Former Greenpeace Co-Founder Exposes 'Pop-Environmentalism' as the Root of Climate Change Hysteria, While Calmly Discussing Virtues of Nuclear Energy

http://www.newsweek.com/id/131753

A Renegade Against Greenpeace: Why he says they're wrong to view nuclear energy as 'evil'


Fareed Zakaria


NEWSWEEK


Apr 12, 2008


Patrick Moore is a critic of the environmental movement—an unlikely one at that. He was one of the cofounders of Greenpeace, and sailed into the Aleutian Islands on the organization's inaugural mission in 1971, to protest U.S. nuclear tests taking place there.


After leading the group for 15 years he left abruptly, and, in a controversial reversal, has become an outspoken advocate of some of the environmental movement's most detested causes, chief among them nuclear energy.


NEWSWEEK's Fareed Zakaria spoke to Moore about his sparring with the green movement, and why he thinks nuclear power is the energy of the future.


Excerpts:


ZAKARIA: At Greenpeace, you fought against nuclear energy. What changed?


MOORE: My belief, in retrospect, is that because we were so focused on the destructive aspect of nuclear technology and nuclear war, we made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons, as if all things nuclear were evil. And indeed today, Greenpeace still uses the word "evil" to describe nuclear energy. I think that's as big a mistake as if you lumped nuclear medicine in with nuclear weapons. Nuclear medicine uses radioactive isotopes to successfully treat millions of people every year, and those isotopes are all produced in nuclear reactors.

That's why I left Greenpeace: I could see that my fellow directors, none of whom had any science education, were starting to deal with issues around chemicals and biology and genetics, which they had no formal training in, and they were taking the organization into what I call "pop environmentalism," which uses sensationalism, misinformation, fear tactics, etc., to deal with people on an emotional level rather than an intellectual level.


Why do you favor nuclear energy over other non-carbon-based sources of energy?


Other than hydroelectric energy—which I also strongly support—nuclear is the only technology besides fossil fuels available as a large-scale continuous power source, and I mean one you can rely on to be running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Wind and solar energy are intermittent and thus unreliable. How can you run hospitals and factories and schools and even a house on an electricity supply that disappears for three or four days at a time? Wind can play a minor role in reducing the amount of fossil fuels we use, because you can turn the fossil fuels off when the wind is blowing. And solar is completely ridiculous. The cost is so high—California's $3.2 billion in solar subsidies is all just going into Silicon Valley companies and consultants. It's ridiculous.


A number of analyses say that nuclear power isn't cost competitive, and that without government subsidies, there's no real market for it.


That's simply not true. Where the massive government subsidies are is in wind and solar. I know that France, which produces 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear, does not have high energy costs. Sweden, which produces 50 percent of its energy with nuclear and 50 percent with hydro, has very reasonable energy costs. I know that the cost of production of electricity among the 104 nuclear plants operating in the United States is 1.68 cents per kilowatt-hour. That's not including the capital costs, but the cost of production of electricity from nuclear is very low, and competitive with dirty coal. Gas costs three times as much as nuclear, at least. Wind costs five times as much, and solar costs 10 times as much.


What about the issue of nuclear waste?


As is now planned, I'd establish a recycling industry for nuclear fuel, which reduces the amount of waste to less than 10 percent of what it would be without recycling. How many Americans know that 50 percent of the nuclear energy being produced in the U.S. is now coming from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads?


The environmental movement is going on about how terrible it will be if someone does something destructive with these materials. Well, actually the opposite is occurring: all over the world, people are using former nuclear-weapons material for peaceful purposes—swords into plowshares. This constant propaganda about the cost of nuclear energy—that's just activists looking for the right buttons to push, and one of the key buttons to push is to make consumers afraid that their electricity prices will go up if nuclear energy is built. In fact, it's natural gas that is causing [energy] prices to go up.


Don't you worry about proliferation?


