So, it should come as very little surprise that the nuclear industry has the same ‘flexible’ view on ethics, legality and basic decency when dealing with its own people. In fact, not even the CEO of France’s nuclear giant, Areva, was safe: the Financial Times has recently revealed a catalogue of incompetence, espionage and massive financial failure (follow-up article) swirling around the French nuclear industry:

• Areva purchased a uranium mine for €1.8 billion that was valued at only €1.4 million two years earlier
• after purchase of the mine it became apparent that it contained a fraction of the uranium deposits that the Areva board believed
• a senior Areva executive was exposed as having hired a Swiss private investigation firm to spy on then Areva CEO, Anne Lauvergeon (known as ‘Atomic Anne’ in France)
• Lauvergeon alleges that her husband’s phone was hacked as part of this and is now starting legal proceedings
• the web of intrigue goes as high as the president of France, Sarkozy, who became personally involved when he forced Lauvergeon out and installed a friend of his, Henri Proglio who also happens to be CEO of EDF, one of the largest energy companies in France and the UK
• Areva have now written off almost €2 billion as a result of the failed uranium mine purchase, amid accusations of fraud – although no evidence for this has been revealed so far

This debacle is piled on top of the disastrous nuclear projects that are unravelling in Olkiluoto, Finland and Flamanville, France where Areva are trying to build their new “Nuclear Renaissance” power plants.

It all paints a picture of a desperate industry in turmoil as nuclear power continues its long-term trend of global decline, with the IEA reporting that nuclear is down 10% year-on-year as renewable energy climbs 24%. Given that the industry operates more like a crime syndicate than a legitimate business, it is a little difficult to feel any sympathy.

Along with flying atomic cars and glittering cities on the Moon, the claims of “unlimited, clean and safe energy” that is “too cheap to meter” that the nuclear lobby began promising in the 1950s have been utterly discredited. Let’s hope that the nuclear piranhas continue eating their own and finish themselves off quickly so that the planet can focus its full resources on deploying clean, safe and truly sustainable renewable energy in order to mitigate the worst of climate change.

“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.

But, and this is the largest ‘but’ I will ever type, the technology still has some immense hurdles to cross yet.

Nuclear fusion, in layman’s terms, has all the benefits of nuclear fission, our current nuclear energy source, but with none of the radioactive material which will have an environmental impact lasting far past the life time of our children’s children.

Nuclear fusion is the chemical process where two lighter nuclei are essentially slammed together with such force that they fuse into one heavier nucleus. As they fuse they emit large quantities of energy.

Nuclear fusion is occurring in the Sun, a process called nucleosynthesis, the heat and light released in the reaction allowing life on Earth to flourish.

Having a stable reaction here on Earth is incredibly difficult as there are no materials able to withstand temperatures in excess of 100 million Kelvin which nuclear fusion reactions can reach.

This means that these plasmas need to be contained in an electric field with no part of the reactor in contact with the fusion reaction.

The two nuclei that come together can be no heavier than iron, with hydrogen atoms, the lightest element the usual candidate making the potential source of fuel for a fusion reactor the most abundant element in the Universe. Nuclear energy sources will no longer be shackled to scarce uranium deposits and suddenly we can look to the oceans for our energy.

The president of the Institute of Physics, Sir Peter Knight, claimed that a demonstration plant would be operational within the next 18 months, showing that in principle fusion can generate more energy than is required to start and maintain the fusion reaction.

He hopes that by demonstrating that this is possible, the first step to scaling the process up will begin and then the enormous benefits of fusion can be realised.

Of course however, it is not that straight forward. It never is.

Even if it possible to utilise nuclear fusion to its full potential and generate massive quantities of accessible, clean, cheap electricity we do not have the ability to effectively utilise this electricity.

Our cars and lorries currently require petrol or diesel, we have gas boilers to heat our water and warm our homes, our planes need aviation fuel to fly etc.

One solution to this, as David MacKay writes in his beguiling and sometimes scary book, Sustainable Energy – without the hot air, is to electrify as many devices as possible.

This means electric: cars; trams; boilers; machinery; ships; all lighting; heaters; you name it, everything. If fusion can provide clean, cheap, accessible electricity then everything that can use batteries, should.

Job done you might think. But then there is the very obvious question:

Is it possible to produce all the batteries needed?

And the simple answer is, no. Not in the form that batteries are currently produced. There are just not enough of the rare earth metals, such as lithium, needed to produce the batteries to substitute all our energy sources. Some people highlight the fact that we will just shift our economy and lifestyle from one dependent on oil to one dependent on rare earth metals.

So, to sum up this rather dispirited article, there have been some bold claims made recently that critical advances are occurring in our fifty year exploration for nuclear fusion. If the incredible is achieved however, there are enormous obstacles to overcome both technically and in our natural resources.

It is my opinion that it is our lifestyle, which is currently so tightly bound to high energy consumption, which is our true Achilles Heel. By reducing our energy consumption we liberate ourselves from the need for complex, technical, and possibly impossible solutions to our energy problems. Fusion may solve some of our energy problems, but it won’t solve them all.

