A category all its own, despite being a form of energy. The until-now primarily dormant energy form of nuclear power is getting a new lease on construction life in the wake of the astronomical energy needs of the tarsands. The tarsands need a vast and growing energy supply, almost requiring half of what it will produce at the point of consumption. As a means of both feeding that "need" and using the thin-wedge of "thirsting for energy" that is "not greenhouse gas emitting" for the tarsands, this highly dangerous and discredited form of energy is making a slow and speeding up comeback. Again, as a result of peak oil, the resurgence of nuclear energy comes cloaked (in Orwellian fashion) in greenwash rhetoric-- ignoring the level to which greenhouse gasses are A) emitted in construction of power plants that will take several years to finish, and B) need to operate for a decade after that before any noticable depreciation in total greenhouse gasses and carbon emissions are registered. Even though it is portrayed as a boon for the earth, radioactive material is anything but and is yet more of the vast and growing assault on the earth of the tarsands. In complimentary fashion, the tarsands would provide legitimacy for a nuclear industry in a post-oil existence, where Three Mile Island and Chernobyl once took it away.
Pale Greens Honor BC Climate Vandals
December 29, 2009
For some, a tiny tax outweighs massive environmental destruction
by Roger Annis
At first glance, it seemed that the “Yes Men” had scored another comedic coup for Mother Earth. CBC Radio news reported on December 16 that on the previous day, British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell was feted and presented an environmental award by many of Canada’s well-heeled “environmental groups” during the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen.
Peak Everything
By Gunther Ostermann
28 November, 2009
http://www.countercurrents.org/ostermann281109.htm
Countercurrents.org
The former media mogul Ted Turner challenged us in 1992 with this statement:' If we don't make the right choices after we have all the information, then we don't deserve to live."
Well, we have more than enough information. Oil and gas, the stored sun's energy, which took hundreds of millions of years to incubate, gone forever within this century. We are, in fact, approaching PEAK EVERYTHING.
Pipelines, Energy, Economy
DEREK BURNEY
WEB | November 17, 2009
Shortly after 9/11, a senior US official approached the Canadian embassy in Washington to ask whom in Ottawa he should contact regarding shared strategic infrastructure, such as pipelines and electricity grids. Presumably Canada is today better equipped now than it seemed to have been then to cope with the threat, however minimal. In any event, the issue of pipeline security needs to be placed in the larger context of energy security and economic resilience.
Nuclear power's sick legacy
By Helen Caldicott
The noted American writer Mary McCarthy once famously observed of the equally
noted but politically discredited playwright Lillian Hellman: "every word she
utters is a lie, including 'and' and 'but' ". As we have seen over the past
10 years, the same can be said of the Howard Government from the
children-overboard scandal to "there will never be a GST" to "yes, there are
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq". Now - joined by misguided and
misinformed members of the ALP and a few scientists who should know better -
Nuclear Power Causes Cancer: What Industry Doesn't Want You To Know
Samuel Epstein,
Cancer prevention expert, prof. emeritus at U. of IL School of Public Health, Chicago
August 4, 2009
Huffington Post
Looking beyond Yellowknife
Guy Quenneville
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, July 1, 2009
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Patrick Doyle has been elected president of the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce at a gloomy time for the city, and he's casting his net beyond Yellowknife.
Separating truth from greenwashing in the West's energy export boom
By Andrea Harden-Donahue
| June 24, 2009
Reading the Saskatchewan government's news release announcing the Energy Council conference, I couldn't help but reflect on the connections with the news of a proposed Western Energy Corridor, recently reported in the Star Phoenix following the Western Governors Association (WGA) Annual Conference. While both are riddled with words like 'sustainability' and 'clean energy,' red flags are going up in seeing emerging themes that raise some serious questions.
Alberta tar sands, nuclear power proposals connected, says Calgary-based journalist
DAMIEN WOOD - Herald-Tribune staff
June 16, 2009
The issues surrounding oil production from the tar sands and nuclear power plants being proposed in Alberta are integrally woven together, says journalist Andrew Nikiforuk.
The Calgary-based business journalist was in Grande Prairie Thursday to give a presentation at the Golden Age Centre based on his latest book, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of the Continent.
March 24, 2009
30 Years and Counting
People Died at Three Mile Island
By HARVEY WASSERMAN
People died--and are still dying--at Three Mile Island.
As the thirtieth anniversary of America's most infamous industrial accident approaches, we mourn the deaths that accompanied the biggest string of lies ever told in US industrial history.
As news of the accident poured into the global media, the public was assured there were no radiation releases.
That quickly proved to be false.
Baker Lake hunters, elders oppose uranium mine
"Like part of their spirit."
February 20, 2009
JOHN BIRD
Joan Scottie was on the front lines 20 years ago when the community of Baker Lake said an historic "no" to uranium mining - and she's still fighting the same battle today.
But this time, key Inuit organizations have switched sides.
"I'm frustrated with our aboriginal organizations," Scottie said. "They are the ones who are supposed to represent us. Instead, they are getting revenue in millions of dollars from the mining companies for our hunting grounds."
