Pro-nuclear Green candidate faces axe
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Independent Minds
A Green Party parliamentary candidate is facing disciplinary action after calling for the reintroduction of nuclear power, which is strictly against party policy.
Chris Goodall, prospective parliamentary candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon, upset many party members with his assertion in yesterday’s Independent that atomic energy has a role to play in the fight against climate change. Mr Goodall was one of four prominent environmentalists disclosed as having had a change of heart about the nuclear issue, having moved from an anti-nuclear stance to believing that atomic power is a necessary part of the energy mix in the struggle to cut carbon emissions and halt global warming.
The others are Lord Smith of Finsbury, the former Labour cabinet minister who now chairs the Environment Agency; Stephen Tindale, a former executive director of Greenpeace, and Mark Lynas, the author of two studies of climate change. But while the others are in essence free agents, Mr Good-all’s case is distinctive in that his views are now formally at odds with one of his own party’s key policy positions.
Resolute opposition to nuclear power has been a cornerstone of Green party policy for years, as is made clear in the party’s principal policy document, Manifesto for a Sustainable Society, which states unambiguously that a Green government, on taking office, would set a deadline for phasing out all nuclear power.
Mr Goodall’s remarks had left many party members “seriously concerned”, the Green Party leader, Caroline Lucas, MEP, said last night. “It is of great concern to me that a candidate should be promoting a policy which is at odds with the party manifesto, and I shall be taking that forward,” she said. “In any party, you have a range of different views, but once selected as a parliamentary candidate, you have a particular responsibility.”
The matter would be dealt with by the party’s regional council, after speaking to Mr Goodall directly, she said. Asked if this would include disc-iplinary action and possibly even de-selection as a candidate, Ms Lucas would only say: “We will be taking appropriate measures.”
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Comments
Unless they're stopped.
Google "zero carbon britain" and you will find a study that does stack up the argument for a Britain run on renewable energy. In fact, our descendants have no choice but to do just that, because uranium is a finite resource, and a massive (say fourfold) global expansion of nuclear power would use it up in the lifetime of the reactors.
Labour sold out a long time ago. The Greens must get their act together. Now that the system is dead, we need a sympathetic funeral director.
Chernobyl killed less than 100 people directly and that includes the ones who had to go in & make it safe (most of whom were dead in a few months). Depending on whose figures you believe, the lifetime cost will be another 100 to 300 early deaths.
Why are people so fearful of Fission? Not a single civilian death has ever been attributed to to a Power Reactor leak (excepting Chernobyl). The Reactors are not perfect (nothing is) but they have a good safety record & should be a significant part of the energy mix until Fusion, renewables etc. are economic in 2 or 3 decades from now.
I remain dubious about nuclear for a variety of reasons, but mainly for the ongoing lack of guarantees for what happens... down the road. Space 1999 and all that.
But I do concede that, if on the other hand we are facing more immediate peril from the consequences of our energy addictions currently met by burning fossil fuels, with growing populations and recovering economies we are in between a rock an a hard place.
If that were not enough of a worry given the evident competencies of our current, um, leaderships, the selfish, careerist, money-driven short-termism shown so far suggests that some things are often seen as just alternatives, rather than as part of a time-buying strategy on the road to stability.
However, or maybe because of this, this report worries me...
And it worries me because of the politics. We are in an era of either/or, black and white, all or nothing. Nuance is not an option. Especially in the politico-media establishment.
My frustrations with the, in theory democratic (ahem) political process is now almost total. I have no faith that anything I do via my MP matters any more. And much of this is because too often I see him told how to vote for party reasons rather than any hint of representing my views, or what he sees as the good of the county and country he represents.
Now I can see how the views of these individuals can clash with that of the party, and indeed the manifesto it needs to stand behind in campaigning, but there strikes me as something worrying about that last phrase: We will be taking appropriate measures. (Hope the unicode error on characters like apostrophes gets solved soon)
Environementalism is bad for democracy.
Read the responses above - the emotional ones with exagerated facts (hundreds of thousands die after Chernobyl - where does that nonesense come from) are the antis. The careful, considered, responses are the pros. Whose advice would you take if this was about the health of your daughter, the emotion or the reason?
However we do have to face a simple fact, there is only about 20 years resource of Uranium (including that currently in weapons) to supply the world at is present rate of energy consumption so we will need another solution within a generation. That one has to be the direct energy capture from the sun and not need vegetable conversion between - l like cerials or fossilised tree ferns. That is the problem we must start work on - today - and use nuclear power to help achieve it.