You may laugh at him and his video, just like I did. But being a bicyclist, or even a pedestrian, in a car-centric world is dangerous and could easily get you killed. For example. In the UK cyclists made up only 0.5% of the total traffic but accounted for 5% of the entire number of road deaths and 11% of the serious injuries during 2009. The report, done by the road safety charity Brake, also concluded that “while road casualties overall had decreased, cyclist deaths and injuries had not”.

And a recently released report shows that between 2000 and 2009 more than 47000 pedestrians were killed in the USA. The study also shows that more than 668000 other pedestrians were injured because of accidents.

“The Transportation for America report asserts that transportation agencies across the country continue to design infrastructure with only vehicle traffic in mind. “It’s a serious problem that doesn’t get a lot of attention,” said Michelle Ernst, who wrote the report.

Most pedestrian deaths occur on “arterial” roadways, designed for traffic without sidewalks or bike lanes to accommodate walkers or cyclists, the report said.”

But luckily there are cities where they have bicycles and pedestrians in mind when they design their streets and transportation systems.

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 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.

Landcare emphasizes that this is a very rough estimate, compiled as a “fun exercise.”

What’s more, their estimates aren’t complete: the London Telegraph points out that the estimated Royal Wedding emissions don’t include “emissions from the millions of tons of bunting, cheap Union Jacks and confetti flooding the streets on the day, or the flights of the international media.”

Nor, we can add, did Landcare include emissions from police operations, helicopter surveillance, pre-emptive arrests of dissidents, or other actions associated with what the Independent calls “the biggest security operation in a generation.”�

But Landcare’s estimate is high enough. The company says that emissions associated with the Royal wedding were 1230 times greater than an entire year’s emissions from an average UK household. It’s even 12 times the annual emissions produced by Buckingham Palace.

Landcare doesn’t say so, but in one day the Royal family was responsible for pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than 67,700 people in Madagascar produce in an entire year.

That puts the entire “too many people” argument into proper perspective. Anyone who really wants to reduce global emissions should be campaigning to abolish the English monarchy.

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.

Another point Or Shlomi made was the issue that in the UK, an independent film maker has great difficulty approaching scientists and getting interviews. They want to speak to the BBC or ITV, etc. In the US, it’s the opposite, tell a scientists you’re an independent film maker they’ll happily give you a couple of hours of they’re time, say you’re from CNN…..and they’ll suddenly remember they’ve got a load of papers that need marking. I’m wondering if this has something to do with the state of journalism in the US, i.e the scientists know that anything they say to CNN (or Fox) will be heavily edited and watered down (or inflated into some scare story). It’s possible that the recent explosion in documentary film making might be linked to the abandonment by the news media, particularly in the US, of serious investigative journalism.

Harry Shearer, director of “The Big Uneasy”, in New Orleans on the bank of the Mississippi River with the Pontchartrain Expressway in the background.

The Big Uneasy

In 2005 the New Orleans was hit by an unprecedented natural disaster, in the form of hurricane Katrina. It was a rare one off storm that nobody could have foreseen….or at least that’s what Fox News would have you believe! As this film shows the true story is one of inadequate flood defences and many other issues that had been building for years. Contrary to popular opinion it’s likely the walls of the levees were not overtopped, several may well have structurally failed, indicating that New Orleans flood defences were inadequately designed. The film documents the accounts of whistle blowers who claimed critical equipment failed in tests years earlier, and that scientist warned of the dangers to New Orleans but were ignored, see National Geographic in Oct 2004 (a year before Katrina, and this was a followup story to another one about the issue published years earlier). The decline and loss of the wetlands around the city in pursuit of shipping channels (to support the oil industry, notably the so called MR GO) as well as climate change, also played its role.

But in the aftermath there is the question of what next for the Big Easy? Some sceptics would say, well you build a city below sea level and it will flood come a storm (like dah!). However, it’s not as simple as that. Indeed large parts of New Orleans, including the historic French quarter, are actually above sea level. The city is built where it is because it is one of America’s most strategic ports – the point of entry for much of its oil (from the Gulf of Mexico as well as Venezuela) and the exit point for much agricultural produce. That said, the film raised questions about the competency of the US Army Corps of Engineers and given the mess they made last time, whether the current flood defences will work next time (and there will be a next time!).

Indeed a good deal of the film was about showing the systematic failures of the US ACE, not just at New Orleans but countrywide. The ACE is one of Congresses principle delivery tools for Federal pork barrel funds, so on the one hand congress wants an ineffective, slightly dotty ACE that will provide more jobs and employment, but then of course they don’t want to pay the high costs of build New Orleans flood defences up to say category 5 level. Not helped by the fact they are now having to spend money correcting past mistakes of the ACE, such as the aforementioned Mr GO shipping channel.

Indeed we have to ask, as the film does, whether building big concrete walls is the best way to protect a city from hurricanes. Other alternatives include reclaiming the wetlands around the city or a “Dutch” approach with lots of open canals and water basins in the city to take away and store the water, plus keeping the ground wet (so it will absorb more come a storm). I would note, that there’s probably health reasons to limit the last of these options, given that New Orleans is in the Tropic (mosquito breeding country), but even so concrete walls aren’t necessarily the only solution to the problem.

