1/3 of Australian women are sexually abused as children).

As a biological scientist I decided to attempt to Measure (to Quantify, Quantitate, get Numbers on) this Australian Culture of Ignoring in which “business as usual” Australia “looks the other way” in relation to its involvement in Genocide (according to the UN Genocide Convention “intent [by stated policy or sustained action] to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”); the Climate Emergency (accelerating Global Warming that is already associated with mass species extinctions and the melting of the Arctic); the Sustainability Emergency (diminishing biological productivity with increasing population); Climate Genocide ( millions are already dying impacted by Climate Change and Dr James Lovelock FRS estimates that over 6 billion people will die this century due to unaddressed Climate Change); Climate Racism (imposing deadly effects of Climate Change on people of particular races, specifically the non-Europeans of the Developing World); and Climate Terrorism (cold-blooded imposition of death and the threat of death upon billions of innocent people in pursuit of Australia’s fanatical ideology of greed and growth regardless of consequences).

My Experiment has involved sending the following Letter to about 2,000 Australian journalists, politicians and academics and assessing the Response. You will be SHOCKED by the Response, which is detailed at the end of the Letter.

Letter

I am writing to eminent and influential Australians about serious threats to Australia and the World from the Climate Emergency, Exceptionalism and a Culture of Ignoring. I would be very grateful if you would disseminate this analysis to everyone you can in the national and global interest. Rational risk management successively involves (a) accurate data, (b) scientific analysis (with a scientific methodology involving the critical testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses) and (c) systemic change to minimize risk. Unfortunately, as outlined below, this protocol is typically subverted in Australia and elsewhere by media, politician and academic substitution of (a) spin, lies, censorship and intimidation, (b) anti-science spin (involving the selective use of asserted facts to support a partisan position) and (c) “blame and shame” (with war and genocide being the ultimate expressions of this perversion).

1. Holocaust ignoring & “history ignored yields history repeated”. Few Australians would be aware of the following atrocities involving Great Britain that have been largely deleted from British history: the Great Bengal Famine (1769-1770, 10 million victims), the man-made World War 2 Bengal Famine (1943-1945, 6-7 million victims) and the real 9-11 atrocity, the 9-11 million avoidable deaths associated (so far) with the Bush Wars (1990-2008). While 3 major histories published recently in Australia utterly ignore the WW2 Bengal Famine, in 2008 this atrocity was exposed in a BBC broadcast involving myself, 1998 Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and other scholars. Denial of the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) attracts 10 years in prison in Austria.

2. Climate Emergency ignored & Great Barrier Reef doomed. According to top US climate scientist Dr James Hansen (Head, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies): “paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm” and “we face a climate emergency”. Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty:“We are in real danger”; Governor of Victoria Professor David de Kretser AC: “There is no doubt in my mind that this is the greatest problem confronting mankind at this time and that it has reached the level of a state of emergency”; and top Australian climate scientists: ditto. Yet the Federal Government and its advisers propose an increase in atmospheric CO2 to 450-550 ppm despite the scientific advice that coral dies above 450 ppm due to ocean acidification and warming; that ocean phytoplankton and the Greenland ice sheet go above 500 ppm (with dire consequences); and that 550 ppm is globally catastrophic. The Federal Government and its advisers have effectively ignored Australia’s world leading coal exports and annual per capita Domestic plus Exported CO2 pollution; the deaths of about 5,000 Australians annually from coal burning-derived pollutants; and the “true cost” of coal burning-based power (4-5 times that of the highly subsidized “market price”). “10% off 2000 levels by 2020” (Garnaut) means a 50% increase in Australia’s Domestic and Exported CO2 pollution and “60% off by 2050” (Federal Government Policy) means a doubling of total CO2 pollution.

