Weatherwatch: concerns over climate impact on UK nuclear power sites
Ex-adviser worries ministers have not taken into account sea level rise and storms in selecting sites
Paul Brown https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/may/12/weatherwatch-concerns-over-climate-impact-on-uk-nuclear-power-sites
Successive governments since the 1980s have had plans for new generations of nuclear power stations sited around the coasts of the United Kingdom. Although the main reason for building them, according to politicians, is to provide a low-carbon form of electricity to combat the climate crisis, no thought seems to have gone into what the climate crisis might do to the nuclear power stations.
Prof Andy Blowers, a former government adviser on nuclear waste, points out in the Town and Country Planning Association Journal that the eight sites identified in 2011 as suitable for new stations are the same as those identified half a century earlier, on which the first generation of nuclear power stations were built.
The reason the sites were originally chosen was their remoteness, for safety, and their proximity to the sea, for cooling purposes. The latest reasoning is that they would have a better chance of public acceptance because two generations of local people have worked in the industry. The new installations are planned to operate for 60 years and will need another century after closure to cool sufficiently to remove the waste.
Blowers, an opponent of the government plans, worries that ministers seem to have taken no account of sea level rise, intense storms and the prospect of flooding at these sites.
Former Nuclear Leaders: Say ‘No’ to New Reactors
The former heads of nuclear power regulation in the U.S., Germany, and France, along with the former secretary to the UK’s government radiation protection committee, have issued a joint statement that in part says, “Nuclear is just not part of any feasible strategy that could counter climate change.”
The statement issued Jan. 25 notes the importance of global action to combat climate issues, but the four leaders say nuclear power is too costly, and too risky an investment, to be a viable strategy against climate change.
The four leaders issuing the joint statement include:
- Dr. Greg Jaczko, former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and founder of Maxean, an energy company.
- Prof. Wolfgang Renneberg, a university professor and former Head of the Reactor Safety, Radiation Protection and Nuclear Waste, Federal Environment Ministry, Germany.
- Dr. Bernard Laponche, a French engineer and author, and former Director General, French Agency for Energy Management, former Advisor to French Minister of Environment, Energy and Nuclear Safety.
- Dr. Paul Dorfman, an associate fellow and researcher at the University of Sussex, and former Secretary UK Govt. Committee Examining Radiation Risk from Internal Emitters.
Here’s the text of the statement:
“The climate is running hot. Evolving knowledge of climate sensitivity and polar ice melt-rate makes clear that sea-level rise is ramping, along with destructive storm, storm surge, severe precipitation and flooding, not forgetting wildfire. With mounting concern and recognition over the speed and pace of the low carbon energy transition that’s needed, nuclear has been reframed as a partial response to the threat of global heating. But at the heart of this are questions about whether nuclear could help with the climate crisis, whether nuclear is economically viable, what are the consequences of nuclear accidents, what to do with the waste, and whether there’s a place for nuclear within the swiftly expanding renewable energy evolution.
“As key experts who have worked on the front-line of the nuclear issue, we’ve all involved at the highest governmental nuclear regulatory and radiation protection levels in the US, Germany, France and UK. In this context, we consider it our collective responsibility to comment on the main issue: Whether nuclear could play a significant role as a strategy against climate change.
“The central message, repeated again and again, that a new generation of nuclear will be clean, safe, smart and cheap, is fiction. The reality is nuclear is neither clean, safe or smart; but a very complex technology with the potential to cause significant harm. Nuclear isn’t cheap, but extremely costly. Perhaps most importantly nuclear is just not part of any feasible strategy that could counter climate change. To make a relevant contribution to global power generation, up to more than ten thousand new reactors would be required, depending on reactor design.”
The statement includes a list of items (below) the leaders see as making an argument against nuclear power.
In short, nuclear as strategy against climate change is:
- Too costly in absolute terms to make a relevant contribution to global power production
- More expensive than renewable energy in terms of energy production and CO2 mitigation, even taking into account costs of grid management tools like energy storage associated with renewables rollout.
- Too costly and risky for financial market investment, and therefore dependent on very large public subsidies and loan guarantees.
- Unsustainable due to the unresolved problem of very long-lived radioactive waste.
- Financially unsustainable as no economic institution is prepared to insure against the full potential cost, environmental and human impacts of accidental radiation release – with the majority of those very significant costs being borne by the public.