And for the other great cities of the world, New Orleans is a warning of what’s to come. Today New Orleans…tomorrow…London? As sea levels rise, many of the world’s great cities such as London, New York, Tokyo and Mumbai, will find themselves under increasing pressure from the sea and will be forced to spend increasing amounts trying to defend the city from flooding. Eventually, it may reach the point where we have to just give up, move the critical functions of said city further inland and abandon the place to its fate. Such could well be the price we pay for climate change. With New Orleans this will be painful, the whole city won’t need to be abandoned (like I said parts of it are on a hill), but we’re talking bout having to relocate maybe 500,000+ people and the docks and other critical infrastructure. That’s going to be a pretty big job, whose going to pay for it? And relocating the city of London to higher ground, or all the financial services companies on Manhattan Island, whose going to pay for that? These are the sort “prices of climate change” that those who oppose action, because its too costly, don’t take into account.

Planeat

This film explores that most crucial of human relationship, between us and our food. Our largely meat based diet is the source of considerable environmental damage, from the increased global warming that it produces (a combination of embodied energy in feeding animals plus the CO2 and methane they produce, a cow for example produces about 90 kg’s of methane per year) and the vast “dead zones” in oceans caused by agricultural run off.

Of course one of the arguments against a Vegan diet is that it’s less healthy. Probably, true up to a point, in that it’s harder to eat a balanced diet if you completely give up meat. However, as the film spends a good deal of time pointing out there are health implications to a meat based diet, such as a greatly increased risk of heart disease and that one is more at risk of certain types of cancers (neither I nor the film are saying that meat causes cancer, not true, but it does increase the risk, nature creates the risk and diet can help pull the trigger). This is largely based upon a major study by Dr T. Campbell focusing on the link between diet and disease in rural China, which showed extremely low risks of heart disease (and certain cancer types) among populations who largely eat a plant based diet, compared with other populations in other parts of the country who were more at risk, due to a more animals products based diet.

Of course one of the other obstacles to going Vegan is cost. Its much more expensive to by Hummus in a Organic food shop, than meat based stuff at the supper market (casing point, last jar of Hummus I bought…think it was 3 quid, last burger I bought at a super market…think they were about 70-80p each…and I went for the gourmet expensive ones!). Of course this price differential is only there because we massively subsidise the meat and dairy industry, both in the Europe (according to Wikipedia its about €57 Billion euro and 40% of the EU budget) and the US. Clearly not a sustainable practice. Removing these subsidies would level the playing field, make meat more expensive and thus Vegan alternatives much more competitive.

Of course for me, an expert in energy, the real worry here is the energy one. Food contains rather a lot of embodied energy. That is the energy used by agricultural machinery preparing the land, the energy used in making fertilizers, pesticides, etc. The energy invested harvesting and processing food and of course packaging and shipping it (i.e. food miles). Much of this energy comes from Fossil fuels. Opinions differ as to how these things pan out, I’ve heard some people suggest that for every calorie of food energy we eat approximately 10 calories of (largely hydrocarbon) energy are consumed in producing that food. Even putting aside this figure, one fact that is beyond dispute, is that a meat based diet consumes much more food than a plant based one. And given that I suspect we’ll have a lot less energy available in future to invest in food production, plus we’ll likely be forced to give over some of our land to energy production (biofuels, etc.) this creates a big dilemma, can we feed the planet in a post peak oil world?

I’ve seen estimates before suggesting that on an energy basis, a sustainable global population would be around 25 Billion with a plant based diet and 8 Billion with a mixed meat and plant diet, of course these figures only account for energy inputs into the system at the exclusion of everything else and we assume 100% conversion efficiency at various steps (when 20-33% is more likely, i.e a pop. of 5-7.5 Billion with plants and 2-2.66 Billion with meat). The energy efficiency of say a cow is probably only about 5-10% (that is we feed a cow food, food = energy from the sun/fossil fuels, kill cow & eat cow but will only receive 5-10% of the originally invested energy back) although again we’re thinking purely in energy terms here.

On a food basis Planeat suggests we can get 3 times more food from the same land with plants than with animals. And as also pointed out in the film, about 40% of our grain supply gets fed to cattle. So, cutting down on meat production is something of a priority.

Of course, as I would counter, we can’t eat grass, while cows can! Furthermore, organic farms tend to be much less efficient producers of food than industrial agriculture . And before we go all Vegan mad here, what’s good for the goose ain’t good for the gander. Some parts of the planet are not really geared towards plant based agriculture. In much of the Middle East, the steppes of Asia, Pacific Island communities, or the Northern areas of North America and Europe (or indeed the highlands of Scotland), a meat or fish based diet is actually the most energy efficient and carbon neutral option. The amount of trouble and energy you’d have to invest trying to grow crops in such a harsh climate, against raising animals or fishing, negates any benefits. But of course feeding much of our grain to cattle isn’t a great idea, nor is it sustainable or ethical in an overpopulated world.

