The popular TV-chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has for a few years now headed a scheme for shared land use known as landshare.net across the British isles. It's basically a scheme that allows those with unused land and those seeking land for micro-farming to find each other and build mutually benefiting relationships.
The UK was the first nation to dissolve the common land to private ownership. Through a practice known as enclosing, we practically invented privatisation. Before the Tudor period, England was mostly commons where land was seen as a god-given resource much the same as air or water.
Land ownership and the public realm is a favourite broken record of mine. I'll get back to it later, but in the meantime, please join the thousands of like-minded commoners at landshare.net.
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
Thoughts on Energy.
There's a documentary out soon about storage of nuclear waste in Finland. Sounds like a cosy night in with my paranoia.
Here's the crux. Uranium is a limited resource which could power the world for hundreds of years, this we know. Yet Nuclear power creates waste. No, not waste. Waste is too fine a word for it. True, it's not a lot (all of USA's waste so far fits in a football field) but it's horrifically toxic. This we also know. Back in the 1970's people marched in the streets in protest and after the Chernobyl melt-down public opinion was firmly against. Sweden had a national policy to decommission all nuclear power stations by 2010 as a matter of public and environmental safety (as thought he two where separable).
So not waste, then what? Maybe a quick look in the thesaurus can help to redefine it. Curious, the antonyms of waste are; development, build, create, preserve, benefit, care for, esteem, prize, respect, revere.... The synonyms for waste are;
But fear not, we'll come up with an as yet unthought of technological solution on dwindling energy and financial supplies at some point in the next 500 years (about the amount of time that our current solution can hold).
Sweden's current nuclear policy in the face of peak oil? Sweden has 10 nuclear power reactors which provide over 40% of its electricity. On 17 June 2010, the Swedish Parliament adopted a decision allowing starting from 1 January 2011 a replacement of the existing reactors with new nuclear reactors.
That's a part of a current set of energy propaganda that can be found all over Sweden at the moment. It reads "We're making our nuclear energy more effective". So sleep easy, load your iPad in peace and Google "Chernobyl children"
Here's the crux. Uranium is a limited resource which could power the world for hundreds of years, this we know. Yet Nuclear power creates waste. No, not waste. Waste is too fine a word for it. True, it's not a lot (all of USA's waste so far fits in a football field) but it's horrifically toxic. This we also know. Back in the 1970's people marched in the streets in protest and after the Chernobyl melt-down public opinion was firmly against. Sweden had a national policy to decommission all nuclear power stations by 2010 as a matter of public and environmental safety (as thought he two where separable).
So not waste, then what? Maybe a quick look in the thesaurus can help to redefine it. Curious, the antonyms of waste are; development, build, create, preserve, benefit, care for, esteem, prize, respect, revere.... The synonyms for waste are;
Spent uranium is deemed fatal or deadly to all life on Earth for at least 50 000 years. Thereafter it is classed as hazardous to health for a further 50 000 years, so it can not be released safely into the natural world for 100 000 years.
100 000 years ago, human civilisation did not exist.
Sweden's current nuclear policy in the face of peak oil? Sweden has 10 nuclear power reactors which provide over 40% of its electricity. On 17 June 2010, the Swedish Parliament adopted a decision allowing starting from 1 January 2011 a replacement of the existing reactors with new nuclear reactors.
That's a part of a current set of energy propaganda that can be found all over Sweden at the moment. It reads "We're making our nuclear energy more effective". So sleep easy, load your iPad in peace and Google "Chernobyl children"
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