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Gandalf Grey
Guest
Two critical (but tentative) green victories hang in the balance
By Harvey Wasserman
Created Dec 11 2007 - 7:57am
The eyes of the world are now on the US Senate. Our oil-endangered species
anxiously awaits even a tiny American step toward fighting global warming
and saving the planetary environment.
But the battered and embattled Energy Bill now being held hostage by the
Republican neo-con minority hides two huge victories tentatively won by the
No Nukes/safe energy movement. If those victories hold, the odds on human
survival could take a quiet but huge leap forward.
The key issues now in the Energy Bill's limelight are big tax
break/subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, and a Renewable Electricity
Standard that would require a certain percentage of our electric power to
come from green sources such as wind, solar, bio-fuels and more.
The centerpiece of the bill has become new standards for motor vehicle fuel
efficiency. This could still go down. But the auto industry, and its labor
unions, seem to have signaled through Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) that
they're willing to accept what's currently in the package, or something
similar. (That such standards have already been largely achieved or even
exceeded in China, Japan and Europe may have something to do with this
accession.)
As for the fossil subsidies, George W. Bush and his minions in the media and
Congress are screeching that the grotesque profits being rolled up by their
coal, oil and gas cohorts are simply not enough. The only hybrid the
neo-cons will now buy is the one mixing that with the notion that truly
green power will somehow raise electric rates. Nothing strikes greater
terror amongst of the Barons of Old Energy than the vision of an electric
grid powered by community-owned wind farms and rooftop solar panels,
stretching from sea to shining sea.
But the multi-trillion-dollar transformation from the King CONG madness of
Coal, Oil, Nukes and Gas is already underway. The brave renewable world will
be powered entirely by natural fuels. Google's deep-pocket leap into that
great green sunrise marries the computer revolution that transformed the
world of information in the 1990s with the clean power revolution that will
remake the energy business of the new millennium.
The entrenched Barons of Oil are a formidable barrier to that
transformation. But peak oil has come, peak gas is past, and the ghastly
costs of coal are too obvious to ignore. It has become all too clear that
very soon we will say goodbye either to fossil fuels or to our ability to
live on this planet.
As for nuke power, after 50 years of proven failure, a hugely funded
counterattack has been launched to somehow revive this Titanic technology.
It's a desperate last gasp for an uncompetitive technology staring at
extinction.
In the half-century since the first commercial reactor opened at
Shippingport, Pennsylvania, the industry has found no solution for its
radioactive waste problem. It can't get liability insurance. It can't
protect its reactors from terror attacks, or from errors by its own
operators.
Nor can it get its own financing. And here's where the Energy Bill hides our
most crucial green victories.
This past summer, US Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) slipped an obscure
sentence into the Senate version. It would allow the Department of Energy to
issue unlimited guarantees for building new atomic reactors. By its own
admission, the industry wants $25 billion for 2008 and $25 billion for 2009,
with untold billions to follow, free of Congressional oversight.
The ploy underscores what's long been known on Wall Street: the Peaceful
Atom is the most expensive technological failure in human history. Even
under optimal circumstances, no new reactor could come on line in this
country in less than ten years. A "new generation" plant under construction
in Finland is already two years behind schedule and $2 billion over budget.
The American nuke pushers continually invoke France's 59 reactors, but never
mention that they are all owned by a government with a very big export
agenda. The French industry is in fact a loss-leader, untroubled by such
details as cost, independent regulation, waste disposal or media scrutiny.
The US industry has already punctured its own myth of "efficient
standardized designs" by submitting scores of major changes to blueprints it
has already run by regulators. Its cost estimates and construction schedules
have already been deemed absurdly optimistic by such independent observers
as Moody's.
Most importantly, every passing moment renders nuke power significantly less
competitive with advancing green technologies that have long since passed it
by. In an intense two months, anti-nuke/safe energy forces rallied through
the www.nukefree.org [1] web site and a wide range of environmental and
internet allies. Mixed in came support from free market groups like the Cato
Institute and Forbes Magazine, which dislike a technology that can't compete
after five decades on the federal dole.