So in my opinion, while we need to take the message of this film on board (course you’ll have to see it first ), we also need to put everything in context. For example, just to correct one point made in the Q&A afterwards, someone (a Vegan I presume) made some comment about the “ethics” of using wool. The problem at the moment in the UK is getting farmers to shear their sheep, as its better for the sheep on an animal welfare point of view. Unfortunately, it now costs farmers more money to sheer a sheep than they get back from selling the wool, as they have to compete against artificial fibres (produced from oil) and some aren’t bothering to do so any more. Wool is a good natural product, excellent insulation properties, good U-value, bio-degradable, a low carbon footprint (compared to artificial fibres) and most important of all its sustainable – we’ve had sheep in the UK for thousands of year and likely still have them thousands of years after the last petrol powered car has rusted back to iron oxide. So wool hardly counts as unethical, quite the opposite!

Of course, I’m being a bit of a hypocrite here, given that I just walked past a fridge full of meat and dairy products (indeed the primary “plant derived” food in my fridge is probably beer!) although my dinner tonight was salad and lunch was spicy potatoes & tomatoes (check out the planeat website for some nice recipes!). Having seen this film, I’ll probably decrease my meat intake in future, but I don’t think I’ll be turning Vegan…sort of hard think to do in Glasgow! Casing point, on the train home after the film many people (drunks…sorry! I mean locals!) were tucking into their deep fried…..something or other (probably best not to know what it was originally!) or kebab and chips. I start preaching about Veganism there I’d have probably got Chibbed with a plastic fork fairly quickly! If Glaswegians went Vegan, we’d start deep frying tofu and lettuce! :O This is the home of the deep fired mars bar! So we’ve along way to go in terms of solving our food problems.

Gasland

Narrowly beaten to the Oscar for best documentary this year (by Inside Job), Gasland is probably one of the most controversial films in years. If you’ve not heard about (have you been living under a rock?) it traces the story of one young filmmaker who was asked by a drilling company for permission to drill in his land for “Shale Gas” using a technique called Hydraulic Fracturing, often referred to as simply Fracking . He embarks on a journey across the US uncovering a trail of people claiming Fracking nearby their homes has contaminated their water supplies….to the point that some of them can actually set fire to their tap water! Then there are strange mysterious vapours coming of the condensation tanks at Shale gas wells (given that they are only visible in IR camera, here a still, its probably some greenhouse gas likely methane…plus a carcinogen or two!)

The film comes on the back of a Cornell university study (summary of the study here, news article here, key graph  here) suggesting that Shale gas drilling, once you account for these methane leaks, comes out with a carbon footprint worse than coal! And worse still, as most of this carbon is released downstream, i.e at the wellhead, we can’t mitigate the problem with CCS. Indeed, reading through the Cornell study paper I note that it doesn’t seem to adequately consider the issue of underground leaks (i.e the gas that’s winding up in peoples drinking water, at one point in the film you see gas apparently seeping up from the ground). If so, then this could mean that Shale gas has a much larger carbon footprint than even this Cornell study suggests. Given how the US and certain other countries now seem determined to get the bulk of their energy from Shale gas in the future, this could mean that if the US starts ditching oil and coal for Shale gas, far from its greenhouse gas emissions falling, they might actually increase dramatically, never mind the enormous damage to public health and drinking water that this film highlights.

Of course the gas industry has been very quick to react to both this film and the Cornell study. In the situations in the film where people light their drinking water, they point out that investigators (hired by the gas industry) concluded that the gas in the water is biogenic in origin (i.e from natural decay not natural gas). The make similar claims as to there being no direct link between Shale gas drilling and water source pollution. This may be true, but as Gasland shows, there’s a growing causal link between Shale gas drillers moving into an area and then people reporting water problems….I wonder if there’s a relationship between the two!

As a scientist, I should note that a causal relationship doesn’t prove anything by itself. But it’s certainly reason for further study and maybe easing off on Shale Gas projects until these studies are completed. I would also note that proving a definitive link between two things, say the deaths of thousands of people at Chernobyl due to radiation, or smoking and lung cancer is difficult. In both the two examples above our evidence is mostly causal (lots of people smoked, lots got cancer).

Of course the very fact the Gas industry swiftly deployed their PR attack dogs against Josh Fox, suggests he’s hit on a raw nerve. You don’t call out the big gun PR firms unless you have a good reason to be worried. The first I heard of this film was from one of these PR agencies attacking it…which given that I know how these guys operate (see PR watch or Toxic sludge is good for you! here), suggested to me that the film must be on to something…indeed it sort of suggests that the fossil fuel industry have probably known about these problems for years and are now really upset that someone’s finally blown the whistle. Why for example, back in 2001, before the Shale gas drilling boom even started did the Bush adm. exempt Shale Gas drillers from the Clean Water Act? That sort of suggests that they knew something was dodgy from day one.

But I see a simple solution to this whole mess, we make a deal with the Shale gas industry that they can drill wherever they like – but the executives and shareholders, plus their families and children, have to exclusively drink the drinking water from wells harvested around shale gas facilities. How many shale gas wells do you think we’d drill?

But Jokes aside, Gasland is a film that anyone who is even vaguely aware of this thing called “the environment” needs to go see….somehow!

