Nuclear: Not Now

I was recently told about a film/documentary directed by Oliver Stone. Released in 2022 Nuclear Now is an unabashed pro-nuclear energy documentary. Stone’s film promotes nuclear as the method by which climate change is to be averted.

Since the disasters of Chernobyl and Fukushima many countries around the world have been cutting back on their nuclear energy programs. Nuclear Now attempts to make the case for halting that decline and rebuilding the nuclear business.

This blog, however, argues – Nuclear: Not Now.

Stone’s documentary, and Oliver Stone himself, begin with a false premise, prompting him to ask the wrong questions. In turn, this leads to erroneous answers.

The false premise is that climate change is a problem to be solved. Beginning with this premise, the film asks: ‘How can we produce more electricity and still cut down on carbon emissions to halt the climate crisis?’ (my emphasis) Stone’s answer to this question – nuclear energy.

However, climate change is not a problem to be solved. There are at least two falsities in this assumption. First, climate change is a symptom, not a cause of something damaging. The cause, if anything, is humanity’s overshoot of planetary boundaries, with climate change being one of those boundaries. Secondly, climate change is part of a much larger phenomenon – a predicament. A predicament is multi-faceted, complex, and inherently unsolvable. A predicament has an outcome (or outcomes) which cannot be predicted, and certainly unable to be controlled by human intervention.

Because of this basic misunderstanding of what climate change is, and how it is manifested, Nuclear Now asks the wrong questions, and hence, gets the wrong answers.

Just Suppose

However, let us make an assumption of our own. Let us suppose that nuclear energy is one of the options available to us to reduce carbon emissions. If it is an option, then how viable is it?

Even with this (futile) assumption, the answer to whether nuclear energy is viable must still be – No!

What follows are just four areas in which the film is in error, or at least, misleading.

1. No climate gases. This claim is ludicrous. From the mining of uranium, to its transportation, to the construction of reactors, to the storage of nuclear waste, the entire nuclear process emits GHGs (Greenhouse gases). The entire process must be considered, not simply the final production of electricity in a built nuclear reactor.

2. Nuclear energy kills far less people. Appealing to this argument is akin to asserting that the death rate from car accidents in my country is okay because it is less than that of a neighbouring country. This argument, is actually an argument for reducing entirely our dependency upon electricity and other energies. The film claims that because the deaths from nuclear accidents have been limited that the technology is safe. Ironically, the film gives the example of the Bhopal chemical disaster in India. A gas leak at the Union Carbide Corporation factory in 1984 resulted in the deaths of an estimated 8,000 people in the first two weeks, and a similar number since. Well over half-a-million people suffered various injuries as a result of the leak. Undoubtedly the US based company (Union Carbide Corporation) as the majority owner of the factory considered it to be safe also! Until the disaster!

A number of other examples of industries that kill people at a greater rate than nuclear are presented in the film. All the examples given (and many more) begs these question: Is industrialisation killing us? Is industrialisation safe? But, these questions never get asked in the film.

Of the nuclear accidents that have happened the film suggests that ‘poorly designed reactors,’ ‘controls were not in place,’ or that ‘human error’ were the cause of these accidents. Yes, all this may be true – human beings are fallible. We do make mistakes. However, if these mistakes and poor designs have led to accidents in the first few decades of nuclear energy, how much more likely is it that mistakes of a human-nature will occur during the coming thousands of years (for that is the length of time that nuclear waste remains toxic and lethal)? The consequences of such a human mistake could be significantly greater than the Bhopal disaster.

3. The increase in use of solar and wind-powered energy are contrasted with that of nuclear in the film. The film notes that these ‘renewables have been going on top of fossil fuels, not replacing them.’ Exactly, and so too has nuclear. During the heydays of reactor construction and operation, the electricity produced by nuclear did not replace that of fossil fuels – it added to the use of electricity. This is a classic example of the Jevons Paradox at work. A paradox that the film makes no mention of.

Jevons Paradox states that when a fuel is made cheaper, more accessible, or simply available, then the use of that fuel will increase, not decrease. Greater numbers of nuclear reactors will increase the consumption of electricity, not decrease it!

4. The most grievous point the film makes about nuclear is that it must be scaled up quickly. The film makes the point that approximately 400 nuclear reactors currently supply 10% of the world’s electricity needs. ‘Reactors,’ the film claims, ‘could be built on a factory scale.’

