Copenhagen: As MAD as it seems?

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Joseph Curtin

“We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked” – these were the words of Secretary of State Dean Rusk at the height of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962.

It may be abhorrent to some, but despite the high stakes international negotiations often come down to extracting the maximum from your interlocutor.

In the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the stakes could not have been higher – President Kennedy had played his hand by blockading Cuba and the Soviet Union had no choice but to back down to avoid Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Analysts have interpreted this as a classic instance of a nuclear game of “Chicken” Khrushchev was convinced that his choice was between turning his fleet home or nuclear holocaust. Continue reading →

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21st Century Swords to Plowshares: From Megatons to Megawatts

Posted on November 28, 2009 by Paddy Morris

Currently, hydropower provides 6% of the USA’s electrical power, and solar, biomass, wind and geothermal combined provide 3%.

Dismantled nuclear weapons provide 10%.

The ‘Megatons to Megawatts’ programme was instituted in the 1990s as a means to secure the weapons that both the US and Russsia had agreed to dismantle as a result of arms reduction treaties. What was initially seen as a massive security issue has been transformed into a cheap and plentiful supply of fissile material, and also led to huge financial savings from not having to secure and maintain the warheads themselves, along with their associated delivery systems. The scheme has been very successful – material from Russia’s ex-weapons currently provides 45% of the fuel in US reactors, with former American weapons providing a further 5%. Continue reading →

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Keeping our heads above (rising) water

Posted on November 26, 2009 by John Gibbons

In these dark November days, as parts of Ireland lie submerged after a virtually stormless deluge, it’s natural to want to look for some positive news. Images of tens of thousands of people using the public sector strike on Tuesday (many of them public servants themselves) to head over the border for ‘bargains’ in Northern Ireland is a tangible reminder of how narrow self-interest and the prospect – real or imaginary – of a bargain quickly part us from our senses.

Ireland is currently spending almost €500m a week more than our national income. This is disastrously unsustainable, but rather than seeing an outbreak of the Blitz Spirit, instead our response is an atomised mé fein-ism. Those thousands of cars streaming into Newry are hastening the demise of their neighbours’ businesses. Continue reading →

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Full steam ahead!

Posted on November 24, 2009 by John Gibbons

While the mud flies to the left and to the right, now, with just 12 days to the opening of the COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen, looks like it’s all hands on deck, women and children first, etc. etc. as the good ship Hubris stokes up its coal-fired turbines and steams us towards, well, you know…

Heartiest congratulations to all the merry crew of climate deniers and assorted smart alecs and know-alls. We’d never have come so far, so quickly, and been in it quite so deep were it not for your Trojan efforts. Don’t be so modest, you’re the real stars of this Tragedy.

Next stop?

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Nothing new under the sun?

Posted on November 19, 2009 by John Gibbons

Around seven years ago, I read a history of the planet in the 20th century, entitled ‘Something New Under The Sun‘, by Georgetown University professor, JR McNeill. The book examined the biosphere, slice by slice, and concluded that, whatever else, the 20th century should be seen as a historical once-off.

The 21st century, he noted, would have to be profoundly different – either humanity learns to live within limits (of resources and carbon emissions), or the entire system would crash, with the profoundest of consequences for life on Earth. This book had a major influence on my decision to get involved in writing and campaigning on climate and environmental topics. Continue reading →

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To the last drop?

Posted on November 10, 2009 by John Gibbons

Take a minute or two to study the chart below. It is just issued by the International Energy Agency, an industry-centric organisation not prone to engaging in eco-alarmism. But this is alarming, truly shocking in fact.

OilProduction

The dark blue chart area is the one to watch. This is the real, live oil, the stuff civilisation runs on. Today, it provides around 70 of the 82 million or so of oil-equivalent barrels we burn each day. Continue reading →

Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Nuclear, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , | 31 Comments

McCarthy: ability without sustainabilty?

Posted on November 5, 2009 by John Gibbons

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? This well-known Latin phrase from the poet Juvenal, loosely translates to “Who will guard the guards?” It came to mind when thinking about the Talented Mr McCarthy and his oversized shears, better known as An Bord Snip Nua. Regular readers will know that I have a slight ongoing problem with what we refer to as orthodox economics, and its practitioners, our mighty Fifth Estate, the economists.

Whatever degree factory churns them out, our economists mostly march metronomically to the rhythm of the all-seeing Market. Too bad the world has moved on since Milton Friedman was their pin-up boy. Meanwhile, An Bord Snip Nua is cheerfully both diagnosing what ails Ireland Inc, and prescribing our remedial treatment. Continue reading →

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Now we’re getting somewhere

Posted on October 28, 2009 by John Gibbons

Earlier today, at a very well attended press conference in Leinster House, the all-party Oireachtas Committee on Climate Change and Energy released their report, ‘The case for a climate change law’.

Committee rapporteur, Liz McManus likened the position we now find ourselves in and the scale of what is required to address it as being “like a war effort”. This, from the Opposition, is extremely encouraging. McManus has for the last year or so, given the distinct impression that she realises this is no phoney war. In that regard, she remains in a small minority within Dail Eireann.

I’d like to believe the numbers are growing, but with the scant, patchy and highly erratic way the media in general continues to cover this issue (with more scare stories about how we “can’t afford” to do anything, or contributions from the it’s-all-a-scam circus) doesn’t lead to any excessive optimism. Continue reading →

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A smart tax, on so many levels

Posted on October 23, 2009 by John Gibbons

James Tobin had a very, very good idea. So good, in fact, they named it after him. And that’s the Tobin Tax. It’s a small tax with very big potential. And best of all, it’s a damn good idea, in that it’s a tax that places a levy on socially, financially or economically non-productive (or even destructive) activity.