The Pipe

In 1996 natural gas was found off the North West coast of Mayo by Shell. So began Ireland’s most controversial energy project to date . Since then various local opposition groups have sought to derail and prevent this Corrib gas project, under the umbrella group “Shell 2 Sea” . This film details the struggle of members of a small local community against the combined forces of a major energy corporation and the Irish State to push through Corrib regardless.

Having said that, I would note that at the time Shell originally proposed the gas field and pipeline route, their preferred pipeline route (which is the crux of all the controversy) struck me as the least worst option from an environmental point of view. Shell 2 Sea’s proposal, while moving the pipe out of certain people’s back yards, would be worse for the environment. So it’s not really appropriate to consider this as an “environmentalists” against multinational situation, more NIMBY’s against a multinational. Indeed it was sort ironic at times seeing some of them driving around in SUV’s or using cars (or fishing boats!) to block construction never once thinking, well without fossil fuels how would I be able to live?

As someone supportive of renewables, I’d rather see more offshore wind, tidal and wave energy installed off the west coast instead of gas. But the fact is that 90% of Ireland’s energy comes from fossil fuels (see the graph here), 37% of it from natural gas. Climbing that mountain is going to take decades. In the interim, we are going to need to use some source of fossil fuels and I’d rather see us use the Irish stuff than importing it from Russia (and if Corrib doesn’t goes ahead this will be the end result). Of course mention the word “environment” in Russia and the FSB will spirit you away to the nearest Sushi bar,  so like I said its about least worse options.

Yes, of all the energy companies picked to exploit Irelands natural resources, I can think of none worse than Shell – who in their right mind pick them…oh! wait, it was Ray Burke, one of the dodgiest, brown envelope stuffing politicians of recent Irish political history. And I mean we used to call him Ray Burka for his habit of hiding stuff! Anyway, Shell for those who don’t know (again, which rock have you been living under?) have a bit of a “reputation” to say the least! The strong arm tactics of the police were brutal, and the way the Irish government just rolled over to corporate power, is controversial. But there is a need to be pragmatic about these things. So altogether both compelling and at the same time slightly humorous viewing.

Of course you’ll notice I said, most controversial to date project. They reckon that there’s Shale gas up in Fermanagh, and given what happened over Corrib, and all that I said earlier about Shale gas above, I suspect sparks will soon be flying over this soon. If there’s one positive outcome from Corrib it will be that the Fermanagh proposal gets quietly dropped as the companies will be too afraid of local opposition.

Winds of Change

A short film that showed an alternative approach to the above. Rather than big business coming into a rural community and imposing an energy project (be it a wind farm, gasfield or nuclear plant) for the benefit of people hundreds of miles away and profit of faceless investors, the community of Fintry bought a share in a local renewable energy project. The profits of which are now being ploughed into local community energy projects (loft insulation, renewable heating systems, etc).

http://www.transitionscotland.org/~transiti/uk-green-film-festival-20-22-may

I would note that this is nothing new; they’ve been following this approach in Denmark and Germany for many years now. This may explain the relatively limited opposition to renewables in these countries compared to the rampant NIMBYism in the UK (and Ireland). So definitely a way forward, and a stark contrast to the business model of Shell above or the Shale gas drilling industry.

That said of course, there’s a limit to how far we can push this paradigm. The majority of us live in large cities which will require some large energy projects if we’re going to solve our energy needs. While I would favour as much local involvement as possible, inevitably you’re going to need major corporations involved, at some level, in both for the installation of renewable systems but also the financing of these projects.

Many people will recognise that description of George Monbiot in his role as one of Britain’s leading environmental journalists. Sadly, few of those descriptors apply to the George Monbiot who is now championing nuclear energy.

The George Monbiot We Knew

Until quite recently, Monbiot was unequivocal that nuclear energy was not worth the risks. Here he is in 2005:

“…nuclear power spreads radioactive pollution, presents a target for terrorists and leaves us with waste that no government wants to handle.”

He was also certain that nuclear was not the optimal solution for climate change mitigation. He approvingly quoted a paper from physicist, Amory Lovins:

“Expanding nuclear power would both reduce and retard the desired decrease in CO2 emissions.”

He rounds off that article with an attack on the UK’s chief scientific, Sir David King, for his support of nuclear energy: “I fear that the government’s chief scientist is mutating into its chief spin doctor.”

He pushes home his point in 2006:

“To start building a new generation of nuclear power stations before we know what to do with the waste produced by existing plants is grotesquely irresponsible. … If, as a result of slow leakage into the groundwater, radioactive materials from a burial site kill an average of only one person a year for one million years, those who made the decision to bury them will – through their infinitesimal and unrecorded impacts – be responsible for the deaths of a million people.”

His positioned softened in 2009, stating that he would not oppose nuclear provided it met four conditions:

1. Its total emissions – from mine to dump – are taken into account.

2. We know exactly how and where the waste is to be buried.

3. We know how much this will cost and who will pay.

4. There is a legal guarantee that no civil nuclear materials will be diverted for military purposes.

His second condition was not met in 2009, it is not met today and there is no sign of it being met at any time in the foreseeable future. We do not know where to put our nuclear fission waste, which needs storing somewhere securely for at least 100,000 years. This means his first condition is also not met – if we don’t know where to put it we certainly do not know its total emissions. Similarly, we cannot know the cost so his third condition cannot be met. In theory, in a perfect world, his fourth condition can be met – but in reality there is no chance of guaranteeing it. We can never be certain what happens in democratic governments, let alone in the less stable regions of the world where theocracies and dictatorships exist on a political precipice.

