Dear fellow-list travellers,
A brief response to some of the recent comments on this list - especially
from Ray Taylor and Chris Church - with regard to the Crisis Forum's
decision to collect and collate information on its website regarding
climate change and nuclear power.
Certainly, we have noted diverse, indeed quite contrary views on this matter
though we must say it has not deflected us from our intention. The
opportunity continues to make comment on this and we encourage people to do
so on this list, especially if they feel strongly on the matter.
Much of the thinking behind our decision, should be either implicit or
explicit from the copy which will be going on the website in the next week.
(indeed I take the opportunity now to include its pre-proof text herein at
the bottom...Please note, however that this may be revised in the upshot).
To Ray's anxieties, may I add this by way of explanation. CF did not begin
as a climate change forum. Its primary aim was, and remains, to analyse and
interpret the dysfunctional nature of the international political-economic
system we now have and why this is unsustainable in planetary and hence
human terms. Perhaps, you might be surprised, Ray, if I were to say that
personally, when we were discussing CF's creation in c. 2002 climate change
was not my own immediate focus, and indeed, though my position has radically
changed on that score, if the issue still did not exist I would continue
to contend that we would be sooner or later heading for absolute
catastrophe as a species.
The intellectual aim of CF, thus, at its outset began from wanting to join
up all the information on the nature of the dysfunction - from the broadest
disciplinary range - in order to try to put flesh on the above premise in
a genuinely holistic way : paradoxically something which it would appear
cannot be done according to current conventional academic theory or
practice.
This may begin to explain why we cannot somehow circumvent the nuclear power
issue. It is exactly indicative of how elites within the current system are
thinking and responding to the crisis before us. Indeed, this must suffice
too, for our answer to Chris. It is exactly because you are utterly right,
if I may put it like this, that you are also utterly wrong! The rightness
lies in the absolute veracity of what you say. Nuclear power as an option in
the face of climate change should on all empirical evidence be a complete
non-starter. Yet by the same token, one might equally - even in a facile way
- ask how do we get into this mess in the first place? If it were through
reason and logic then something clearly does not compute. Perhaps, then,
what needs interrogating is not the facts of the matter per se, but the
psychological factors which impel those in power to think according to the
entirely straightjacketed and boxed-in precepts of that political culture
and from which "logicaly" nuclear power emerges as 'the' answer.
I have my own little paltry bit of evidence on this matter too. For my sins
I happen to know somebody at the very senior policy making level of the
civil service, somebody in fact who was in on the whole nuclear power
development back in the '70s as a much more junior bod. but is now in a
crucial decision making position. When I proposed to him recently that
nuclear power was clearly a case of taking exactly the wrong turning if we
wanted to genuinely tackle climate change, I was rebutted with the response
that I was suffering from a surfeit of anti-nuclear faith and not looking at
the matter "logically". In other words, what we have here is a case of elite
prejudices and assumptions translating into wisdoms and mantras even when
entirely at odds with the evidence! Thus, just as we must be very careful
of not falling into the trap, as George Marshall, has pointed out, of not
getting sucked into a ridiculous debate on this subject, as if it were the
be-all and end-all of our purpose, we surely must also not be entrapped by
our own mirror-image of elite hubris. We need to be forewarned that senior
elements of government, the civil service, corporations and other business
sectors are going to be make a very strong bidding to resume the nuclear
option, and it seems to me imperative in the circumstances, that we should
not close ourselves off to this eventuality or what that will mean in the
broadest societal, political, economic as well as environmental terms.
Indeed, what it will mean is the movement towards a much more tightly
regulated and controlled society; a very particularly form, indeed - as the
crisis of climate change accelerates - of something we might call
eco-fascism. Looking at the crisis from now into the near-future, we have to
be forearmed against this.
Crisis Forum remains, as we state below, committed to analysis and
interpretation, not to campaigning per se. But we cannot thereby enter into
a situation where we simply self-censor ourselves in the interests of
consensus when actually what is needed now is a very clear critique of why
the trajectories which are being begun to be envisaged and articulated by
the powerful contain within them the seeds not just of environmental
catastrophe but a societal and political one to match it.
Mark Levene
Crisis Forum
----------------------------------------------------------
It's hard to escape the feeling that the lights got switched off at the
'nuclear power ' yes or no?' stadium years ago (1989), but of course the
nuclear lobby has been hanging around trying to boot the ball back on to the
pitch ever since. Given the lack of any real desire from anyone else to
waste time on them, it's perhaps not surprising that they've started to get
some coverage through the climate change link. But the big issues for
climate change are by no means about how we generate some electricity - they
go much wider and are crucially about how society sees, understands and
relates (or tries to hide from) to the problem.
And let's not forget all the underlying issues that relate to why nukes
proved such a disaster first time round, none of which are in any way
irrelevant now:
The desire for a 'big science' solution
Some people still believe that the 'boffins' can somehow solve the problems
(and allow us to carry on with completely unsustainable lifestyles). Rather
more people (?) have an underlying distrust of scientists these days...
Public unacceptablility
Opnion polls still show the usual 70 - 80% opposition to nuclear power
(about the same level as that of support for wind power...)
The Chernobyl factor
It happened... There is no 'totally fool-proof system' - arguable as to
whether such a concept has any real validity.
The economics
The impact on poorer communities from massive investment in over-priced and
subsidised electricity generation rather than efficiency is likely to be an
increase in fuel poverty and early deaths (where are those in the life cycle
analysis?). Nuclear generation costs (even without paying the full waste
costs) continue to stay high while wind and solar are falling year on year.
The wider environmental impacts
Uranium mining, enrichment at Capenhurst (a huge and intensive energy user),
waste treatment / storage / disposal issues (high medium and low...)
etc.....