You do not need a nuclear reactor to make a nuclear weapon. With centrifuge technology, it is far easier, quicker and cheaper to make a nuclear weapon by enriching uranium directly. No nuclear reactor was involved in making the Hiroshima bomb. You'll never change the fact that there are evil people in the world. The most deaths in combat in the last 20 years have not been caused by nuclear weapons or car bombs or rifles or land mines or any of the usual suspects, but the machete. And yet the machete is the most important tool for farmers in the developing world. Hundreds of millions of people use it to clear their land, to cut their firewood and harvest their crops. Banning the machete is not an option.


Are you optimistic that there will be an aggressive move toward nuclear power in the industrial world, and in particular in the United States?


There are 32 nuclear plants on the drawing boards right now. Last year four applied for their licenses and this year we expect 10 or 11 more. That's just in the United States. There are hundreds of nuclear plants on the drawing boards around the world. This is a completely new thing: the term "'nuclear renaissance" didn't exist three years ago, and now it's a widely known term. Unfortunately, the environmental movement now is the primary obstacle here. If it weren't for their opposition to nuclear energy, there would be a lot fewer coal-fired power plants in the United States and other parts of the world today.

Irrational Green Biofuel Exuberance Is 1 of 4 Major Causes of Food Price Increases

http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/newsroom/wfp173342.pdf


Testimony to the European Parliament Development Committee

by Josette Sheeran, Executive Director


UN World Food Programme


Thursday 6 March 2008



...Food prices have been aggressively increasing to historic highs.


There are four major drivers for this:


- the rise in oil and energy prices which affect the entire value chain of food production from fertilizer to harvesting to storage and delivering and access to water;


- the economic boom in nations such as India and China, creating increased demand for all commodities including food and forcing China, which was a major food exporter just a little more than one year ago, to now being an importer of food;


- increasingly harsh and frequent climatic shocks like hurricanes, floods and drought, have made for some bad harvests in particular regions like Australia and regions of Africa;


- and fourth is the shift to increased biofuels production that has diverted hundreds of millions of metric tonnes of agricultural output out of the food chain, and has caused food prices to be set at fuel price levels in many places, including, for example, palm oil in Africa which is now being priced out of household reach because it is being set at fuel prices as a biofuel addition.


Experts like Joachim von Braun, the Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute, point out that food supply and fuel supply are now inexorably linked; triggering a competition between crops for food and crops for fuel that will affect food prices and supply for years to come. He raises the question that even if food production were to increase 20 percent this year would it go into fuel or would it go into food? For the first time in history we don’t know because it would go to the highest bidders on markets.


These high food prices are placing food out of reach for many of the world’s most vulnerable and especially for those living on less than US$1 a day. Of particular concern is the emergence of what I call the new face of hunger – hunger characterized by markets full of food with scores of people simply unable to afford it. These conditions have triggered food riots from Cameroon to Burkina Faso to Indonesia to Mexico and beyond. (pp 3-4)

The Ethanol Fallacy: Will Politicians Ever Learn???

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4237539.html?series=46


The Ethanol Fallacy


Op-Ed


Popular Mechanics (Feb. 2008)


By James B. Meigs (PM's editor-in-chief)


America needs smart alternative to oil, but the just-passed energy bill puts too much emphasis on the wrong alternative, PM's editor-in-chief says.



The idea is so appealing: We can reduce our dependence on oil-stop sending U.S. dollars to corrupt petro-dictators, stop spewing megatons of carbon into the atmosphere-by replacing it with clean, home-grown, all-American corn. It sounds too good to be true.



Sadly, it is.



Of course we need alternatives to oil. The world uses a cubic mile of petroleum each year, and demand keeps rising as the global economy booms. At first glance, corn seems like a heaven-sent substitute. American corn farmers are the most productive in the world, growing far more of the grain than we can possibly eat, and exporting mountains of the stuff to other countries. And the corn kernel is a marvel of energy storage. Converting that compact bundle of starches into alcohol is a relatively simple trick known to generations of moonshiners. So why not build corn liquor stills on an industrial scale and use the output to power our cars and trucks?



That's exactly what this country has been doing for the past several years. Some 134 ethanol plants are now in operation, consuming close to 1.6 billion bushels of grain, about 15 percent of our total corn production. To feed the ethanol machine, farmers planted almost 93 million acres of corn in 2007, a 19 percent increase over the previous year, and the highest figure since 1944 (when yields per acre were far lower).



The result is that the country is now experiencing an ethanol glut. Prices are sagging-as are plans to build ethanol refineries from sea to shining sea. Yet many in Washington seem determined to force still more ethanol into the system. The just-passed Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which President Bush has said he will sign, mandates corn ethanol usage of 15 billion gal. a year (more than three times today's consumption) by 2015. And presidential candidates have outdone each other with vows to flood the nation with ever-increasing rivers of ethanol for at least a generation.



It's great that our politicians have discovered the need for new energy technologies. But it appears that Washington is determined to put its money-our money-on the wrong horse. Right now, researchers are studying a host of energy solutions, including hydrogen, high-mileage diesel, plug-in hybrids, radical reductions in vehicle weight and cellulosic ethanol (made from cornstalks, switchgrass or other nonfood crops).



It is far too soon to say which of these holds the most promise. But, instead of promoting experimentation and competition to find the best solutions, politicians seem ready to declare ethanol the winner. As a result, our nation could wind up with the worst of both worlds: an ‘alternative’ energy that is enormously expensive yet barely saves a gallon of oil.



Let's start with the math. Corn doesn't grow like a weed. Modern corn farming involves heavy inputs of nitrogen fertilizer (made with natural gas), applications of herbicides and other chemicals (made mostly from oil), heavy machinery (which runs on diesel) and transportation (diesel again). Converting the corn into fuel requires still more energy. The ratio of how much energy is used to make ethanol versus how much it delivers is known as the energy balance, and calculating it is surprisingly complex.



The National Renewable Energy Laboratory states that, “Today, 1 Btu of fossil energy consumed in producing and delivering corn ethanol results in 1.3 Btu of usable energy in your fuel tank.” Even that modest payback may be overstated. Skeptics cite the research of Cornell University professor David Pimentel, who estimates that it takes approximately 1.3 gal. of oil to produce a single gallon of ethanol.



If the benefits are in doubt, the costs are not. It would take 450 pounds of corn to yield enough ethanol to fill the tank of an SUV. Producing enough ethanol to replace America's imported oil alone would require putting nearly 900 million acres under cultivation-or roughly 95 percent of the active farmland in the country. Once we've turned our farms into filling stations, where will the food come from?



There's a simple reason that ethanol is popular with politicians: money. Substituting corn ethanol for a large fraction of the gasoline we burn will mean sluicing gushers of cash from more populated states to politically powerful farm states. And a lot of that cash will wind up in the pockets of the big agribusinesses, like Archer Daniels Midland, that dominate ethanol processing-and whose fat checkbooks wield enormous influence in Washington.



In fact, governments generally have a bad track record when it comes to picking technologies. In the midst of an earlier oil crunch, President Jimmy Carter seized on ‘synfuels’-refined from oil shale deposits-as a panacea. Oops. Synfuels turned out to be woefully uneconomic, environmentally disastrous and feasible only with massive government subsidies. It took years to kill the program off-and the last of the multibillion-dollar tax credits just expired in 2007.



The corn ethanol boondoggle threatens to be far, far worse. If enacted, current proposals will amount to a huge hidden tax on consumers, with benefits flowing to the politically connected. Once set in motion, such a program would be all but impossible to stop-even if other alternatives, like cellulosic ethanol, turn out to be vastly superior. And every dollar spent on corn ethanol is a dollar not spent on those other, more promising approaches.



So what should the government do? First off: no harm. Instead of trying to mandate specific technologies-and risk locking us into using the wrong one-Washington should create incentives to help the market choose the best approaches. One step would be to reward consumers for conservation: There are vast opportunities to make our homes, businesses and vehicles more efficient, and to make our economy stronger in the process.