So, in reality, none of Monbiot’s conditions for not opposing nuclear can be met. He lectures us on why this is such a fundamental problem:

“The most fundamental environmental principle, taught to every child before their third birthday, is that you don’t make a new mess until you have cleared up the old one. It seems astonishing to me that we could contemplate building a new generation of nuclear power stations when we still have no idea where the waste from existing nukes will be buried.”

Fukushima Meltdown Brings Nuclear Epiphany

Following the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan on March 11 and the subsequent growing catastrophe that engulfed the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, Monbiot published an article just 5 days later, stating “The Fukushima crisis should not spell the end of nuclear power.“At this stage, TEPCO (the Japanese power company who own and manage the nuclear reactors) were issuing calm reassurances that there was little to worry about – “All 6 units of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station have been shut down.” (March 13) – as we simultaneously watched videos of nuclear containment buildings exploding and multiple experts warning that the situation was far worse than official reports suggested. Very clearly, TEPCO’s claim that all the reactors were “shut down” was at best ‘misleading’.

With each passing day it became clear that Fukushima was a growing disaster. A few, short weeks later it was elevated to International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) level 7 – the highest level, only matched previously by Chernobyl. To say that Monbiot’s assertion was premature is a colossal understatement. TEPCO subsequently admitted that “The radiation leak has not stopped completely and our concern is that it could eventually exceed Chernobyl.”

Monbiot reiterated his four conditions for not opposing nuclear and added a fifth in his March 16 article:

“To these I’ll belatedly add a fifth, which should have been there all along: no plants should be built in fault zones, on tsunami-prone coasts, on eroding seashores or those likely to be inundated before the plant has been decommissioned or any other places which are geologically unsafe.”

Note that he has seemingly forgotten about the threat of terrorism even though there seems little evidence that the world has become a more stable, secure place in the past six years. He also seems unaware that the same chief scientific adviser to the UK that he pilloried in 2005 as being nuclear’s “chief spin doctor” warned that ““a mass of rock” off the Canary Islands was “waiting to collapse into the Atlantic” causing “giant tsunamis””, adding “Britain would have a six hour warning before a 30ft wave hit us”.

So, Monbiot’s growing list of conditions all fail – but this does not dampen his growing affection for nuclear. Although, deciphering Monbiot’s position is quite difficult when he makes statements such as:

“I despise and fear the nuclear industry as much as any other green: all experience hath shown that, in most countries, the companies running it are a corner-cutting bunch of scumbags, whose business originated as a by-product of nuclear weapons manufacture.”

Who does he think will build and manage nuclear reactors in the UK – or anywhere else – except the “corner-cutting bunch of scumbags“?! At this point a person who makes decisions based on evidence and reason might start backing away from nuclear. Not the new George Monbiot. He is now more convinced than ever:

“As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.”

After his March 16 article, he no longer mentions his four five conditions. They have simply vanished.

Chernobyl? General ‘Buck’ Turgidson Assesses the Impact

Monbiot is now aggressively advocating nuclear and going on the attack against a growing chorus of criticism directed at him:

Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution.

He even uses the strap line “How the Fukushima disaster taught me to stop worrying and embrace nuclear power” which is a play on Kubrick’s classic movie, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb“. Just like General ‘Buck’ Turgidson from the movie, Monbiot’s assessment of mass death and suffering is akin to “having our hair mussed.”

In order to dismiss the impact of Chernobyl as being relatively insignificant Monbiot offers up his readers a single number for total deaths: 43.

That number is cherry-picked from the IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency – whose stated purpose is to “seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy“. Those 43 are the poor souls who were immediately affected by radiation that came pouring out of Chernobyl, mostly firemen, engineers and other first responders. They received massive doses of radiation and died quickly, in days or weeks. However, the 43 that Monbiot claims (subsequently increased to 47 in a later article) is most certainly not the full extent of the excess deaths that resulted from Chernobyl. Here are a selection of estimates:

• World Health Organisation (WHO) / IAEA = 9000 “…there may be up to 9,000 excess cancer deaths due to Chernobyl among the people who worked on the clean-up operations, evacuees and residents of the highly and lower-contaminated regions in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.” http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr20/en/index.html
• International Agency for Research on Cancer = 16,000 “…about 16,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 cases of other cancers may be expected due to radiation from the accident and that about 16,000 deaths from these cancers may occur.” http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2006/pr168.html
• TORCH (independent scientists, commissioned by the German Green Party) = 60,000 “…the worldwide collective dose of 600,000 person sieverts will result in 30,000 to 60,000 excess cancer deaths.” http://www.chernobylreport.org/?p=summary
• Greenpeace = 93,000+ “…approximately 270,000 cancers and 93,000 fatal cancer cases caused by Chernobyl. The report also concludes that on the basis of demographic data, during the last 15 years, 60,000 people have additionally died in Russia because of the Chernobyl accident, and estimates of the total death toll for the Ukraine and Belarus could reach another 140,000.” http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/chernobylhealthreport.pdf
• New York Academy of Sciences = 985,000 deaths as a result of the radioactivity released. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects#New_York_Academy_of_Sciences_publication + http://www.napf.org/articles/db_article.php?print&article_id=141

There is clearly a very wide range of estimates of total mortality as a result of Chernobyl and it is impossible to ever know the true number. But one thing is clear: the true death toll resulting from Chernobyl far exceeds the handful that George Monbiot wants us to believe.

Also, note that the WHO are effectively muzzled by the IAEA following an agreement in 1959 whereby the WHO cannot publish anything regarding radiation or nuclear technology without the approval of the IAEA. So, even the nuclear industry’s marketing department admits there may be up to 9000 excess deaths due to Chernobyl. And this says nothing about the tens of thousands of excess cancers, the miscarriages, birth defects, people displaced from their homes, all the lives wrecked by each of these things and the crippling economic costs – all of which continue today.

Monbiot’s claim of 43 47 excess deaths due to Chernobyl is not simply wrong. It is an obscene lie. He must know about the wide-ranging credible estimates that put total fatalities in the thousands or tens of thousands. He must know that the IAEA is the marketing department for the nuclear industry – the same industry that he describes as “liars” and “scumbags“. And yet, for the purpose of assessing the impact of Chernobyl, a cherry-picked number from the nuclear industry that not even the nuclear industry quotes is the gospel truth for General ‘Buck’ Turgidson George Monbiot.

Radiation dangerous? Bananas!

Now George moves on to the thorny problem of radiation toxicity. He ‘cites’ a nifty graphic from a well-known web-based comic: XKCD, Radiation Dose Chart. It offers a guide to radiation based on relative doses, starting with ‘sleeping next to someone’ and ‘eating one banana’. Monbiot found this quite convincing. Perhaps because he chose to in preference for doing the least amount of research on the subject?

Radiation comes in different forms and can be delivered by different mechanisms. The key fact not shown in Monbiot’s preferred comic is that external emitters of radiation (e.g. getting an x-ray at the dentist) are not the same as internal emitters (e.g. drinking milk contaminated by caesium). Once radioactive products have entered the body (via water, food or from the air) they are emitting radiation directly into cells and their deleterious effect is multiplied massively. So background radiation is not at all the same as having radioactive plutonium in your lungs or radioactive caesium in your bones or radioactive iodine in your thyroid.

Bananas? Bananas contain potassium. Your body contains potassium. When you eat a banana, your body ejects the same amount of potassium that you just consumed, thereby making bananas radiation-neutral. Also, as you would expect, the radiation delivered by bananas is very different to that delivered by fissile materials that come out of a nuclear reactor that is in meltdown. For some reason, this has not occurred to George Monbiot.

Note the warning at the foot of the XKCD graphic – which Monbiot clearly did not: “If you’re basing radiation safety procedures on an internet image and things go wrong, you have no one to blame but yourself.” Indeed.

The False Dichotomy: Nuclear or Coal

The key argument that Monbiot appears to be pushing (as best one can discern from the multiple, frantic articles published over the last few weeks) to defend his nuclear crusade is that our energy choice is “nuclear or coal” and therefore “nuclear or unmitigated climate change“. This is a false dichotomy.

The choice for our energy future – and therefore climate change mitigation – is nuclear energy or renewable energy.

Remember that Monbiot circa 2005 said, “Expanding nuclear power would both reduce and retard the desired decrease in CO2 emissions.” This was confirmed by the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission: “doubling nuclear capacity would make only a small impact on reducing carbon emissions by 2035” and “the risks of nuclear energy outweighed its advantages.” That advisory panel has since been closed by the pro-nuclear Tory government – which is one way to get rid of inconvenient facts when you have an ideology to push ahead with.

Monbiot is backing the wrong horse in the climate change mitigation race. Reality shows that renewables are being deployed at a phenomenal rate and global renewable energy generation now exceeds nuclear. Remember, nuclear has been subsidised, developed and deployed for almost 60 years; renewables have only received serious investment in perhaps the last decade.

New nuclear reactors are barely being deployed quickly enough to match old reactors going offline. The disaster at Fukushima is unlikely to improve that. Indeed, Germany have since announced rapid closure of their nuclear reactors and to accelerate their plan for 100% renewable energy.

The other tactic that Monbiot has employed to justify a rush to nuclear energy is that nuclear will become cheaper in the future. He made the following bizarre statement while debating Caroline Lucas of the Green Party:

“So while you can say wind at the moment costs less than nuclear … My guess, because I haven’t yet seen a comparative study, and I don’t believe one exists, is that when we get up to those sorts of levels, nuclear is likely to be quite a lot cheaper.”

That beggars belief. He is making “guesses” based on non-existent studies about the costs of nuclear and renewables decades in to the future while admitting that right now nuclear is the more expensive option. And contrary to Monbiot’s “guessing”, the evidence suggests the very opposite. Nuclear continues to climb in costs while renewables continue to fall:

• Does nuclear power have a negative learning curve? Real escalation in reactor investment costs while solar and wind falls. “New nukes have gone from too cheap to meter to too expensive to matter for the foreseeable future.”