Spurred on by a music video featuring Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham
Nash, Keb Mo and Ben Harper, more than 120,000 signatures poured in against
the nuke loan guarantees. On October 23, the petitions were submitted with
Representatives Ed Markey (D-MA), Shelly Berkeley (D-NV) and John Hall
(D-NY), and the core of the environmental movement on hand.
Under the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid, the subsidies were dropped from the Energy Bill. At the
same time, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), as Chair of the Senate Committee on
the Environment and Public Works, deleted a laundry list of nuke handouts
from the Global Warming Bill being championed by Senators Joe Lieberman
(D-CT) and John Warner (R-VA).
The victories are not etched in stone. Nuke backers could inject the
guarantees into the hectic negotiations now roiling the Energy Bill. Those
handouts could resurface in the Lieberman-Warner Bill, which will be voted
on next year.
Domenici says he'll continue to push for nukes until he retires from the
Senate next year. Rumors are now flying that he is already pushing for the
guarantees to be included in the upcoming omnibus appropriations bill, where
the complexities of the legislative process will make the battle even
fiercer and more delicate than in the Energy Bill. Key votes on that could
be coming within days. As always, stopping nuke power will require our full
and immediate attention.
For the stakes couldn't be higher. New reactors are indeed on order and
under construction in Russia, China, India and elsewhere. But except for
France, the major economic powers of Europe---most importantly Germany,
Spain, Sweden, Denmark and Italy---have turned their collective back on nuke
power. The global take-off toward renewable energy would gain
serious----perhaps definitive---altitude from an American decision to not
build more nukes.
Which is the hidden big picture behind these radioactive loan guarantees.
Despite all the "nuclear renaissance" hype, no new reactors will be built in
the United States without taxpayers footing the bill, a la France.
If that underwriting is stopped here, the flight toward a green-powered
planet might rise to unstoppability. And our species just might find a way
to solve the climate crisis and survive on this planet.
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Harvey Wasserman
Created Dec 11 2007 - 7:57am
The eyes of the world are now on the US Senate. Our oil-endangered species
anxiously awaits even a tiny American step toward fighting global warming
and saving the planetary environment.
But the battered and embattled Energy Bill now being held hostage by the
Republican neo-con minority hides two huge victories tentatively won by the
No Nukes/safe energy movement. If those victories hold, the odds on human
survival could take a quiet but huge leap forward.
The key issues now in the Energy Bill's limelight are big tax
break/subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, and a Renewable Electricity
Standard that would require a certain percentage of our electric power to
come from green sources such as wind, solar, bio-fuels and more.
The centerpiece of the bill has become new standards for motor vehicle fuel
efficiency. This could still go down. But the auto industry, and its labor
unions, seem to have signaled through Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) that
they're willing to accept what's currently in the package, or something
similar. (That such standards have already been largely achieved or even
exceeded in China, Japan and Europe may have something to do with this
accession.)
As for the fossil subsidies, George W. Bush and his minions in the media and
Congress are screeching that the grotesque profits being rolled up by their
coal, oil and gas cohorts are simply not enough. The only hybrid the
neo-cons will now buy is the one mixing that with the notion that truly
green power will somehow raise electric rates. Nothing strikes greater
terror amongst of the Barons of Old Energy than the vision of an electric
grid powered by community-owned wind farms and rooftop solar panels,
stretching from sea to shining sea.
But the multi-trillion-dollar transformation from the King CONG madness of
Coal, Oil, Nukes and Gas is already underway. The brave renewable world will
be powered entirely by natural fuels. Google's deep-pocket leap into that
great green sunrise marries the computer revolution that transformed the
world of information in the 1990s with the clean power revolution that will
remake the energy business of the new millennium.
The entrenched Barons of Oil are a formidable barrier to that
transformation. But peak oil has come, peak gas is past, and the ghastly
costs of coal are too obvious to ignore. It has become all too clear that
very soon we will say goodbye either to fossil fuels or to our ability to
live on this planet.