Thanks, Green party, for exposing yourselves as the muesli-munching monomaniacs some of us have always known you to be :o) Here's hoping that your political demise will be as swift as it will be well-deserved.
Once I stopped laughing I thought, there is a better chance of Ian Paisley being the next Pope than of the Greens ever being a government in the UK. Thankfully under First Past The Post as used in the elections which really count, i.e. for Parliament, they will be very lucky indeed to win a single seat in the House of Commons.
If they were to look from behind their dogma they would realise that Nuclear Power is indeed far cleaner than fossil fuels and far more dependable than wind or wave power. Alas, I feel that what they really wish is to reduce our standard of living and to cripple our Industry and Commerce. The Greens, for all their Bunny Hugging and Tree Loving appearance, are a Hard Left party. Scratch a Green, find a Red.
Molitva Chornobylskaja (Chernobyl prayer). Despite the widespread censorship of critical literature in the United Kingdom (publishers only accept stuff that sells like sliced bread), there is enough evidence about to go deeper into this, but it requires long and painstaking work, and I only have ten minutes this morning.
It was very difficult in Soviet times to get officials to admit to the true number of casualties, but several thousands (not 'one hundred' - a figure straight out of Margaret Thatcher's proper ganda)died immediately, and others often in abject poverty years later.
As for one million cancer deaths as a result of nuclear power worldwide - a gross estimate, of course, it could be less, it could be more - you do have to count the hundreds of accidents in safety-free regions like the USSR, China etc. and go back to the Fifties. It also helps if you multiply the established cases of leukaemia around Sellafield by a certain factor and you will already arrive at thousands of cases in 'normal' industrialised countries, especially near reprocessing plants.
As the possibility of reversing the fission process in radioactive materials is extremely remote,
a safe disposal of the stuff remains a logical impossibility for hundreds of years. In all that time, somebody has to be paid to
watch over the damned stuff.
The disposal and decommissioning of Nukes is the most expensive part. It's the equivalent of sponsoring all bad banks worldwide. It is no wonder that only totalitarian states and no free enterprise touches the stuff these days.
Chernobyl technology was old, or safeguards and poorly maintained.
The irony with Chernobyl is wildlife within 50km of Chernobyl proliferated as a result; and post studies have found the casaulties were a fraction of what experts predictedat the time.
Tindale no longer works for Greepeace, but does work for RWE, which has extensive nuclear interests (see the Guardian diary). He also wrote New Labour's environment policy leading up to 1997 (which means he must be very disappointed), so you could argue that he his view of nuclear may be clouded by his past association with New Labour. As for Lynas, his excellent work on climate change has been increasing let down by his fascination for mega projects, such as the Severn barrier. Prominent? If you screw your eyes up and are a journo in need of a story...
Climat e change is very serious, but real world economics gets in the way of nuclear. Energy efficiency must be the first priority - since its the quickest, cheapest way to reduce carbon emissions. Nuclear is an expensive distraction, whose economics have always relied on large subsidy. No plant has been built on time or budget, and there is no reason why it will be in the future.
I can see the attraction of nuclear - no emissions , with large baseload capacity. For the politicians, it allows them to continue their fascination with large projects, avoids having to ask us to save energy, may help to keep to Kyoto, and in the case of the government, helps keep several rural seats safely Labour. Unfortunately, it won't cut emissions in time, will suck all monies out of the rest of the non-carbon sector, allows politicians to do nothing about climate change, and continues to pile up waste disposal and security problems.
Here is the deal for nuclear. You have to finance, build, maintain, insure and decommission them all by yourself (including disposal of waste). No government handouts (including hidden subsidies via the French state, as happens with EDF). You sell your power at market rates (no special low rates or extras on customers bills, as happened in the UK), and you make no attempt to block other non carbon sources of energy (no giving money to anti wind farm groups, which has happened in the past, or arguing that turbine blades would destroy you local station - while maintaining that crashing a jet into it would not). In other words, you have to act like an ordinary business.
However, I bet that wont happen. The City is unlikely to fund nukes on such terms (they didn't when times were good, so now?), and the economics are worse than ever . Nukes don't make money, at least in any real world way. If the free market had a say, there would be no nuclear in the UK - it would be the market, not the Greens who would kill them. And if the cost of carbon was priced properly (if only!), then efficiency and all these other technologies http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2
The guru of energy efficiency, Amory Lovins, puts it perfectly - 'If nuclear is the answer, your asking the wrong question'.