But, what would this mean? One person who has attempted to answer this, and has done the calculations required, is Dr Simon Michaux, a professor of physics, mining, and geology. Dr Michaux’ arithmetic shows that at current levels of reactor building, decommissioning, and replacement, the earth has about 300 years worth of Uranium reserves.

However, if the world were to ramp up the construction of nuclear reactors, as Stone would want, then those reserves would be depleted within 75 years. Even then, with such a vigorous and aggressive program, less than 70% of fossil fuels would be phased out. Imagine how quickly reserves were to be depleted to reduce the use of fossil fuels by even 50%!!

The real problem (if a ‘problem’ is conceded) is that the question is not nuclear vs fossil fuels. It is a question of supply vs demand. Our demand keeps increasing. Increasing supply is not going to solve that.

IN the final moments of the film, Stone comments ‘We may have reached a point where Earth is asking us – “do you know what you are doing?”’

Exactly! Sadly, the film/doco Nuclear Now does not answer the Earth’s pressing interrogation.

Notes:

1. Dr Simon Michaux, interviewed by Nate Hagen in Minerals and Materials Blindness, The Great Simplification, 18 May 2022

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

We use the saying, ‘Caught between a rock and a hard place,’ to indicate a difficult situation, often one in which we are faced with two possibilities, neither of which is desirable.

We have been faced with such uncomfortable choices for millennia it seems, as the saying comes from Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, composed around the 8^th or 7^th century BCE. At one stage during his travels Odysseus must pass between a fearsome cliff (rock)-dwelling man-eating monster and a treacherous whirlpool (hard place.)

Now, twenty-seven or twenty-eight centuries after Homer was writing, we might need to rephrase the saying. It is becoming apparent that humanity is going to be caught between the sea and a hot place.

The Sea

Most of us are aware of the danger of sea-level rise over the near-term. Currently some 270 million people live on land that is less than 2m above sea level. By 2100 that number is expected to exceed 400 million. Although, by then, most of those 400 million will have had to move because of sea-level rise. The NASA Earth Observatory predicts a rise of between 0.6m – 1.1m by the end of the 21^st century.

Of the top 20 cities (by population) at risk of severe sea-level impact, 15 of them are in Asian countries. One of those nations, Indonesia, is already taking steps to shift its coastal capital of Jakarta (with the dubious distinction of being labelled the ‘fastest sinking city in the world’) to a new site – some 2,000 km NE of Jakarta to Nusantara in Borneo, where the location is hillier than the alluvial plain on which Jakarta sits.

Another country at severe risk of sea-level rise is the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. The flattest country on Earth, the country has an average elevation of just 1m above sea level. A sea-level rise of just 45cm would see the nation lose 77% of its land area.

Sea-level rise is one half of the dire situation.

The Hot Place

Two years ago a group of scientists from China, USA, UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Uruguay published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal calling attention to a vastly increased land area that would be too hot for human inhabitation by 2070.¹

Presently humans live in a climatic envelope where the Mean Average Temperature (MAT) is around 11^o C to 15^o C with a small number living in a MAT of around 26^o C.

Very few, if any, humans live in an area with a MAT of 29^o C or greater. This is hardly significant at present as only 0.8% of the Earth’s land surface experiences such conditions, concentrated mostly in the Sahara.

However, according to this research, by 2070 the area experiencing a MAT of 29^o C or greater is projected to be 19% of the Earth’s surface. That is twenty-four times as much land area as now! That is massive!

Most at risk will be nations in central Africa, parts of the Indian sub-continent, SE Asia. Northern areas of Australia, and much of the Amazon basin.

How many people will this affect? Huge numbers. Around 350 billion, or one-third of the projected global population.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that currently there are 103 million forcibly displaced people in the world, a figure that has risen significantly in the past decade.²

The world has trouble coping with this number now. How will the world cope when this number is increased by a factor of 10 or more?

Notes:

1. Xu, Kohler, Lenton, Svenning, & Scheffer, Future of the Human Climate Niche, PNAS May26, 2020, Vol 117, no. 21

2. Refugee Data Finder on UNHCR website accessed 2 November 2022.

Where Have All The Environmentalists Gone? (10 Principles/Practices)

The first two parts of this blog series lamented the loss of the environmental movement that began with such promise in the 1960s and 70s. This Part 3 asks whether it is possible to resurrect and/or resuscitate the movement from within the climate change movement? Failing that, is there any chance of rekindling a truly environmental movement?