3. Ignoring of horrendous Australian child abuse. Unreported by media, UN Population Division data indicate that the “annual death rate” is 2.7% and 6.2% for under-5 year old infants in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan, respectively, as compared to 10.2% for Australian prisoners of war of the Japanese (for which crime Japanese generals were tried and hanged). This appalling infant mortality is 90% avoidable and largely due to Occupier non-supply of life sustaining requisites demanded by the Geneva Convention. Thus WHO data indicate that “annual total per capita medical expenditure” permitted in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan is $130 and $26, respectively, as compared to about $3,000 (in Occupier Australia) and $6,400 (in Occupier US). Domestically, while the “Little Children Are Sacred” Report was unable to quantitate the extent of abuse of Indigenous children, it quoted data indicating that 34% of Australian women have been sexually abused as children. Yet these horrendous realities are effectively ignored and were ignored at the Australia 2020 Summit.

4. Genocide commission and genocide ignoring. Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”. “Intent” can be surely established from “sustained, remorseless policy leading to destruction”. Australia is complicit in an ongoing Iraqi Genocide (post-invasion excess deaths 2 million, post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 0.6 million, 6 million refugees); Afghan Genocide (post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths 4-6 million, post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 2.1 million, 4 million refugees); Aboriginal Genocide (9,000 avoidable deaths annually; 90,000 avoidable deaths under the previous Coalition Government; annual avoidable death rate (1.8%) about twice that in non-Arab Africa; “annual death rate” 2.2% (Indigenous Australians) and 2.4% (Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory) as compared to 2.5% (Australian sheep)); and Climate Genocide ( Australia is a world leader in greenhouse gas pollution; climate change is increasingly impacting Third World deprivation that avoidably kills 16 million people annually; Professor James Lovelock FRS says that over 6 billion people will perish this century due to unaddressed climate change). These horrendous realities are ignored but I have made a detailed, formal complaint to the International Criminal Court.

5. Australia ignores acute nuclear, greenhouse and poverty threats. The prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has nominated nuclear, greenhouse and poverty threats as the acute threats facing humanity. Yet Australia is a major uranium exporter and is intimately linked to US nuclear terrorism via joint communications facilities, military cooperation and welcome to nuclear-armed naval vessels in Australian capital cities. Australia’s “annual per capita fossil fuel-derived CO2 pollution” in tonnes CO2 per person per year is 27 domestically but 47 including CO2 from coal exports –10 times worse than for China and the World and 40 times worse than for India. Indeed Australia helped the US sabotage the December 2007 Bali Climate Change Conference by firmly rejecting any greenhouse gas reduction targets and the latest estimate based on Government Policy is that Australia will actually double its annual greenhouse gas pollution by 2050. Australian greed and profligacy is already contributing to the submergence and salinization of Pacific Island States and devastation of coastal deltaic parts of India, Myanmar and Bangladesh adjoining the Bay of Bengal.

6. US state terrorism is killing and threatening Australians. It is estimated that about 0.1 million people (about 300 in Australia) die avoidably each year due to opiate drug-related causes. About 0.6 million people (about 2,000 Australians) have died due to the US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 5% of world market share in 2001 to 93 % in 2007 (UNODC World Drug Report data). In mid-2006 25,000 Australian citizens were subjected to bombing and rocketing in Lebanon in the face of Australian bipartisan support for the perpetrator. UNICEF data indicates that 2,400 Occupied Palestinian infants (many with Australian relatives) die avoidably each year due to denial of life-sustaining requisites by the Occupier – however an Australian Muslim meeting the zakkat religious charitable obligation by donating money to sorely deprived Gaza hospitals potentially faces up to life imprisonment under Australian Anti-Terrorism laws. 7,000 Westerners have been murdered by Muslim-origin non-state terrorists in the last 40 years (this total including Israelis and assuming no US complicity in the 9-11 atrocity). No Australians have been murdered in Australia by Muslim-origin non-state terrorists yet UNICEF data show that Australia is war criminally complicit in the avoidable deaths of 1,000 Occupied Iraqi and Occupied Afghan infants every day.

