EU Labels Gas and Nuclear as ‘Sustainable,’ Betraying Climate Promises
the taxonomy is the result of a “Faustian pact”
Socialist Project, July 13, 2022 • Anna Maria Merlo
It is a “disgrace,” a “scandalous result,” but “the struggle continues.” Green, left-wing and environmental organizations have strongly criticized the result of last Wednesday’s vote in the European Parliament, which rejected, by 328 votes to 278 and 33 abstentions, the “objection” – which amounted to a veto – against the inclusion of gas and nuclear in the Renewable Energy Taxonomy, at least as a transition, that had been put to the European Parliament’s Environment (ENVI) committee on June 14.
As the veto failed, the Commission’s text presented in January was approved, which deems certain investments for energy production in CO2-neutral nuclear power plants built until 2030 (and adopting a protocol for greater safety from 2025 and plans for waste storage from 2050) as “sustainable.” Also accepted are gas-fired power plants, provided they use the latest technology and allow the closure of even more polluting coal-fired plants.
The story does not end there, however: Austria and Luxembourg intend to go to the European Court of Justice, a court case that will be joined by various oppositions. The European Council will need to approve the Commission’s line, but there is opposition from eight countries (not enough, however, for a qualified majority that would block the decision)
Environment Takes a Back Seat
The Commission on Wednesday assured that it “remains determined to use all available instruments to move the EU away from carbon-intensive energy sources.” In these hours, the focus of the Commission and member states is all on the Russian threat to turn off the gas tap, and ecological concerns are taking a back seat………………………
Greenpeace reminded on Wednesday that including gas in the taxonomy means giving a gift to Putin: that’s at least €4-billion a year for Moscow to finance the war in Ukraine, €32-billion until 2030. The strengthening of the dollar against the euro and rising energy prices also help to fill the Russian coffers………..
for the Greens, the taxonomy is the result of a “Faustian pact” between France and Germany: the latter, anti-nuclear, has traded Paris’s support for gas for support for French (and Eastern European) nuclear power. “By keeping gas and nuclear as sustainable in the taxonomy,” the S&D group says, the conservatives have shamefully betrayed the EU’s climate ambitions…………………………………. https://socialistproject.ca/2022/07/eu-labels-gas-and-nuclear-as-sustainable-betraying-climate-promises/
Nuclear would do little to solve gas issue in Germany
Germany’s vice chancellor has defended the government’s commitment to ending the use of nuclear power at the end of the year
Independent UK Via AP news wire 12 July 22, Germany’s vice chancellor on Tuesday defended the government’s commitment to ending the use of nuclear power at the end of this year, arguing that keeping its few remaining reactors running would be complex and do little to address the problems caused by a possible natural gas shortfall.
government officials argue that natural gas isn’t so much a factor in generating electricity as in fueling industrial processes and providing heating.
“Nuclear power doesn’t help us there at all,” Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who is also the economy and climate minister and is responsible for energy, said at a news conference in Vienna. “We have a heating problem or an industry problem, but not an electricity problem — at least not generally throughout the country.”
Germany shut down three nuclear reactors in December and the remaining three are due to cease production at the end of this year as part of a long-running plan to phase out conventional power plants in favor of renewable energy.
In this year’s first quarter, nuclear energy accounted for 6% of Germany’s electricity generation and natural gas for 13%, both significantly lower than a year earlier. Germany has been getting about 35% of its gas from Russia.
Habeck said the legal certification for the remaining reactors expires at the end of the year and they would have to be treated thereafter as effectively new nuclear plants, complete with safety considerations, and the likely “very small advantage” in terms of saving gas wouldn’t outweigh the complications.
Fuel for the reactors also would have to be procured, and Scholz has said that the fuel rods are generally imported from Russia………….. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap-nuclear-green-party-berlin-olaf-scholz-b2121180.html
The CIA used to infiltrate the media. Now the CIA is the media
The Empire Is Showing More And More Of Its True Face
Caitlin Johnstone14 July 22 ” ………………………………………………. an excellent new report by Alan MacLeod with Mintpress News shows that Facebook/Instagram parent company Meta has been hiring dozens of people who previously worked in the US intelligence cartel to help regulate what content gets seen on the social media giant’s platforms. Some were hired from straight out of the CIA or had (officially) left the agency very recently.
The CIA used to infiltrate the media. Now the CIA is the media. This trend of openly hiring US intelligence veterans to help teach the public what thoughts to think about the world began a few years ago in the legacy media, and now we’re seeing it in the new media as well.
This is part of a broader trend in which many of the ugly things the US empire used to do in secret it now does openly with the aid of propaganda spin. In addition to attempting coups right out in the open as we saw in Venezuela and just giving intelligence insiders positions of influence within both new and old media institutions, you’ve got things like the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which according to its own founding officials was set up to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly.