Perhaps someday corn ethanol will prove itself a viable part of our energy mix. But corn liquor is powerful stuff, and it can make people do strange things. Let's keep it out of Washington's hands.

Terminating Global Warming, Energy Dependence or Private Property Rights?

By Lawrence A. Kogan, Esq.


http://www.itssd.org/Publications/Terminating-Global-Warming.pdf


Protecting the Public?


Earlier this month, western governors unveiled their long awaited clean energy plan for the western half of the United States. Admittedly, the plan contains several voluntary features, and
its recommendations seem, at first glance, plausible. Its measured language even appears couched more in science and economics than in environmentalisms.


Appearances can be deceiving, however. Is this really an energy security plan that can also ensure regional energy reliability? Can this plan immediately lessen the western U.S. region’s foreign energy dependence? Can it promote low-cost, affordable new energy generation? Or, is it actually another back-door’ environmental regulatory ‘takings’ regime that will benefit some at the expense of others, while claiming to protect the public against the phantom menace known as global warming?


The plan’s stated goal is to provide energy reliability and security for the American west. However, rather than objectively place all energy source alternatives on the table for consideration in a region that has limited energy supply but great energy demand, the plan summarily dismisses substantive consideration of: 1) nuclear power; 2) Alaskan-based liquified natural gas (LNG); 3) offshore oil and gas drilling; and 4) most readily available sources of coal, America’s most bountiful and inexpensive natural resource. In fact, the plan mentions only two
very expensive ‘clean coal’ technologies – 3rd generation integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), and supercritical and ultra-supercritical pulverized and circulating fluidized bed combustion. The plan prefers these new and promising technologies because they are said to provide total sequestration – i.e., zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. But, by restricting the plan’s coal portfolio to only these two costly and emerging technologies, the plan’s sponsors
seek to effectively ban the construction of more than a few new coal ‘builds’ within the western half of the nation for the foreseeable future. These restrictions simultaneously place more pressure on existing but over-extended natural gas, hydro and coal sources that require substantial upgrading to meet regional energy security and reliability needs.



The governors’ long-term preference for developing emerging windmill, solar, hydro and biomass-generated energy technologies is laudable, but they do not provide practical or efficient short-term solutions. Many of these technologies are not currently available for collective large scale use, and even when fully matured, are unlikely, by themselves, to deliver more than a fraction of the region’s energy supply. Instead, a holistic portfolio of energy source options must be offered that includes many currently available and environmentally clean technologies, including those coal-related. Such a menu should also include indigenous offshore (west coast) oil and gas, and clean and inexpensive Alaskan LNG that could be delivered in short order to west coast ports if only California environmentalists would drop their irrational opposition to the issuance of the necessary construction permits. In addition, the west’s use of safe, cheap and infinitely available nuclear energy must also be continued and expanded, despite the fear-inspired propaganda-based claims made by nuclear energy-averse environmentalists. Indeed, scientists have shown government policymakers how adequate design, construction and management of LNG and nuclear facilities within and off the coast of California can mitigate earthquake and other natural disaster–related health and environmental risks. Among other reasons, this is precisely why a number of European governments are reconsidering nuclear power.



Furthermore, the plan’s over-reliance on conservation and efficiency measures is also unrealistic. First, conservation and efficiency mandates must be delivered through mechanisms that are performance and not merely process-based – i.e., they must be measured in scientific, technical and economic terms, rather than expressed as political preferences. Poorly designed and symbolic renewable portfolio standard mandates are unlikely to produce much if any energy cost savings, and may actually be counterproductive – they may prove more costly in terms of innovation, productivity and economic growth if the necessary underlying energy supply is
curtailed. Second, according to scholars, what the plan obliquely refers to as ‘incentive regulations’, are not as well understood by regulators as is commonly claimed, and are susceptible to political manipulation. While the plan uses language such as ‘market-based incentives subject to science and cost-benefit’, it is highly questionable how market-friendly regulations can actually be, and how truly objective state environmental regulators will be in implementing them, especially given their interstate nature. Will it really be the least commerce-restrictive alternative available to achieve the energy security, reliability and environmental objectives identified? How will extra-regional energy (‘leakage’) be treated? For these reasons, individual businesses and consumers should be worried about the potential economic impact that the governors’ clean energy plan mandates will impose upon state and regional power generators, which can be expected to be passed downstream to them.