- Militarily hazardous since newly promoted reactor designs increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.
- Inherently risky due to unavoidable cascading accidents from human error, internal faults, and external impacts; vulnerability to climate-driven sea-level rise, storm, storm surge, inundation and flooding hazard, resulting in international economic impacts.
- Subject to too many unresolved technical and safety problems associated with newer unproven concepts, including ‘Advanced’ and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
- Too unwieldy and complex to create an efficient industrial regime for reactor construction and operation processes within the intended build-time and scope needed for climate change mitigation.
- Unlikely to make a relevant contribution to necessary climate change mitigation
- needed by the 2030’s due to nuclear’s impracticably lengthy development and construction time-lines, and the overwhelming construction costs of the very great volume of reactors that would be needed to make a difference.
Despite the dangers of climate change, UK nuclear power stations still sited on the coastline!
**Nuclear Siting**
Frozen in aspic — planning and pragmatism in the siting of nuclear power
stations in Britain. Despite efforts at strategic siting and the problems
posed by changing circumstances — especially the challenges arising out
of climate change — the geography of nuclear power infrastructure is
stubbornly inflexible, and has barely changed since it was first
established over half a century ago, as Andrew Blowers explains.
The geography of nuclear power in Britain was more or less settled by the 1970s
and has endured remarkably since then. Speed was of the essence in the
early years, a so-called age of ‘innocent expectation’ or, perhaps more
realistically, one of ‘trust in technology’. This was ‘nuclear’s
moment’, lasting less than three decades, during which time the
infrastructure of nuclear development was established around Britain,
predominantly at coastal sites.
But there is now a serious disjunction between a geography of nuclear power established more than half a century ago and the realities of site suitability in an age of climate change.
During the present century, a strategic siting process was adopted, with
individual sites identified through a National Policy Statement for Nuclear
Power Generation. In practice, siting remains a specific process, a matter
primarily of economic and historical determinism, with a few projects
seeking to attract investment to a handful of existing sites.
The last of the AGRs, at Torness on the east coast of Scotland, became the focus of the
first full-blown anti-nuclear protest in 1978 and 1979, attracting 5,000
people to the familiar features of fairs, symbols, stalls, camps, speeches,
leaflets, workshops, non-violent action, political and media attention,
stand-off s with police, and site occupations. The protest halted progress
but was eventually cleared. Its target was not just Torness power station
but the nuclear industry itself, and the connections between civil and
military nuclear power were clearly in evidence. With Torness, the
geography of nuclear power in Britain was complete.
Town & Country Planning Association Journal March April, 25th April 2023. ..https://www.tcpa.org.uk/journals/
The most at-risk regions in the world for high-impact heatwaves
Heatwaves are becoming more frequent under climate change and can lead to
thousands of excess deaths. Adaptation to extreme weather events often
occurs in response to an event, with communities learning fast following
unexpectedly impactful events.
Using extreme value statistics, here we show
where regional temperature records are statistically likely to be exceeded,
and therefore communities might be more at-risk. In 31% of regions
examined, the observed daily maximum temperature record is exceptional.
Climate models suggest that similar behaviour can occur in any region.
In some regions, such as Afghanistan and parts of Central America, this is a
particular problem – not only have they the potential for far more extreme
heatwaves than experienced, but their population is growing and
increasingly exposed because of limited healthcare and energy resources. We
urge policy makers in vulnerable regions to consider if heat action plans
are sufficient for what might come.
Nature Communications 25th April 2023
Searing heatwave hitting Southern and South Eastern Asia.
Much of southern and southeastern Asia is enduring a deadly,
record-smashing heat wave, one that’s being called the continent’s worst
ever recorded in April. Several all-time record high temperatures have been
broken, including a torrid 113.7 degrees in Tak, Thailand, the nation’s
hottest reading on record. Laos also recorded its highest reliable
temperature in its history earlier this week, with 108.9 degrees at Luang
Prabang, reported climatologist and weather historian Maximiliano Herrera.
As the searing heat spread from India to China to Thailand to Japan,
Herrera called it a “monster Asian heat wave like none before.”
USA Today 19th April 2023
One in three people on the planet hit by ‘monster Asian heatwave’. The
searing heat has spread across large parts of south and southeast Asia in
recent weeks, and impacted more than a dozen countries including India,
China, Thailand, Laos, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan, Japan and Korea. The
temperature hit a scorching 44.6 degrees Celsius in the western province of
Tak, Thailand this week, the hottest temperature ever recorded in the
country. Thailand’s Meteorological Department warned that the baking
weather would continue into next week.
Independent 20th April 2023
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/asia-heatwave-india-china-thailand-b2323666.html
Nuclear disasters could leave a lasting legacy of contaminants in glaciers
Emerging research is suggesting that radioactive particles are being stored within glaciers
University of Plymouth Alan Williams, April 2019
Nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima are known to have had an immediate impact on their surrounding environments and the people living within them.
But emerging research is suggesting the legacy of these events and international weapons testing could be felt for much longer as radioactive particles are being stored within glaciers.
The first results from this collaborative international research project were presented at the 2019 General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), taking place in Vienna from April 7-12, 2019………………………………………
The EGU presentation combined studies into the presence of fallout radionuclides (FRNs), a product of nuclear accidents and weapons testing, within ice surface sediments – or cryoconite – across multiple sites in the Arctic (Sweden, Greenland and Svalbard), Iceland, the European Alps, the Caucasus, British Columbia, and Antarctica.
The levels of some FRNs found in these sites are orders of magnitude higher than those detected in many other (non-glaciated) environments, raising important questions around the role of glaciers, and specifically cryoconite and its interaction with meltwater, in the accumulation of anthropogenic atmospheric contaminants.
The research also demonstrates that the presence of FRNs in cryoconite is not restricted to sites closest to large source areas such as Chernobyl, highlighting the global reach of nuclear events and other sources of atmospherically-transported contaminants.
The widespread occurrence of concentrated FRNs in glacier catchments, and the impacts on downstream water and environmental quality, including uptake of FRNs into flora and fauna, are the focus of current and future research efforts.
Dr Clason said:
“Research into the impact of nuclear accidents has previously focussed on their effects on human and ecosystem health in non-glaciated areas. But evidence is mounting that cryoconite on glaciers can efficiently accumulate radionuclides to potentially hazardous levels. Very high concentrations of radionuclides have been found in several recent field studies, but their precise impact is yet to be established. Our collaborative work is beginning to address this because it is clearly important for the pro-glacial environment and downstream communities to understand any unseen threats they might face in the future.”
France’s riverside reactor build plans “irresponsible” – expert.
MURIEL BOSELLI, Paris, 07 Apr 2023, https://www.montelnews.com/news/1477431/edfs-riverside-reactor-build-plans-irresponsible–expert
(Montel) France’s plan to build two riverside reactors is “irresponsible”, given the acceleration of global warming-related water strain, nuclear expert and critic Yves Marignac told Montel.
Climate change has raised fears of extreme temperatures and droughts that will cause more outages at EDF’s 44 nuclear reactors – out of 56 – that are located along rivers and use water for cooling.
The average summer flow of the Rhone, on which 22% of France’s nuclear capacity is installed, could fall by 20% within 30 years, according to a recent study by the Rhone-Mediterranean-Corsica Water Agency.
However, EDF plans to build two additional reactors along the Rhone.
“We can always adapt the reactors to cool themselves by reducing their water withdrawal, as some reactors do in the desert,” said Marignac, but added that these costly developments “remove the interest of placing installations along rivers”.
Higher water use
He said he also feared a “considerable increase” in competition between water-intensive sectors such as agriculture, industry, energy and tourism.
EDF plans to build three pairs of European pressurised reactors (EPRs) by 2042-43 – one at Penly, a second at Gravelines (both on the coast), and a third at Bugey or Tricastin, on the Rhone.
The decision would be made by the end of the year, Joel Barre, inter-ministerial delegate for new nuclear power plants, told Montel.
Last week, president Emmanuel Macron announced a vast investment plan to adapt nuclear power plants to climate change, notably by equipping riverside units with air-cooling towers to make them less dependent on the temperature of waterways.
Although this system allows reactors to continue producing power during hot periods, it consumes much more water as a significant part of the volume withdrawn evaporates through the towers during cooling.
French energy minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said earlier this week that scenarios established by the international group of climate experts Giec had shown “very limited losses [of production]”.
“Critical” risk
However, a recent report by France’s auditors’ court warned the impact of global warming on the French nuclear fleet could become “critical” by 2050, with three to four times more unavailability than today.