For any or all of this to happen, any emergent environmental movement will surely come to recognise and accept the following ten principles and practices:

1.     Think in systems and take a wide-angled view. See the big picture. Rather than looking through carbon-tinted glasses, the movement will not privilege or prefer one part of the world, or one species, over any other parts. Specifically, it cannot descend into anthropocentrism.

2.     In doing so, the movement will understand and work with local diversity, ecosystems, and bioregions. It will understand that harming any part of the whole damages the whole.

3.     Make connections between “issues.” This includes recognising the desire for comfort in one part may be of immense discomfort to another. For example, slavery and child labour is an “issue” that must be considered in all environmental campaigns.

4.     Gain a long-term understanding of history. This includes understanding the mechanisms of colonisation (still evident today), especially how that process contributes significantly to environmental degradation. Furthermore, such an understanding will recognise that the basic reason we are in an environmental mess is because of overshoot.

5.     Question the imperatives of modernity, especially what Vanessa Machado de Oliveira calls ‘…our ego-logical desires for the 6 “Cs” of comfort, convenience, consumption, certainty, control, and coherence.’ ¹

6.     Overcome our fixation on fixing. This includes overcoming our techno-addiction. Technology never has been, and never will be, the solution to any of our environmental problems, let alone the predicament we are now in. Eco-psychologist Chellis Glendinning argues that modern humans suffer a trauma of disconnection from nature and that we attempt to “heal” this trauma by an addiction to technology.² 

7.     Remember some of the slogans of 30, 40, or 50 years ago: “Think global, act local.’” “The personal is planetary, the planetary personal.”

8.     Work through the grief process. Being stuck in some parts of the grief cycle is not a good place from which to undertake environmental action.

9.     Tell the truth. This is the first of the three ‘demands’ of Extinction UK. The movement must tell the truth about the inter-connected, and self-reinforcing, dangers facing the whole world. Furthermore, it must tell the truth about the inadequacy of the solutions being offered (see 6 above.)

10.  Find a spiritual/soulful home/place. Our place is an integral part of the whole of nature, not separated from nature. Our socio-environmental predicament is less about what we do, or will do; it is more about who we are – and that is a question of spirituality, soulfulness, and inner being.³

It will also be useful for any reclaimed environmental movement to re-read some of the seminal books of the environmental movement from before the focus on carbon emissions. Some possibilities include:

·       Limits to Growth, Meadows et al

·       Silent Spring, Carson

·       Small Is Beautiful, Schumacher

·       The Population Bomb, Ehrlich

·       Walden, Thoreau

·       Overshoot, Catton

Eco-psychology is the branch of psychology that recognises our human place within nature, and has emerged significantly since the awareness of global warming. This is an important area for the environmental movement to take into consideration. Contributions from Indigenous writers also need to be recognised. Some readings include:

·       My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization, Glendinning

·       Nature and the Human Soul, Plotkin

·       Active Hope, Macy

·       Coming of Age, Jenkinson

·       Dream of the Earth, Berry

·       Sand Talk, Yunkaporta

·       Last Child in the Woods, Louv

·       Facing Extinction (essay), Ingram

Primarily, any resuscitated, resurrected, or re-kindled environmental movement must think differently. It will have to recognise Einstein’s famous dictum: ‘We cannot solve the world’s problems with the same thinking with which we created them.’ Einstein was not talking simply about thinking creatively (as de Bono would suggest,) he was talking about the very foundations of our thinking. He meant changing the very paradigms of thinking. He was talking about simplicity, cooperation, connections. He understood the importance of making mistakes, and he fostered curiosity, including a curiosity (and hence a wariness) of consequences of our thinking. I have addressed Einstein’s famous quotation and what he possibly meant in a prior blog here.

Younger Generations

Finally, a few words about the younger generations, especially those who are worried, scared, and fearful of the world we are in and what this means for their futures.

The phenomenon of School Strikes for Climate is prescient and necessary. This is a world-wide movement that must be listened to. Older generations have stolen the future from these young people. Sadly, this is not all that new. William Catton, wrote in 1982 on page 1 of his must-read book - Overshoot – that, ‘humankind is locked into stealing ravenously from the future.’

Consequently, I will continue to support young people, and challenge others to listen to them. I will not, however, condone older generations lying to them about the future, proposing non-environmental techno-solutions, nor offering young people false hope.