Terrorism
When people took a mock bazooka onto my local railway station in 1982 and
pointed it at a nuclear waste flask, it was largely seen as amusing (BR said
it was alright as long as they had platform tickets). Would it be seen as
quite so amusing today? Any economy focused around Plutonium and enriched
Uranium is going to attract terrorists and criminals and require a level of
security that will accelerate moves towards wider state control.
Ability of nuclear to deliver
Nuclear has never delivered more c. 4% of our primary energy (of which
electricity is just a small part). We currently have no licensed design for
the UK (a delay factor of several years even without a public enquiry etc.)
We could start investing properly in efficiency tomorrow.
Given all these points it is hard to understand why anyone working on
climate should allow themselves to be diverted into giving this non-solution
any serious air time. Leave them out there with the climate deniers and the
flat earthers and let's focus on what will really make a difference.
Chris Church
CEA
From: "A Taylor (NVC Findhorn Slovakia)" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "Mark Levene" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 9:43 PM
Subject: Re: Climate Change and Nuclear Power
> Hi Mark,
>
> while I am passionate about climate change, I do
> not have fixed views about anti-nuclear issues. I
> would much appreciate if those feeling strongly
> about the limitations and dangers of nuclear
> power could set up separate e-lists, rather than
> imposing their strong anti-nuclear views on the
> broader coalition working on climate change.
>
> I think foisting the nuclear issue onto all
> climate change folk is likely to weaken the
> synergies we already have. I'm not sure I would stay on the list if it
> became an anti-nuclear energy forum as well as a
> climate change forum.
>
> Ray Taylor
> Findhorn
Provisional copy for website:
Nuclear Power and climate change
The British government is in the process of revitalising interest in nuclear
power, ostensibly
as a response to climate change. Crisis Forum has decided to devote a
section of its website to this issue. Its purpose is twofold:
a) to chart the ongoing nature and contours of this government agenda -
primarily through pertinent mainstream media and independent articles on the
subject
b) to provide a resource base of expert opinion which clearly states in an
accessible way, why the nuclear option is the wrong one. In some instances,
where appropriate, we shall do this through providing relevant links.
Our underlying reason for this initiative is both to provide accessible
information now to anybody who wants to understand the real issues at
stake, while in the slightly longer term build up a serious documentary
collection of authoritative evidence which may be of value in any further
more public debate on climate change and nuclear power. We therefore invite
short, accessible statements, from whatever disciplinary standpoint which
help demonstrate the mendacity, dangers, or irrelevance of nuclear power as
a panacea (in whole or part) to climate change, for inclusion on this
website. Areas of interest might include (though are not limited to) : the
flawed history of nuclear power; who stands to benefit from its renewed
development; the security issues in an age of alleged global 'terrorism';
the nuclear power:weapons nexus ( not least its relationship to the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty); issues of social and political control vis-a-vis
nuclear power; broader ethical issues; ongoing epidemiological issues
associated with (uranium)mining, production, transport, long-term storage
and decommissioning; broader environmental, social as well as economic
costs; the issue of time-lag in setting up a large nuclear programme in the
context of short, medium and long term climate change imperatives; and
perhaps most importantly, any economic, social or other evidence as why
nuclear power fundamentally does not address the climate change crisis.(
Please note, however, that where there are serious queries on the 'science'
or veracity of the articles/papers/statements submitted we will be sending
them out them for further assessment).
We appreciate that not everybody coming to this site will necessarily share
the opinions of the Crisis Forum co-founders on this subject, or, if living
and working outside the UK, may feel remote from its relevance.
Independently of this section, therefore, we also invite anybody who would
like to offer comments, of whatever nature, to please do so on the CF list.
Finally, we would like to confirm two things. Firstly, nuclear power is
not, and will not become, our primary focus. Indeed, our view is that it is
a complete red herring in so far as the real climate change debate is
concerned, not to say a way of deflecting attention from the necessary
palliatives we should now be rapidly moving towards. However, it does
provide evidence of the way the emerging crisis of the 21st century - as
most clearly crystallising around climate change - is leading to state and
corporate sponsorship of avowed solutions which are themselves highly
indicative of the dysfunctional, indeed bankrupt nature of our present
international economic-political system. In that sense, it seems to us that
we have no choice but to highlight this specific development, if only to
better understand the landscape of the broader crisis and hence the dangers
inherent in leaving it to those political, technocratic and economic elites
who have a vested interest in the conventional 'business as usual' wisdom
of out times, that is, as founded on a single model of economic growth.
That this is redundant in the face of climate change, not to say entirely
incompatible with the survival of our planet, is at the core of why nuclear
power is both wrong - yet at the same time an alarming indicator of the
dystopian direction in which we are potentially heading. Thus, we heed
absolutely the warning of our close CF associate, George Marshall, not to
fall into a government-laid trap of becoming embroiled in a debilitating
debate on this single issue, when there are so many other important
directions and initiatives which we should be seeking and taking . But this
simply should reaffirm a second point. Crisis Forum qua Crisis Forum is not
a campaigning organisation but one which seeks to analyse and interpret the
nature of our current species predicament on this fragile but precious
planet. As such we cannot avoid what is happening on the nuclear power issue
but our best role is to solicit sound empirical evidence which can unravel
not so much its irrelevance -that almost goes without saying -bur rather the
collective mindset which can, in spite of that, even envisage it. In turn,
we leave it to campaigning organisations, to use that evidence and
information wisely, as they see fit.
.
Submissions to Mark Levene [log in to unmask]
cc. Marianne McKiggan (Crisis Forum webmaster) Marianne
McKiggan <[log in to unmask]>
Please encourage others who have anything of value to contribute.
David Cromwell
Mark Levene
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