Last summer, France’s nuclear safety authority ASN authorised EDF to exceed temperature limits for some riverside plants to enable units to continue producing power during the drought.
Thibault Laconde, founder of climate risk assessment start-up Callendar, said EDF’s Tricastin site in southeastern France was a better choice than Bugey for cooling because it was near a section of the Rhone that had cool water inflow from the Isere river.
Melting ice caps
Building reactors by the sea also raised questions, experts said, because of uncertainties about the rising sea levels during the EPRs’ lifespan, which EDF has set at a minimum of 60 years.
The auditors’ court has called on EDF to anticipate “the low probability” of an acceleration in ice cap melting, which would lead to a rise in the average sea level of nearly 2 metres by 2100 and 5m by 2150.
However, EDF has only incorporated a sea level rise of around 1.2m into the design of its EPR reactors, said Barre.
EDF did not respond to Montel’s requests to comment.
Three consecutive years of rapidly increasing carbon dioxide emissions.
Record temperatures, devastating floods and superstorms are causing death
and destruction across the planet but humans are failing to cut greenhouse
gas emissions fueling the climate emergency, new US data shows. Atmospheric
levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide – the
greenhouse gases emitted by human activity that are the most significant
contributors to global heating – continued to increase rapidly during
2022, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(Noaa).
Carbon dioxide levels rose by more than two parts per million (ppm)
for the 11th consecutive year: the highest sustained rate of CO2 increases
since monitoring began 65 years ago. Before 2013, scientists had never
recorded three consecutive years of such high CO2 growth.
Guardian 6th April 2023
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/06/greenhouse-gas-emissions-noaa-report-us-data
The temperature of the world’s ocean surface has hit an all-time high.
The temperature of the world’s ocean surface has hit an all-time high
since satellite records began, leading to marine heatwaves around the
globe, according to US government data. Climate scientists said preliminary
data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) showed
the average temperature at the ocean’s surface has been at 21.1C since
the start of April – beating the previous high of 21C set in 2016.
Three years of La Niña conditions across the vast tropical Pacific have helped
suppress temperatures and dampened the effect of rising greenhouse gas
emissions. But scientists said heat was now rising to the ocean surface,
pointing to a potential El Niño pattern in the tropical Pacific later this
year that can increase the risk of extreme weather conditions and further
challenge global heat records.
Guardian 8th April 2023
Antarctica’s melting ice sheet could retreat much faster than previously thought
Antarctica’s melting ice sheet could retreat much faster than previously
thought, new research suggests. The evidence comes from markings on the
seafloor off Norway that record the pull-back of a melting European ice
sheet thousands of years ago.
Today, the fastest withdrawing glaciers in
Antarctica are seen to retreat by up to 30m a day. But if they sped up, the
extra melt water would have big implications for sea-level rises around the
globe. Ice losses from Antarctica caused by climate change have already
pushed up the surface of the world’s oceans by nearly 1cm since the 1990s.
The researchers found that with the Norwegian sheet, the maximum retreat
was more than 600m a day.
BBC 5th April 2023
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report fails to mention military or conflict emissions.
The IPCC’s failure to mention military or conflict emissions in its
recent synthesis report points to a deeper problem. Ellie Kinney explains
why solving it will require a concerted effort from states, researchers and
civil society. As the IPCC has made clear, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Conflict & Environment Observatory 3rd April 2023
TODAY. The China bogey-man distraction from the REAL threat OF GLOBAL HEATING
The global military-industrial-corporate-political-media complex has done a damn good job of taking attention away from the world’s genuinely serious danger – climate change.
Sometimes it takes a military man to tell us the truth.
As Australia gets ready to be USA’s proxy fighter in war against China, former Defence Force chief Admiral Chris Barrie said climate change posed a bigger risk to Australia than China’s rapid military build-up. Other Defence experts agreed on “climate change as an existential threat. It’s a much bigger threat to our national security than a potential fight with China “
The Defence expert went on to say – “This is about transparency and keeping people informed.”
There’s the problem.
Big business – the fossil fuel industries, the weapons industry, the bought politicians, the craven, subservient media (media often owned by fossil fuel interests anyway,) the frightened national media like BBC and ABC – all of them tout the myth about China planning to militarily attack other countries.