The George Monbiot of Today

There is no coherence to Monbiot’s arguments. He demonstrates all the traits of the climate change deniers he has fought for many years. He cherry picks numbers, ignores all credible evidence that undermines his position and abandons his arguments as soon as they prevent him pushing forward with his new-found love of nuclear. He is making statements which he must know to be untrue. He is “guessing” about costs of technology decades in to the future in order to justify his beliefs.

George Monbiot is in denial of reality in order to protect an emotional attachment to what he erroneously believes is a solution to global warming. He is advocating a technology that brings catastrophic risks, highly toxic waste, is too expensive, too slow and unreliable to build. Nuclear energy will starve the renewable sector of the funds and resources it needs and which offers the best chance of preventing catastrophic climate change.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time Monbiot has succumbed to superficial arguments from vested interests. He was fooled by the lies of the climate change deniers regarding the stolen CRU emails. He was fooled by a single paper from a rightwing think tank, RWI Essen, to the extent that he called Feed In Tariffs and solar energy “The German Disease”? He has now been fooled by the lies of the nuclear lobby.

For many, this inconsistency and lack of coherent, evidence-based reasoning is now too much. George Monbiot can no longer be considered a credible commentator.

George Made Some New Friends

To finish on a positive note for George, he has made some new friends and allies with his nuclear epiphany. Among them are the billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, and who are possibly more responsible than any others for funding climate change denial. They also strongly support nuclear energy. Why? Because they know that nuclear offers no realistic threat to their fossil fuel golden goose. The George Monbiot that we knew would have gained a clue from that fact….

The photo shows the second hydrogen explosion at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 3 reactor in Japan.

The ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan has sparked new life in the nuclear energy debate in many countries. And the fear for possible nuclear accidents in other countries forces politicians to reconsider and review their current energy policy stance.

The continued protests against nuclear energy in Germany has seen an upswing during these past days. About 60,000 people formed a chain around a nuclear power station in Germany this weekend to protest its continued operation. And chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to announce the suspension of the country’s plans to extend the life of its nuclear power stations later today, the Guardian reports.

In USA people and politicians are starting to question President Barack Obama’s plans to expand and build new nuclear power plants to meet growing energy demands in the country. The independent and strongly pro-nuclear Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, have said that the USA should “put the brakes on nuclear power plants“:

“I don’t want to stop the building of nuclear power plants. But I think we’ve got to kind of quietly put, quickly put, the brakes on until we can absorb what has happened in Japan as a result of the earthquake and the tsunami and then see what more, if anything, we can demand of the new power plants that are coming on line.”

In Britain the Green lawmaker Caroline Lucas have said that the Japanese nuclear crisis strengthens the case against new nuclear construction. “You will never be able to completely design out human error, design failure or natural disaster,” she said. Walt Patterson, associate fellow at London’s Chatham House thinktank, said that, the financial damages of a potential nuclear accident also played a big role in shaping the energy debate in Brian and Europe.

“That is undoubtedly going to filter back to the debate in Europe as a further factor in the very dubious economics of these plants,” he told Reuters.

The plans to expand nuclear energy in India for around $175 billion might, in light of the current situation in Japan, see a strong public backlash, analysts and experts say:

“The Japan accident has created a very, very tough situation for India, actual implementation of nuclear power projects will now certainly take a backseat,” said Debasish Mishra, Mumbai-based senior director at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. “It will be very difficult to sell the idea of nuclear power to people for any political party after the Japan disaster.”

While the nuclear crisis in Japan might not change the Chinese government’s plans to develop more nuclear power it could force China to review their energy policies. The current situation in Japan “may become a factor in the drafting of China’s energy plans, Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said in Beijing.”

“The accident in Japan may trigger increased public concerns over building atomic plants,” said Dave Dai, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Daiwa Securities Capital Markets Co. “China will become more cautious while developing nuclear-power plants but is unlikely to alter its long-term nuclear development plans.”

“The Baltic nation of Latvia is blessed with some of the most beautiful forests in the world, millions of square kilometres of pristine woodland that support a complex biodiversity of rare species of animals and plants. [...] As the UK aims to become one of the greenest countries in Europe, we expose its role in the deforestation of Latvia.”

The clear cutting, which is a total loss not only for biological diversity but also for social and economic reasons, is the result of the current economic crisis in Latvia. It is being fueled by the demand from overseas markets, particularly the UK which has been Latvia’s main export market for over 300 years. Al Jazeera shows how corporations and the Latvian government ignores EU habitat directives, laws and nature reserves to be able to satisfy the market demand for timber. They also question the validation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certificate which is said to only label timber that is sustainable produced.

“Many of the products of the trade from furniture to wood pulp and paper are sold in the UK under a labelling scheme run by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international NGO that certifies timber is being sustainably produced. Is that really true?”

This episode shows not just the world’s ecological unequal exchange but also how unattainable sustainability is in today’s capitalistic system which is based on a never-ending growth rate.