Post scriptum

If there is a movement that took up, and extended, the radical potential of the mid 20^th century environmental movement then it is the Deep Ecology movement.⁴ The term Deep ecology was coined by Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss. Deep ecology recognises that the existence of any organism is co-dependent upon the existence of all organisms (including humans.) It promotes the inherent worth of all living beings, not just those that have utility value to humans.

Notes

1. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 2021.

2. Chellis Glendinning, My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization, Shambhala Publications, Boston & London, 1994

3. Please note, I am not advocating religion here. Spirituality is not synonymous with religion, although your particular religion may be how you approach your spirituality.

4. Seed, Macy, Fleming, Næss, Thinking Like A Mountain, New Society Publishers, Philladelphia, 1988

No Way Out; Only Through

Photo: Ricardo Viana on Unsplash

We’re in a mess.

There’s no way out. There may (or may not) be ways through.

Let me explain.

In 2006 (updated in 2010) the eminent philosopher, futurist, and systems thinker, Ervin Laszlo, published Chaos Point: 2012 and Beyond.¹ In that succinct book Laszlo proposed that when societies undergo transformation, they do so in four phases. First is the Trigger phase, followed by the Accumulation phase, then the Decision-window, and finally the Chaos Point.

Our current society, Laszlo asserts, saw the Trigger phase pass by from 1800 to 1960 with innovation upon innovation giving humanity greater efficiency and manipulation of our surroundings. The Accumulation phase (1960 – 2010) saw higher levels of resource use, rocketing population growth, increasing complexity, and massive environmental impacts.

Laszlo then predicted that the few short years until 2012 were crucial. These, he proposed, were the years in which humanity had a Decision-window: a few short years in which the pressures of the previous phases made society unstable and subject to fluctuations. These years were the years in which humanity had to make the decision whether to break-through or break-down (in Laszlo’s words.)

The fourth phase, Chaos Point, is one in which the system becomes critically unstable, with wild fluctuations, and will emerge into either Breakdown or Breakthrough.

In the ten years since Laszlo’s critical timing of 2012, it is extremely difficult to argue for anything other than a breakdown in social, environmental, and planetary systems having occurred. Laszlo characterised this period as one of rigidity of thinking and lack of foresight, leading to situations in which institutions can no longer cope with the mounting and intensifying crises.

Simply put – we are in a mess.

A more sophisticated word for mess would be predicament.

Predicaments are not like problems, not even like a collection of problems. Problems suggest possible solutions. Predicaments are not solvable. Erik Michaels writes of this and notes that predicaments only have outcomes, and these are notoriously unpredictable, and hence unmanageable and uncontrollable.

Once in a predicament (or mess) there is no way out. We cannot solve our way out of it. Furthermore, nor can we solve our way out of it before we get into it, if the trigger points tipping us into the mess have already been tripped.

Since Laszlo wrote his book the evidence for triggering tipping points, and exceeding planetary boundaries has been mounting. So much so, that we have to admit we are now in a mess.

Ways Through

If there is no way out of a mess, then what happens?

There may be a way (or ways) through the mess. But, please, do not ask me what those ways are, or where they will lead. No one can answer those questions. The ways through will possibly be many, or none. There is no way of predicting whether humanity will survive this mess.

Furthermore, the outcome of this predicament will not be known for many generations. In terms of the most well-known aspect of this mess – climate change² – we know that for the earth to cool back to pre-Industrial (or even pre-1970) levels, it will take several centuries once carbon stops being emitted into the atmosphere.

Hence, there is only one question we must pose ourselves.

How do we treat one another, the other-than-human creatures, and the earth herself?

That is a question that only each one of us can answer.

The answers can only be ethical, possibly spiritual. The answers cannot be technological, industrial, nor even political.

Notes

1. Ervin Laszlo, Chaos Point: 2012 and Beyond, Hampton Roads Publishing Company Inc., Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 2006 (updated 2010) There is a review of this book on this blogsite (although readers will note that I am not as optimistic about the outcome now as I was at the time of writing the review – March 2012)

2. Climate change is only one aspect of the mess we are in. Climate change is a symptom, not a cause. The symptom is Overshoot which induces many inter-related and mutually reinforcing symptoms: e.g., deforestation, soil loss and erosion, air and water pollution, insect depletion, flora and fauna extinctions, growing inequalities, war and terrorism, plagues and pandemics, homelessness, food shortage, toxic waste… ad nauseum.