The Tobin Tax was proposed back in 1972, shortly after the break-up of the Bretton Woods fixed-exchange-rate system. The idea was to place a tax on foreign currency transactions that would shield national governments from having their economies at the mercy of speculators. a tax on financial transactions. The reason you may not have heard of it is that it exists in theory alone. Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

There (still) is no plan B

Posted on October 21, 2009 by John Gibbons

One of my earliest posts on this blog, on December 12, 2007, was headed ‘There is no Plan B‘. The headline was taken from a quote from the then new Australian PM, Kevin Rudd to delegates at the UN climate conference in Bali.

The line re-emerged earlier today, when British PM, Gordon Brown said in London: “This is the moment. Now is the time. For the planet there is no plan B”. He outlined a catastrophic scenario of heatwaves, flooding and droughts if an ambitious new deal is not secured in Copenhagen in December. Continue reading →

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Cool, sparkling sense comes dropping slow

Posted on October 19, 2009 by John Gibbons

Amazing the things you never knew you never knew. This morning, for instance, I found out that if you spell ‘naive’ backwards, you come up with Evian, the cool, sparkling spring water that is full of, er, volcanicity – this apparently being the distinctive flavour of this tipple as it percolates up from caverns measureless to man, emanating, no doubt from a sunless sea of startling purity (with apologies to S. T. Coleridge).

This nugget was texted in to Tom Dunne’s breakfast show on Newstalk, where I was his studio guest for a slot discussing the great bottled water swindle, a topic I had covered in last week’s IT column. That piece led off with a reference to a vintage video clip from Penn Teller’s satirical US documentary series entitled “Bullshit”, where they looked at different areas of pure bull, from the Bible to bottled water, and had a lot of fun along the way. By popular demand, you can view it in its entirety, including the unforgettable Amazon bottled water, complete with dead spider: Continue reading →

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Challenging the infallible economist

Posted on October 15, 2009 by John Gibbons

Colm McCarthy chaired the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes, better known as An Bord Snip Nua. It issued its various prescription for what ails us in July, and much of the national discussion since then has been framed through the McCarthy lens.

McCarthy fancies himself as a straight-talker, and last Friday he excoriated Comhar’s Green New Deal proposals in a newspaper article headlined: “Green plan a recipe for fudge and confusion in economic policy”. Deeper into his piece, McCarthy opines: “The “Green New Deal” package from Comhar is seductive in several dimensions, apart from the catchy moniker. It promises to help the environment and to create jobs, all at no apparent cost. Continue reading →

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Blowing up a political s**t storm

Posted on October 13, 2009 by John Gibbons

Fintan O’Toole is, for my money, the most insightful commentator on Irish life, and has been for years. Like any of the rest of us,  he has his hobby horses, and I’ve often been disappointed that he rarely turns his intellect to the rich grounds of the sustainability/climate/environmental catastrophe that’s now unfolding.

On Nama, he’s been superb. Were it not for the intervention of two of Fine Gael’s eminence grises, in the forms of Garrett Fitzgerald and Alan Dukes, I’m pretty sure the anti-Nama arguments, so forcefully articulated by O’Toole, would have prevailed. As it was, while naturally the Greens are getting it in the neck, in fact two ageing FGrs sealed its fate. The Greens pissed O’Toole off on Nama, and, thanks to John Gormley’s gormless travel arrangements, O’Toole has hit them in their ethics, where it really, really hurts. Continue reading →

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A fair wind for renewable energy sector?

Posted on October 12, 2009 by John Gibbons

The Green Party seems to have snatched an unlikely victory at the weekend – they somehow maneuvered themselves from being pinned between the proverbial rock and a hard place and wriggled free with party unity intact and a hatful of new concessions wrung from their senior government partners. Harry Houdini would have been impressed.

Certainly, Eamon Ryan sounded uber-chipper on RTE radio yesterday morning, including giving Sunday Times editor Frank Fitzgibbon as good as he got in some fairly heated exchanges. Meanwhile, the Sunday Indo yesterday decried the revised programme for government as a cynical deal. Given that newspaper’s deeply cynical campaign to repeal stamp duty at the height of the property bubble, and their even more cynical support for B. Ahern & Friends in the lead-in to the 2007 General Election, this is clearly an area of expertise for them. The opening 2 paras of yesterday’s lead story are worth reproducing: Continue reading →

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The Anthropocene draws to a close

Posted on October 8, 2009 by John Gibbons

The term Anthropocene was coined by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen a decade ago to describe the new ‘Era of Man’, a distinct geological epoch shaped almost entirely by our actions and impacts. “The Anthropocence has yet to be accepted as a geological time period, but if it is, it may turn out to be the shortest – and the last”, wrote Bob Holmes in the current edition of New Scientist in an intriguing article that rolls the clock forward to see how Earth would cope in the era after Man.

Mass extinctions are already well advanced, so much so that scientists have already designated the current era as the Sixth Extiction – since these measures cover close to a billion years, Extinction eras are rare indeed, the last being the event 65 million years ago that did for the dinosaurs and ultimately created the wiggle room for our ancient ancestors, the early mammals, to get a toe-hold. Continue reading →

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