All of them, parrot-like, recite the mantra of the “global rules-based order” – what a beautiful invention of the global military-industrial-corporate-political-media complex. ( no doubt the fossil fuel and weapons industries in Russia and China promote the same kind of propaganda to boost themselves)
Does Admiral Barrie have a hope in hell of the Australian government being transparent about the genuine peril to Australia of global heating, the melting Antarctica, and all that is already ensuing from this?
I doubt that he will be heard, along with how many other intelligent military leaders world-wide, who would rather see action on climate change, than another pointless and wasteful war?
Elon Musk is remaking Twitter into a climate denier sanctuary
by ketanjoshi85 [very good graphs]
As I wrote recently here on my site, Elon Musk’s reputation as a ‘climate hero’ has been badly exaggerated. Every good thing he’s contributed to sits alongside a collection of actively counter-productive things. One of those things is killing a space that climate activists, communicators and experts used regularly – that is, Twitter. Still my core social media space, but a broken, burning one……………………………………………………………………….
The gradual rebirth of climate denier Twitter
It feels like something more fundamental in site dynamic has changed – particularly around which accounts and tweets get boosted and promoted.
I recently noticed that climate deniers, or climate delayers (who argue for no or slow climate action) have had massive increases in their followings, whereas pro-climate accounts have either lost followers, or gained very few of them. Musk has himself been cosying up with climate deniers, boosting, for instance, a conspiracy theory video from Australian climate denier and member of far-right xenophobic party One Nation, Senator Malcolm Roberts. “[Musk is] doing a marvellous job of rekindling freedom of speech,” Roberts told the SMH. “That alone is worthy of high praise.”
Berlin-based researcher Travis Brown has been tracking various changes at Twitter under Musk’s rule; particularly how the roll-out of the paid service ‘Twitter Blue’ has been going (I did an ad-hoc data snapshot of climate denial among Blue accounts, and…it’s bad). Being able to pay a tiny fee to simulate trustworthiness and get boosted into prominence in both algorithmic feeds and the sorting of replies on Twitter is invaluable for climate deniers.
It is, of course, very relevant given that Musk has just announced that the only tweets appearing in the algorithmic ‘For You’ feed will be those who’ve paid to subscribe to Twitter. Musk think he’s onto a solid grift here; offering prominence to those who are so deeply shit in their speech that they’ve failed to earn it.
Another recent analysis by ISD found that “fringe climate denialist websites have gained a foothold in online conversation with thousands of daily mentions on Twitter by highly followed climate-denying actors, pundits and outlets”. They also found that “some actors identified as ‘super-spreaders’ of climate misinformation by ISD and CAAD linked to the fringe websites”, including notorious denier accounts Patrick Moore, Steve Milloy and Peter Clack…………………………………………………………………..
Though my account selection method was somewhat ad-hoc, there’s basically no denying how significantly Musk-Twitter has caused a massive audience boost for climate deniers and delayers. To some degree, this had already kicked off around mid 2022, prior to Musk’s official purchase, but whatever dials Musk turned has accelerated this phenomenon significantly…………………………………………………………………
The change of ownership has had both direct and indirect influence in denier prominence on Twitter, accelerating this pre-existing problem. There’s been a general emboldening of the worst, most cruel right-wing accounts. There’s a spring in their step – their man is in the top job. And climate is a big focus for them.
A specific change to the algorithm to boost tweets ‘outside’ of one’s political sphere has resulted in far, far more eyeballs on right-wing content (in addition to being the core reason I get ferociously racist responses to innocuous things I post). And Twitter Blue subscriptions are helping grant legitimacy and prominence to the worst, pro-fossil deniers, as shown by journalist David Vetter. “As a platform, Twitter is now fully weaponized to undermine science, climate action and global sustainable development”, he wrote.
Some of the reason pro-climate accounts have lost followers has been people leaving Twitter. Musk has been publicly endorsing far-right and right-wing views,……………………………………………………………….. more https://ketanjoshi.co/2023/03/28/musk-is-remaking-twitter-into-a-climate-denier-sanctuary/
Climate change amplifies existing threats to national security
We need to stop thinking of climate change as future hazard. It is
happening right now, and it is damaging our national security as well as
our way of life.
Global warming has not yet reached the Paris-agreed limit
of 1.5C, and already the shocks to global weather are ravaging communities
around the world.
Speaking as the IPCC delivered their latest assessment,
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres called it a “ticking climate time
bomb”. In a troubled world, with real concerns about cost of living, the
creeping dangers posed by climate change are too easily ignored. But we do
so at our peril.
Borders are no protection against its effects and, as
authoritarian states mount a challenge to the entire international system,
climate change further amplifies existing threats to UK national security.
Heat, drought, water shortages, food scarcity and fuel conflict drive huge
numbers of people from their homes.
Changes in the climate are having a
devastating social and economic effect, putting severe pressure on many of
the most vulnerable countries. This can exacerbate unrest and play a role
in the outbreak of war. Ethnic tensions in Sudan in 2003 were inflamed when
drought and hunger took hold. As then UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon
warned at the time: “The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis,
arising at least in part from climate change.” For decades before clashes
erupted, the Sahara Desert had advanced a mile a year into Sudan.
Independent 26th March 2023
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/britain-climate-change-threat-national-security-b2308198.html
Burning down the house — Climate options are available now. Nuclear power isn’t one of them
Our climate needs a fire hose. Our government is bringing buckets
Burning down the house — Beyond Nuclear International
Climate options are available now. Nuclear power isn’t one of them
By Linda Pentz Gunter
In 2019 at the Davos World Economic Forum, youth climate leader, Greta Thunberg, then only 16, warned the audience in a quiet and measured voice that addressing the climate crisis involved a solution “so simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases.”
In closing, she said: “Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people to give them hope. But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house was on fire. Because it is.”
On March 12, 2023, the Biden administration announced that it had approved oil and gas drilling in Arctic Alaska, retaining the United States’s vaunted position, alongside China and India, as one of the world’s leading arsonists.
As the UK daily, The Guardian reported of that decision: “The ConocoPhillips Willow project will be one of the largest of its kind on US soil, involving drilling for oil and gas at three sites for multiple decades on the 23m-acre National Petroleum Reserve which is owned by the federal government and is the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the US.”
The US government’s lame excuse for approving the drilling project was that it had few legal options, given Conoco-Phillips holds lease rites to the land dating back decades.
So sue. The house is on fire. Tying the project up in the law courts would have bought us time. Green-lighting new oil and gas drilling is tone deafness to a crisis that has gone beyond the tipping point.
This was confirmed, yet again, days later, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023, the final part of its mammoth Sixth Assessment Report. It came replete with even more dire warnings than in previous AR6 reports, which should already have been panic-inducing enough for the world to wake up and understand that we cannot drill for a single more drop of oil. Ever. Period.
This time, the scientists who co-authored the AR6 Synthesis Report called it their “final warning.” However, in their press release announcing the report, the authors tried to take the high road, insisting that “There are multiple, feasible and effective options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to human-caused climate change, and they are available now”.
None of those options includes nuclear power, according to the IPCC scientists, which never mentions ‘nuclear’ once in the report narrative. It appears only in a single graph (below on original)) to illustrate its lack of applicability to addressing the climate crisis…………………………………………..
IPCC Chair, Hoesung Lee, said: “This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.”
If we act now. Like we didn’t after Thunberg’s words of warning in 2019. Like the Biden administration didn’t last week. What’s left is the largely empty rhetoric of hope, but no signs of panic.
This lack of urgency is compounded by a failure in the media to put the climate emergency on the front page with regularity. The given reason is that it’s not what their readers are interested in, a complete abdication of responsibility to inform, educate, and in the case of the climate crisis, to inflame passion and a demand for action. And there is also, in the US at least, and as we wrote last week, a lamentable adherence to an outdated formula that relegates the voices of right and reason to the back of the quote queue.
This was no better (or should that be worse) exemplified than by the two days of coverage about the Alaskan Willow project in The Washington Post, which never once in either story quoted anyone from the Indigenous Alaskan population bitterly opposed to the drilling.
…………………………………………………… we still aren’t seeing the outrage where it really matters. We are still confronting deniers. And our governments are not taking the climate crisis nearly seriously enough. Instead of rushing for the fire hoses, they are bringing buckets.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/03/26/burning-down-the-house/
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25 June- THE PUKE ON NUKES
Thursday, June 25, 2026
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From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
26 June – Radiation Trainwreck at the NRC / Join the Protect Better Campaign – https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4ZlZ5_qLSHGiLSCg8FF6Bg#/registration
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
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