Or, Deceiving the Individual?


Moreover, it is also difficult to see how the types of changes to the western states’ regulatory landscape that would be needed to implement this plan would not also substantially diminish the economic values of existing business and personal assets and investments located throughout the region, so as to make them virtually worthless. This is particularly a concern in California, Oregon and Washington, which intend to adopt an interstate Model Rule requiring each state to impose strict CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions caps.


Putting aside the interstate commerce, federal preemption and supremacy clause (constitutional law) issues this plan engenders, it will also likely threaten the fundamental and alienable constitutional right to exclusive private property, a central tenet of collective individualism upon which this great nation was founded.


The U.S. Supreme Court has long grappled with overly aggressive regulations used in the exercise of a state or municipal government’s ‘police’ and/or ‘eminent domain’ powers. Indeed, many such rules have proliferated in recent years under the guise of environmental or economic blight. Some have mandated significant new private plant and equipment investments or imposed substantial environment-related product and plant use restrictions to address perceived environmental, health and safety hazards. And, others have authorized the dispensation of public funds for economic redevelopment of perceived ‘economically blighted’ areas to serve an ostensible public good. However, in the end, they serve only to benefit some private interests at the expense of others – i.e., they have had the effect of disenfranchising many small businesses and homeowners. Admittedly, Supreme Court jurisprudence in this area has been less than clear; one need only ask the Connecticut residents who were victimized as the result of the Court’s twisted reasoning in last year’s Kelo [1] decision.


Furthermore, many other citizens throughout the United States have faced similar types of disguised governmental ‘economic and environmental blight’-premised measures. Some of them have already lost their homes and small businesses, while others now fear such loss. In fact, enough Americans, at this point, have become sufficiently outraged by what they perceive to be the steady erosion of their constitutionally guaranteed individual private property rights, at the hands of wealth redistribution-minded government officials, that they have appealed to President Bush to step into the political fray.


And the President has complied, with the issuance last week of a new Executive Order, "Protecting the Property Rights of the American People”. [2] This E.O. makes clear, as a matter of U.S. federal policy, that economic-development-related private property ‘takings’ entitled to just compensation must actually serve a ‘general public use’. In other words, a government cannot take away one private party’s (citizen’s) property ownership or use “merely for the purpose of [directly, or indirectly,] advancing the economic interest of [other] private parties [citizens]…” [3] By issuing this new E.O., President Bush’s policy has largely remained consistent with, and has expanded the scope of, a prior E.O. issued by former President Ronald Reagan during March 1988.



Executive Order 12630, “Presidential Executive Order 12630 Governmental Actions and Interference With Civil Constitutionally Protected Property Rights”, recognized that “governmental actions that do not formally invoke the [eminent domain] condemnation power, including regulations, may [in fact] result in a taking for which just compensation is required.”[4] It also established broad guidelines that the General Accounting Office subsequently found had been essentially abandoned during the Clinton era.[5] Generally speaking, these guidelines require officials to consider whether governmental ‘actions’ and ‘policies’ could have ‘takings’ implications before rather than after they are pursued, i.e., to perform a ‘takings impact assessment’ where there is a high probability that a government action or policy could affect the use of any real or personal property.


Interestingly, E.O. 12630 also ses forth a standard to determine whether environment, health and safety (EHS) regulations so affect the value and/or beneficial use of private property as to be deemed a ‘taking’ for public use that is also entitled to just compensation. The governors of the states of California, Oregon, Washington, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Delaware and Maryland, would do well to consider these guidelines prior to adopting/or implementing the strict carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions caps, renewable portfolio standards, and energy efficiency and conservation requirements they are now contemplating.