We see NED’s fingerprints all over pretty much any situation where the western power alliance needs to manage public perception about a CIA-targeted government, from Ukraine to Russia to Hong Kong to Xinjiang, to the imperial propaganda firm known as Bellingcat. Rather than manipulate world narratives and foment discontent from behind the veil of hidden identities and cutouts as in CIA tactics of old, NED just manipulates them openly by pouring funds into narrative management operations which benefit the empire while framing it as promoting democracy and human rights.
Then you’ve got things like American officials telling the press that the US government has been circulating disinformation about Russia and Ukraine, Biden administration officials saying the proxy war in Ukraine is being used to “weaken” Russia and that they are fine with US brinkmanship with Russia causing global recession and hunger, and western officials telling the press that Ukraine is crawling with CIA personnel.
What the empire has found is that you don’t need to hide as much from public visibility as long as you can manipulate what people think they’re seeing. If the public is sufficiently propagandized and consent has been adequately manufactured, you can get away with just proclaiming some random guy the president of a foreign country and seeing if you can manipulate the rest of the world into playing along with you.
If your narrative control is strong enough, you can even keep the empire running smoothly when information gets out into the open that you’d rather stay hidden. Very often these days major stories about imperial malfeasance will come out that simply have no impact, either because the mainstream news media unite to ignore them or because they spin those revelations as coming from someone bad or not containing important information.
People tend to overrate the power of the US war machine and underrate the power of the US propaganda machine. While the US military finds itself losing a war to the Taliban, the awesome power of its propaganda engine has people marching in perfect alignment with the will of the oligarchic empire. ……… https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-empire-is-showing-more-and-more
Sizewell C- an ill-judged nuclear project
Roy Pumfrey, Stop Hinkley spokesperson. In his excellent article on
the plight of the Minsmere reserve in Suffolk in the face of EDF’s plan to
build a nuclear reactor, Sizewell C, next door (“Will new nuclear plant
soon loom over haven where harriers, avocets and bitterns fly free?”,
News), Robin McKie refers to Hinkley Point C.
Here in Somerset, EDF is
struggling to build a reactor with 6,000 workers, soon ramping up to 8,500.
This is a last desperate throw of the dice in the face of a shocking
underestimate of the complexity of the construction. Numbers matter as the
strain these extra people put on local resources causes them to buckle.
Property prices are rocketing. Where else would you find a town like
Bridgwater with 40,000 residents and seven new hotels?
What will happen to
those hotels when the workforce shrinks to the bare 900 required to run
Hinkley C? EDF says it will learn lessons from building Hinkley C when it
goes to Sizewell.
Funny, that’s exactly what it said it would do at
Hinkley, learning from its ill-fated Flamanville project in France. Sadly,
the lessons are that the reactor will be massively over budget and
terminally delayed. It’s not just the birds at Minsmere that will suffer if
Sizewell C goes ahead.
Observer 10th July 2022
No end to nuclear costs for UK taxpayers
Varrie Blowers unpacks the impacts of the Nuclear Industry (Financing) Act
2022 in BANNG’s Regional Life column for June 2022.
Heard the fantasy about constructing an airport in the Thames estuary? And the one about
constructing a bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland?
Well, there is a new fantasy going the rounds: that eight new nuclear power stations will be
constructed in the UK in the next decade. And where is the Government proposing to obtain the huge sums required for construction? From your pocket, of course! Under the Nuclear Industry (Financing) Act, 2022, it is intended that in order to attract investors a levy will be added to consumers’ energy bills to pay the upfront costs. Energy Minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, thinks this will be ‘a small amount’ but at this time of
soaring energy bills seems unable to reveal the actual figure. And, on top of this, taxpayers will be paying £1.7bn to enable a large-scale nuclear
plant to achieve a final investment decision in this Parliament.
BANNG 13th June 2022
EDF the first company to take advantage of the European Union’s taxonomy classification of nuclear power as ”green”
EDF has become the first issuer to harness last week’s hard-fought
inclusion of nuclear power in the European Union’s taxonomy of
sustainable activities and will use a new green financing framework to
support nearly €8bn of annual nuclear spending.
IFR 12th July 2022
https://www.ifre.com/story/3439095/edf-galvanises-nuclear-green-bonds-d6zm8jhtf5
Nearly 50,000 people have signed a petition calling for a full council debate and vote on the plans for seismic testing in the Irish Sea.
Anti-nuclear waste campaigners have protested over plans for seismic
testing in the Irish Sea. The research, which uses sound waves, is being
carried out to determine if the seabed contains suitable geology for
underground nuclear waste storage. Mid and South Copeland are among areas
in the UK mooted for what is known as a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF).