7. Australia now ignores the fundamental truth that love of Australia means love of Australians, wild Australia and Australian values. By “looking the other way” Australia is complicit in the avoidable deaths of 9,000 Indigenous Australians every year and the avoidable deaths of about 300 Australians annually due to US opium industry promotion in Occupied Afghanistan. US intelligence organizations have found that Australians (and Americans) are now more threatened from non-state terrorism due to the Bush War on Terror (in horrible reality a War for Oil and Hegemony). The families of hundreds of thousands of Australians in the Middle East are subject to real terror from US Alliance and Apartheid Israeli violence. Australia is acutely threatened by linkage to US nuclear terrorism. Bipartisan commitment to fossil fuel burning kills about 5,000 Australians each year from the effects of coal burning pollutants alone. There now appears to be bipartisan agreement for a new, biological “Brisbane Line” involving the destruction of WA coral reefs and the Queensland Great Barrier Reef in the interests of the Australian coal industry. Notwithstanding the 1967 Referendum result, there is bipartisan agreement for race-specific suspension of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act in relation to Northern Territory Indigenous Australians. The entrenched mainstream media, politician and academic IGNORING of the horrendous realities outlined above violates not only rational risk management for the safety of Australians but also violates the principles of a “fair go” and of being “fair dinkum”. My words and statistics having failed, I have painted HUGE paintings for Peace and Mother and Child that I would dearly love to DONATE to public institutions (for images see “Truth , Beauty & Saving the World – Science, Art & Nuclear, Greenhouse & Poverty Threats”. For further details and detailed documentation of the above see Yarra Valley Climate Action Group Fact Sheets: and my recent books “Body Count” (see: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ and http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya ) and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”. Please inform everyone you can.

Responses

The Response so far has been minimal. People associated with the Australian Greens have responded positively but the “score” of people actually responding to my plea to “please inform others about my concerns” currently stands at 4 out of about 2,000 addressees or about 0.2%. In relation to Jesus Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan who helped the badly beaten Jewish traveller, about 99.8% of these variously eminent and influential Australians surveyed here have “walked by on the other side”.

I am actually an agnostic Humanist scientist but love the humanitarianism of Jesus Christ and indeed am Number 1 in the World on the Web for saying “thou shalt not kill children“. I am therefore happy to reiterate the Christian theme that decent folk aware of the Climate Emergency must “bear witness” to the horrendous reality. We cannot walk by on the other side. We must inform everyone we can.

Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003). He has recently published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007); see also his contribution “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007). He has just published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others). When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for Peace and for Mother and Child see “Truth , Beauty & Saving the World – Science, Art & Nuclear, Greenhouse & Poverty Threats”) .

Well, I am no US political expert. Heck, I am not even an US citizen. But from what I’ve heard and seen so far the discussions and talks about the climate threat have gone pretty much un-noticed.

Sure you can say to the defence that USA hasn’t yet decided which two(!) persons who are eligible to fight for the presidency. But aren’t you, as an American and Earth citizen interested in where the different presidential contenders stand on climate and energy issues? Especially when you consider that USA is THE country that pollutes the worst, uses the most of earths resources and fuels the ignorant standpoint on climate change.

Luckily Gristmill has made a table with the candidate’s stances on fuel-economy standards, renewable energy, and coal.

John McCain is said to be the greenest of the Republican presidential candidates. But how green is he when he supports coal? Or maybe you should ask how bad (for the environment) the other Republican presidential candidates are?

On a poll on Msnbc.com where you could “choose Iowa’s biggest winners, losers”, from yesterdays Iowa caucus. One of the questions where:

“Going forward from Iowa, what is the most important issue for all candidates to address with clear policies and new ideas?”.

Msnbc.com had listed six different options that you could choose from:

• Family values
• War in Iraq
• Illegal immigration
• Health care
• Taxes and the economy
• Terrorism

I can’t see “Climate Change” as an option. And none of them were directly related to the environment. Only four of those where in some way related to the climate threat and it’s effects (can you guess which ones?).

So maybe it’s no wonder that Al Gore haven’t, yet, succeeded with his hopes to influence the American minds and politics when “Family Values” seems, for the majority of the American people, be much more important than the end of the civilization?

Maybe Al Gore could put pressure on the climate issue by running for president? I do hope he will. Sure, he might not win, but he will sure shake things up.

And like Michael Moore said this Wednesday; “Where are you, Al Gore? You can only polish that Oscar for so long. And the Nobel was decided by Scandinavians! I don’t blame you for not wanting to enter the viper pit again after you already won. But getting us to change out our incandescent light bulbs for some irritating fluorescent ones isn’t going to save the world.”