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Deep Green: The end of price
Posted by bex on 30 June 2008.
Here's the latest in the Deep Green column from Rex Weyler - author, journalist, ecologist and long-time Greenpeace trouble-maker. The opinions here are his own.
In the 1980s, fishermen caught the last wild Beluga sturgeon from the Sea of Azov, source of prized caviar, and wild sturgeon in the Caspian Sea failed to reproduce. The sturgeon catch plunged by 95 percent, and the cost of caviar soared. Such extraordinary price growth is known as "hyperinflation," or as economist Eric Sprott says, "the caviar syndrome."
This may sound trivial regarding caviar, but hyperinflation turns critical with commodities such as oil, gas, copper, zinc, water, or fine hardwood, all now growing rare on a global scale. Industrial civilization has already depleted the best and most accessible of these resources. Sturgeons might recover if we leave them alone, but copper and oil do not reproduce themselves.
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The nuclear White Paper: an analysis
Posted by bex on 10 January 2008.
Our political unit has been trawling through the fine print of this morning's nuclear White Paper. Here's their initial analysis, outlining some of the more subtle ways the government has understated the real risks to the taxpayer and the lack of clarity on economics:
- The White Paper shows how nuclear companies will be able to cap their liabilities, leaving the tax payer exposed if estimates for dealing with waste change.
- It openly admits the government will have to provide extra money if cost estimates are wrong.
- It uses questionable financial estimates to build the nuclear economic case.
We're heading the wrong way
Posted by John on 11 December 2007.
Climate change is not some long-term, notional threat to the environment but an immediate threat to our security and prosperity.
As Ulrich Beck noted recently in the Guardian: "Climate change is not solely a matter of hurricanes, droughts, floods, refugee movements, impending wars or unprecedented market failure. Suddenly, and for the first time in history, every population, culture, ethnic group, religion and region in the world faces a future that threatens one and all."
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Cranes, canoes and rainwater collectors
Posted by bex on 31 May 2007.
The things you learn when working for Greenpeace. Today, I found out how to collect several litres of rainwater using a banner, two hard hats, a hollow cross-member of a crane and a CamelBak water bag - while 80 metres up in the air, hanging onto a crane.
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Restructuring aid for British Energy
Issues for the European Commission
Publication date: March 2004
Summary
After the collapse of the UK's only private nuclear operator, British Energy, in 2002, the Government agreed to bail out the company with a £650m loan facility on the condition that British Energy draw up a long term restructuring plan to claw its way out of trouble. British Energy's restructuring plan, supported by the Government and submitted to European Commission for approval, would entail up to £5bn of public funds being paid to BE over the next 10 years.
Greenpeace commissioned respected nuclear economist Gordon Mackerron of NERA Economic Consulting to assess whether or not certain parts of the package - namely the renegotiated fuel supply and spent fuel management contracts with BNFL - could be viewed as contracts that a creditor in the private market place would agree to. The report concludes that there are aspects of the contracts that are highly dubious, and ends by providing some suggested areas of interest for the EC that indicate the contracts were not the act of two private creditors, but are in fact a deal concocted with the help of the British Government intended to bailout not just British Energy, but the complete failure that is the UK nuclear industry.