Nearly 50,000 people have signed a petition calling for a full council
debate and vote on the plans.
BBC 13th July 2022
France’s Competition Authority accuses 6 nuclear decommissioning companies of being an illegal cartel
France’s Competition Authority has accused six companies in the nuclear
decommissioning market of illegally exchanging information and rigging
public procurement procedures.
GCR 12th July 2022
https://globalcompetitionreview.com/article/france-alleges-nuclear-decommissioning-cartel
Former Fukushima nuclear power plant bosses ordered to pay over $139b in damages
Former Fukushima nuclear power plant bosses ordered to pay over $139b in damages
A Tokyo court says former executives from the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant involved in the 2011 disaster must pay around $139.96 billion in damages.
By classifying nuclear as ”green”, Europe benefit’s Putin’s Russia – a major supplier of nuclear fuel
By classifying gas and nuclear as “green” investments the EU has
indirectly handed Putin a pay check. More must be done, including sanctions
on uranium, to end his grip on Europe’s power supply.
At least a fifth of the uranium for Europe’s nuclear reactors comes from Russia
Tortoise 12th July 2022
https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2022/07/12/putins-other-nuclear-project/
Developer dismisses B-52 crash radiation fears at proposed site of Spanish resort
Two nuclear bombs exploded in 1966 after US aircraft involved in mid-air collision over Palomares in Almería
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/14/developer-dismisses-b-52-crash-radiation-fears-at-proposed-site-of-spanish-resort Stephen Burgen in Barcelona, Thu 14 Jul 2022
A British company has defended its plans to develop a resort in south-east Spain after environmental groups claimed the area could be contaminated with radioactivity from nuclear bombs that fell after a plane crash in the 1960s.
On 17 January 1966 a US air force B-52 collided mid-air with a refuelling plane over Palomares in Almería, killing seven of the 11 crew.
Of the four 1.5 megatonne nuclear bombs the B-52 was carrying, three fell to Earth, of which two exploded as conventional bombs, spreading radioactive debris over a wide area, while the fourth landed in the sea. It was recovered 80 days later.
Shortly after the accident, the US shipped 1,700 tonnes of contaminated earth to South Carolina, after which it was largely forgotten.
British-based Bahía de Almanzora plans to build 1,600 homes, a hotel and a sports complex about a mile (1.5km) from the contaminated zone in Palomares, which has been fenced off for the past 56 years. The Almanzora proposal makes no mention of the 1966 incident or the contamination.
José Ignacio Domínguez, a lawyer who heads the local Ecologists in Action group, said: “The plutonium isn’t just in the fenced-off area because it’s carried on the wind and by animals such as birds and rabbits.” Domínguez said his group’s own tests have revealed dangerously high levels of radiation outside the closed zone.
Meritxell Bennasar from Greenpeace said: “A chain-link fence isn’t much of a barrier. Some of the contamination is only a few centimetres deep. There are places where the United States secretly buried contaminated soil and we’re only just finding out where they are.”
Fraser Prynne, development director for Bahía de Almanzora, said the contaminated land was “nowhere near the development” and that “this stuff about particles flying about is nonsense”.
“There’s no need to say it’s close to contaminated land,” he said. “There are probably 150 existing houses that are closer.”
The 1966 accident happened as Francoist Spain was opening up to tourism and shortly afterwards Manuel Fraga, the tourism minister, and Angier Biddle Duke, the US ambassador, staged a photo-op of them swimming in the sea at Palomares in an attempt to demonstrate that the waters were safe.
Fifty-six years later, 103 hectares (254,000 acres) remain fenced off and neither the Spanish nor US governments have complied with a mutual agreement signed in 2015 to clean up the zone.
“We’re as keen as anyone to see the area cleaned up,” Prynne said. “It’s American plutonium but there’s no nuclear cemetery in Spain and no one else wants it.”
Palomares was not mentioned during the recent visit to Madrid by the US president, Joe Biden, and when Julissa Reynoso Pantaleón, the US ambassador to Spain, was asked about the long-delayed clean-up in an interview this week in El País newspaper, she said only that “we are prepared to listen to any proposal from the Spanish government”.
Aside from the radiation issue, environmentalists say the proposed development will destroy what is virtually the last stretch of virgin coast in Almería.
“The only reason this part of the coast hasn’t been destroyed is because it’s radioactive,” said Domínguez.
