Staff

Nuclear energy: man’s low-carbon best friend or planet-polluting worst enemy? – July 4

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-Has the green movement lost its way?
-Radioactive Cesium Is Found in Tokyo Tap Water for First Time Since April
-Revealed: British government’s plan to play down Fukushima
-Don’t believe the spin on thorium being a ‘greener’ nuclear option
-Response: don’t dismiss the potential of thorium nuclear power
-French nuclear power plant explosion heightens safety fears

U.S. nuclear scares, Fukushima update, and De-growth

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In this episode we talk about three nuclear facilities in the United States hovering on the brink of catastrophe in the last month of June 2011 – due to climate change. We also bring you an update on the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan and we also hear from two panelists from a recent “de-growth” conference in Vancouver, Conrad Schmidt and Bill Rees.

Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from shale gas compared to coal: An analysis of two conflicting studies

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A recent series of studies and rebuttals have debated the greenhouse gas impacts of shale gas production as compared to coal. Post Carbon Institute Fellow David Hughes, author of the groundbreaking report, "Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?", provides an analysis of two conflicting studies. His conclusion: Shale gas is worse than coal for the climate over a 30-50 year timeframe, depending upon the technology used.

 

ODAC Newsletter – July 1

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The fallout from the IEA’s recent decision to release 60 million barrels of oil reserves continued this week. OPEC members criticized the IEA for “breaching its own principles” and interfering with the market. Traders too seemed little impressed with the move as prices recovered last week’s losses, as Greece drew back from the brink. After all, 60 million barrels is less than a day’s global consumption.

Blazing Brazilian biofuel beatdown

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The Food and Agriculture Organization will have a new director-general, José Graziano da Silva. Among Graziano’s accomplishments is the Zero Hunger programme, which has been partly responsible for getting 40 million people out of hunger. But you don’t get to run an international organisation without the support of your home country, and you don’t get that support in Brazil without deep debts to agribusiness. At his first press conference, Graziano started to pay them off, announcing that biofuels should not be “demonised” for their role in driving up food prices. That this contradicts the latest evidence is only surprising for as long as it takes to remember quite how big Brazil’s biofuel industry is.

Wales: a Co-operative nation?

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We are living in an important historical moment. The last time we saw an economic collapse on this scale it took the dislocation and suffering of the 1930s and the Second World War to put the uncontrolled market back into its box and the tensions in the Eurozone are indications of the sorts of passions that result from economic failure provoked by selfishness and greed.

Energy: Making sense of peak oil and energy uncertainty

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There are currently no viable substitutes for oil at current rates of consumption.  Although alternatives to oil do exist for many of its uses, they are generally vastly inferior to oil in their energy content and in the ease of which they can be extracted, transported, and turned into a commercially-useable fuel.