This E.O. predates the current international debate about whether expensive European-style socialist) regulations based on the nonscientific principle of precaution (‘better safe than sorry’) should also be adopted as the basis for U.S. regulation. Nevertheless, it eerily seems to have anticipated it. “…[T]he mere assertion of a public health and safety purpose is insufficient to avoid [having the regulation deemed] a taking…Actions…asserted to be for the protection of public health and safety, therefore, should be undertaken only in response to real and substantial threats to public health and safety, be designed to advance significantly the health and safety purpose, and be no greater than is necessary to achieve the health and safety purpose” (emphasis added). [6]


All politicians should take note, as have these executive orders, that the U.S. Supreme Court has continued to find that such laws, regulations and policies will qualify as illegal ‘takings’ of private property, even where other than total beneficial use and enjoyment of private property has been impaired. This admonition applies to the now-centrist-leaning California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is one of the Western Governors’ Clean Energy Plan’s chief supporters, and especially, also to his Democratic opponent Phil Angelides. Mr. Angelides, who is a very rich land developer, and perhaps, even a renewable energy source investor, is not unfamiliar with how to exploit regulations that redesign the economic and environmental landscape for his and his political allies’ private benefit. And, should he be elected California’s governor, Mr. Anglides is even more determined than the Governator to use the Kelo decision as the portal through which to catapult the state and the region into a grand new universe of regulatory ‘takings’ that benefit some private property owners at the expense of others.


This raises an important question: If Californians and other westerners embrace the governors’ clean energy plan as the recommended solution to their perceived global warming problems, how many of them will later find themselves bidding farewell (“Hasta la vista, baby!”) to their private property rights, which is more than possible, or to the threat of global warming and foreign energy dependence, which is not?

UK Government: There is NO Policy Reason to Deny Energy Companies From Investing in New Nuclear Power Stations

Notwithstanding the global warming/climate change hysteria wrought by extremist environmental groups in the UK and throughout the European Continent, the UK Government appears to have arrived at a rationale and reasonable risk management approach to ensuring UK energy security for the foreseeable future (next 50 years).


The UK government, as stated in its January 2008 document "Meeting the energy challenge: a White Paper on nuclear power" (http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/nuclear-whitepaper/page42765.html), "decided that the electricity industry should, from now on be allowed to build and operate new nuclear power stations, subject to meeting the normal planning and regulatory requirements."


The Labor government acclaimed nuclear technology as "a tried and tested technology" that "has provided the UK with secure supplies of safe, low-carbon electricity for half a century."


“...8. We set out the Government’s preliminary view on nuclear power in our Energy White Paper15. This explained how nuclear power related to our overall energy strategy. In particular, we highlighted the uncertainties we face in the availability and costs of the UK’s energy supplies over the coming decades. We also need to respond to the challenges of climate change. These uncertainties relate to: future fossil fuel and carbon prices; how quickly we can achieve energy efficiency savings and the therefore likely levels of energy demand; the speed, direction and future economics of development of the renewables sector; and the technical feasibility of and costs associated with applying carbon capture and storage technologies to electricity generation on a commercial scale.”


“9. It is our view that, given these uncertainties, our energy strategy should be based on diversity and flexibility in the energy mix and has accordingly developed policies which keep open the widest possible range of low-carbon generating options. These options would include renewables and the use of gas and coal with CCS, as well as nuclear. Unnecessarily ruling out one of these options would, in our view, increase the risk that we would be unable to meet our climate change and energy security objectives.”


The report concluded that rational and reasonable decisions are needed NOW because:


"...energy companies will need to build around 30-35 GW of new electricity generating capacity
over the next two decades. They will have to make around two-thirds of this investment by 2020. So investment decisions made in the next few years will affect our electricity generation infrastructure for decades to come."