The developers however say the mayor and the local population are in favour of the plan. “They’ve seen all the development along the coast and it’s been disappointing not to see it happening in their area,” Iain Anderson Moody said on behalf of the Almanzora
8 billion morons on an orbiting sewer – World population rises as quality of life crashes
https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/op-ed-8-billion-morons-on-an-orbiting-sewer-world-population-rises-as-quality-of-life-crashes/article#ixzz7YyLkFrGe ByPaul Wallis, July 12, 2022
The human race as usual is growing beyond its means. So are pollution, poverty, resources unreliability, environmental degradation, and arguably, insanity. Mismanagement is the norm, madness is the default policy for anything to do with human survival.
This idiotic, system-less approach to global management guarantees failure. 8 billion people will be living in this obscenity of a world by the end of this year. Assuming there’s not a nuclear war or some other fun option.
The current state of play is:
- Global poverty is euphemized by statistics. Poverty doesn’t have a dollar number. What you can’t afford is the definition. 22% of the world’s population lives in “multidimensional poverty”, a wonderful expression. That includes 644 million children, according to World Vision, see the link.
- Global pollution news is consistently bad and getting worse. All the talk has achieved precisely nothing. Air pollution is truly horrendous. That’s largely due to skank governments deregulating everything and corporate trash enabling endless breaches of laws with the full support of politicians. Filtering any sort of emission is cheap and easy; but it’s not done. Nor are effluents managed at all well, if at all.
- Education news by any global measure is truly repulsive. The failures are constant. The West is leading the charge to fatally-dumbed-down with decades of bad calls degrading education to a meaningless abstract. Obscenely overpriced colleges, “education poverty”, and backward-moving US education policies making teachers’ lives impossible in particular aren’t helping.
- The World Economic Forum asks the interesting if unnecessary question of whether 8 billion people can get equal opportunity. Short answer, the idea of equal opportunity is a luxury to a very large percentage of the world’s population. They’ve never had it, and an overstrained economy can’t give it to them.
- Cost of living has exactly one consistent characteristic throughout history – Most people can’t afford it. The rising population is a ticket to disaster in this regard. The theory of supply and demand is the problem. Create a demand which can’t possibly be supplied, make sure people can’t afford what they need, and this is what happens. Dumb as dumb can be.
- Health is truly insane, thanks to Big Pharma and a lot of parasitic things in health systems. Costs are simply inaccessible. That’s not news; it’s now an institutionalized reality in the US and getting worse. Add politicized pandemics, anti-vax lunatics, and waiting times of years, and everything’s just ducky. Even the idea of universal health care is now a “leftist” thing.
- Housing – The four-letter word of the 21st century so far. Nothing is being done right, if anything is done at all, and it usually isn’t.
- The environment – No good news at all on this front. At this rate, the environment which gave humanity a chance to exist won’t exist itself. Well done, morons. The sheer buildup of unregulated toxins is getting worse by the second, but hey, you like being sick and poisoned and poor, right? Bacteria are smarter than that. The difference is that they can prove it
The science of failure
To totally screw future generations, all you need are:
- Truly mediocre economic management.
- Totally unsystematic knee-jerk social management.
- Obsolete political “ideologies” which achieve nothing at all.
- Non-policies that do nothing for the future.
- Total economic instability, like the last 2 decades.
- Crashing societies and never fixing them.
- Total refusal to even recognize the needs of future generations.
- Inability to comprehend future tech and extremely high potential values.
These alone will guarantee the global population hits a truly hideous wall. You can’t survive without what you need to survive. This odd coincidence apparently hasn’t reached the exalted excremental intellects of whatever’s claiming to manage this dunghill of a world.
…But wait! There’s more!
Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) finds shortfalls in EDF’s cybersecurity plans
French energy giant EDF has been placed under ‘enhanced attention’ by the
UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) after identifying shortfalls in
its cybersecurity plans, according to reports this weekend.
The ONR is
taking action due to the findings of routine inspections over the past 12
months. The Telegraph newspaper quoted the body as saying it had
“identified shortfalls in governance, risk and compliance in certain
technical controls” during these inspections. EDF owns and runs the UK’s
network of nuclear power stations at five locations and is currently
building a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset, together
with minority Chinese partner CGN.
The action takes place against a
backdrop of increased awareness of the vulnerability of energy
infrastructure around Europe to cyber-attack. In particular, Russia has
been blamed for cyber-attacks on both windfarms and nuclear power plants in
Europe as part of its invasion of Ukraine.
Info Security 11th July 2022
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/edf-scrutiny-cybersecurity-record/
Les Echos 11th July 2022
‘Greatest peace plan of all’: US, Australia say renewable energy cannot be ‘weaponised’
‘Greatest peace plan of all’: US, Australia say renewable energy cannot be ‘weaponised’
Australia and the US call for the acceleration of the renewable energy transition as a form of insurance, arguing that no country has ever been “held hostage” over access to the wind or sun.
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