As for nuke power, after 50 years of proven failure, a hugely funded
counterattack has been launched to somehow revive this Titanic technology.
It's a desperate last gasp for an uncompetitive technology staring at
extinction.
In the half-century since the first commercial reactor opened at
Shippingport, Pennsylvania, the industry has found no solution for its
radioactive waste problem. It can't get liability insurance. It can't
protect its reactors from terror attacks, or from errors by its own
operators.
Nor can it get its own financing. And here's where the Energy Bill hides our
most crucial green victories.
This past summer, US Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) slipped an obscure
sentence into the Senate version. It would allow the Department of Energy to
issue unlimited guarantees for building new atomic reactors. By its own
admission, the industry wants $25 billion for 2008 and $25 billion for 2009,
with untold billions to follow, free of Congressional oversight.
The ploy underscores what's long been known on Wall Street: the Peaceful
Atom is the most expensive technological failure in human history. Even
under optimal circumstances, no new reactor could come on line in this
country in less than ten years. A "new generation" plant under construction
in Finland is already two years behind schedule and $2 billion over budget.
The American nuke pushers continually invoke France's 59 reactors, but never
mention that they are all owned by a government with a very big export
agenda. The French industry is in fact a loss-leader, untroubled by such
details as cost, independent regulation, waste disposal or media scrutiny.
The US industry has already punctured its own myth of "efficient
standardized designs" by submitting scores of major changes to blueprints it
has already run by regulators. Its cost estimates and construction schedules
have already been deemed absurdly optimistic by such independent observers
as Moody's.
Most importantly, every passing moment renders nuke power significantly less
competitive with advancing green technologies that have long since passed it
by. In an intense two months, anti-nuke/safe energy forces rallied through
the www.nukefree.org [1] web site and a wide range of environmental and
internet allies. Mixed in came support from free market groups like the Cato
Institute and Forbes Magazine, which dislike a technology that can't compete
after five decades on the federal dole.
Spurred on by a music video featuring Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham
Nash, Keb Mo and Ben Harper, more than 120,000 signatures poured in against
the nuke loan guarantees. On October 23, the petitions were submitted with
Representatives Ed Markey (D-MA), Shelly Berkeley (D-NV) and John Hall
(D-NY), and the core of the environmental movement on hand.
Under the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid, the subsidies were dropped from the Energy Bill. At the
same time, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), as Chair of the Senate Committee on
the Environment and Public Works, deleted a laundry list of nuke handouts
from the Global Warming Bill being championed by Senators Joe Lieberman
(D-CT) and John Warner (R-VA).
The victories are not etched in stone. Nuke backers could inject the
guarantees into the hectic negotiations now roiling the Energy Bill. Those
handouts could resurface in the Lieberman-Warner Bill, which will be voted
on next year.
Domenici says he'll continue to push for nukes until he retires from the
Senate next year. Rumors are now flying that he is already pushing for the
guarantees to be included in the upcoming omnibus appropriations bill, where
the complexities of the legislative process will make the battle even
fiercer and more delicate than in the Energy Bill. Key votes on that could
be coming within days. As always, stopping nuke power will require our full
and immediate attention.
For the stakes couldn't be higher. New reactors are indeed on order and
under construction in Russia, China, India and elsewhere. But except for
France, the major economic powers of Europe---most importantly Germany,
Spain, Sweden, Denmark and Italy---have turned their collective back on nuke
power. The global take-off toward renewable energy would gain
serious----perhaps definitive---altitude from an American decision to not
build more nukes.
Which is the hidden big picture behind these radioactive loan guarantees.
Despite all the "nuclear renaissance" hype, no new reactors will be built in
the United States without taxpayers footing the bill, a la France.
If that underwriting is stopped here, the flight toward a green-powered
planet might rise to unstoppability. And our species just might find a way
to solve the climate crisis and survive on this planet.
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson