Re: [Marxism] Peak oil

[Rod Holt <rholt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The fact that Louis feels compelled to repeat a point stems from the
failure of his point to meet Marxists' needs. His statement that we
should be "… presenting entirely new ways of organizing society so as to
be environmentally sustainable" is baloney. We need a demand which
answers the American worker's needs and anxieties relative to 1.) energy
costs, 2.) more wars for oil, 3.) more global warming and consequent
berserk weather.
Points 1.) and 2.) are understood by substantial sector of the U.S.
population as due to Big Oil and its servants in the "government." Point
3.) is dawning despite Bush & Co.'s suppression of scientific evidence.
We have the demand ready at hand: Nuclear power under the democratic
control of its workers and the non-industrial users. No nuclear power
(or any other nukes) in the hands of private capital OR the "government."
The overwwhelming majority of the U.S. people distrust the utilities,
the Bechtels, the Department of Energy and all the rest—and all for good
reason. But there is no engineering, scientific or technological reason
why thorium cycle power should be unsafe. You can't make nuclear bombs
from the by-products of the thorium cycle. Costs? Look where oil is
going; and how much have Katrina and Rita cost? $200 billion so far. And
this is just for this year. If the Gulf sea surface temperatures go up
another 1C, look out. A next-generation nuclear power plant, waste
storage and all will cost less than $3 billion for 20 TW-hrs. output.
That is, 500 such will supply *all* the power requirements for all of
the U.S. Not just just electricty, ALL the power (500 quads). 2,000 such
reactors supply the world's 2004 requirements. 2,000 reactors, mass
produced, would cost $6 trillion—about 10 years' of the Defense
Department's spending.
The proposal is to stop war spending and devote the entire DOD budget to
building nuclear power plants on a non-profit basis allo of this
organized and controled by a democratic association of workers, consumer
groups, and scientific groups. Of course, the U.S. capitalist is not
going to buy this program, but what will their public defense be? That
we got lots of cheap oil? That nuclear power is unsafe? That the
American people can't handle such a massive project? That the capital
needed must come from profit-making banks and rich people--not taxes?
Every argument they possess to reject such a proposal either contradicts
their own interests or their own propaganda.
I know most people on this list can't possibly accept the idea that
nuclear fission power is the answer for the next 50 years. Most people
on this list don't do their own research on the topic which is
understandable since it's tedious and one has to study statistics and
things of that sort. It's easier to accept what the Sierra Club is saying.
It is unnecessary to present technical arguments here unless people are
really interested. But I include a piece written in May of 2004 by James
Lovelock, one of the foremost leaders of the ecology movement. I is from
the *Independent.*
----------
Nuclear power is the only green solution
by James Lovelock
"We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources;
civilization is in imminent danger."
The Independent, 24 May 2004

Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, was far-sighted to say
that global warming is a more serious threat than terrorism. He may even
have underestimated, because, since he spoke, new evidence of climate
change suggests it could be even more serious, and the greatest danger
that civilization has faced so far.

Most of us are aware of some degree of warming; winters are warmer and
spring comes earlier. But in the Arctic, warming is more than twice as
great as here in Europe and in summertime, torrents of melt water now
plunge from Greenland's kilometer-high glaciers. The complete
dissolution of Greenland's icy mountains will take time, but by then the
sea will have risen seven meters, enough to make uninhabitable all of
the low lying coastal cities of the world, including London, Venice,
Calcutta, New York and Tokyo. Even a two meter rise is enough to put
most of southern Florida under water.

The floating ice of the Arctic Ocean is even more vulnerable to warming;
in 30 years, its white reflecting ice, the area of the US, may become
dark sea that absorbs the warmth of summer sunlight, and further hastens
the end of the Greenland ice. The North Pole, goal of so many explorers,
will then be no more than a point on the ocean surface.

Not only the Arctic is changing; climatologists warn a four-degree rise
in temperature is enough to eliminate the vast Amazon forests in a
catastrophe for their people, their biodiversity, and for the world,
which would lose one of its great natural air conditioners.

The scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) reported in 2001 that global temperature would rise between two
and six degrees Celsius by 2100. Their grim forecast was made
perceptible by last summer's excessive heat; and according to Swiss
meteorologists, the Europe-wide hot spell that killed over 20,000 was
wholly different from any previous heat wave. The odds against it being
a mere deviation from the norm were 300,000 to one. It was a warning of
worse to come.

What makes global warming so serious and so urgent is that the great
Earth system, Gaia, is trapped in a vicious circle of positive feedback.
Extra heat from any source, whether from greenhouse gases, the
disappearance of Arctic ice or the Amazon forest, is amplified, and its
effects are more than additive. It is almost as if we had lit a fire to
keep warm, and failed to notice, as we piled on fuel, that the fire was
out of control and the furniture had ignited. When that happens, little
time is left to put out the fire before it consumes the house. Global
warming, like a fire, is accelerating and almost no time is left to act.

So what should we do? We can just continue to enjoy a warmer 21st
century while it lasts, and make cosmetic attempts, such as the Kyoto
Treaty, to hide the political embarrassment of global warming, and this
is what I fear will happen in much of the world. When, in the 18th
century, only one billion people lived on Earth, their impact was small
enough for it not to matter what energy source they used.
But with six billion, and growing, few options remain; we can not
continue drawing energy from fossil fuels and there is no chance that
the renewables, wind, tide and water power can provide enough energy and
in time. If we had 50 years or more we might make these our main
sources. But we do not have 50 years; the Earth is already so disabled
by the insidious poison of greenhouse gases that even if we stop all
fossil fuel burning immediately, the consequences of what we have
already done will last for 1,000 years. Every year that we continue
burning carbon makes it worse for our descendants and for civilisation.

Worse still, if we burn crops grown for fuel this could hasten our
decline. Agriculture already uses too much of the land needed by the
Earth to regulate its climate and chemistry. A car consumes 10 to 30
times as much carbon as its driver; imagine the extra farmland required
to feed the appetite of cars.
By all means, let us use the small input from renewables sensibly, but
only one immediately available source does not cause global warming and
that is nuclear energy. True, burning natural gas instead of coal or oil
releases only half as much carbon dioxide, but unburnt gas is 25 times
as potent a greenhouse agent as is carbon dioxide. Even a small leakage
would neutralize the advantage of gas.

The prospects are grim, and even if we act successfully in amelioration,
there will still be hard times, as in war, that will stretch our
grandchildren to the limit. We are tough and it would take more than the
climate catastrophe to eliminate all breeding pairs of humans; what is
at risk is civilisation. As individual animals we are not so special,
and in some ways are like a planetary disease, but through civilisation
we redeem ourselves and become a precious asset for the Earth; not least
because through our eyes the Earth has seen herself in all her glory.

There is a chance we may be saved by an unexpected event such as a
series of volcanic eruptions severe enough to block out sunlight and so
cool the Earth. But only losers would bet their lives on such poor odds.
Whatever doubts there are about future climates, there are no doubts
that greenhouse gases and temperatures both are rising.

We have stayed in ignorance for many reasons; important among them is
the denial of climate change in the US where governments have failed to
give their climate scientists the support they needed. The Green
lobbies, which should have given priority to global warming, seem more
concerned about threats to people than with threats to the Earth, not
noticing that we are part of the Earth and wholly dependent upon its
well being. It may take a disaster worse than last summer's European
deaths to wake us up.

Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by
Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears
are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to
be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the
minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly
one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air
laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen. If we fail to
concentrate our minds on the real danger, which is global warming, we
may die even sooner, as did more than 20,000 unfortunates from
overheating in Europe last summer.

I find it sad and ironic that the UK, which leads the world in the
quality of its Earth and climate scientists, rejects their warnings and
advice, and prefers to listen to the Greens. But I am a Green and I
entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection
to nuclear energy.
Even if they were right about its dangers, and they are not, its
worldwide use as our main source of energy would pose an insignificant
threat compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves
and sea levels rising to drown every coastal city of the world. We have
no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in
imminent danger and has to use nuclear - the one safe, available, energy
source - now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.

The writer is an independent scientist and the creator of the Gaia
hypothesis of the Earth as a self-regulating organism.
-------------
---------------

Louis Proyect wrote:

> Let me repeat a point I made the other day. [snip. original dated 10/1/05]
>
>
> ________________________________________________
> YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism