Slashdot Mirror

The Greenies and NIMBYs are going to oppose fusion just like they oppose fission.

Not quite true. They don't all oppose fission out of hand. For a take on nuclear from one of the UK's more renowned green journalists, George Monbiot, see http://www.monbiot.com/category/nuclear/

Matt Ridley, the failed bankster?

Yes, the author of those brilliant books is the same Matt Ridley who was chairman of Northern Rock in 2007 when it experienced the first run in modern times, nearly collapsed, and was eventually bailed out by the state to the tune of £27 billion.

More on George Monbiot's blog, here: http://www.monbiot.com/2010/06...

Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality. If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11...

Has your relative never heard of the term "market failure" ?

There is research to suggest that people with conservative beliefs tend to be less intelligent. They basically like to be told what to believe, which explains your relative's misplaced faith in The Market.

In my experience, right-wing principles (market knows best , regulation is bad) tend to be based on thought experiments, whereas left-wing principles (income inequality is bad, socialised benefits are more efficient etc) have empirical evidence supporting them. Not that this matters to most voters, since most people do not research/analyse the data, they make their minds up on sound-bites.

Not sure why this is being modded 'Funny'. Quite a few 'environmentalists' are starting to revisit Nuclear Power, e.g. George Monbiot (A regular columnist in the Guardian newspaper).

Personally, I can't help thinking that technology may have advanced since we last built nuclear reactors. Certainly I think any IT would be more advanced - just don't connect to the internet!

Here is environmentalist George Monboit embracing the deployment of nuclear power: http://www.monbiot.com/2013/12...

Here is climate scientist James Hanson calling for the development and deployment of nuclear energy: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes....

Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality. http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/07/the-self-attribution-fallacy/

Hypocrisy defined. What about the U.S. chemical weapons policy? http://www.monbiot.com/2013/09/09/obamas-rogue-state/

Depends on how you look at it - the amount of radioactive material released isn't the sole indicator.
No one has died yet from direct exposure to radiation, I remember the reported deaths of two workers but they were killed by the tsunami, not radiation.
However it is estimated that long term there will be a small percentage increase in cancer cases.
There were deaths among hospital patients in the hurried and botched evacuation of the area.
Still, the human impact is absolutely dwarfed by the death toll from the earthquake and tsunami.
I don't think any credible voice has denied the extent of TEPCO's incompetence and failure.

However, if this is the worst case scenario with previous generation reactors, it is rather insignificant compared to the magnitude of the crisis facing humanity in the very near future. I generally despise the far left for their dogged ideological immovability, which is why one person surprised me after Fukushima.

George Monbiot is a journalist for the left leaning Guardian newspaper in Britain. He has strong left wing views and sympathies with environmental movements. Until Fukushima, he was a vocal opponent of nuclear power. And after Fukushima, he changed his views in one of the most amazing displays of intellectual honesty I have ever seen: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/21/going-critical/
He has continued to be a strong advocate, taking on people from 'green' movements he previously supported and exposing how the movement has misled the world about the dangers of radiation and nuclear power: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/evidence-meltdown/
He continues to take on the very unscientific, almost irrational opinions in the green movement: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/08/08/the-moral-case-for-nuclear-power/

The point is, he is one of the few who demonstrated the capacity to be rational. I continue to be amazed just how badly misguided and stubborn otherwise intelligent, rational people are about anything related to nuclear power. Very few take the initiative that Monbiot did and closely examine all the information thrown at us by the media, environmentalist movements and the plainly ignorant.

There are many lessons to be learnt from Fukushima, but the world is learning all the wrong ones. It is concerning to see two engineering powerhouses, Germany and Japan abandon nuclear power. With Japan it was quite inevitable after the events, there is a point where the reasoning ability of the general public breaks down, even in a highly educated and technologically advanced nation like Japan. However, it was incredibly disappointing to see Germany pick the cowardly and backward looking option of abandoning nuclear power. Now they are again importing power from France, and the question I wish more had asked is do they really think Germany would be unaffected in the case of a large scale nuclear disaster in France?

The worldwide drive pushing for the acceptance of the validity of the science and evidence supporting the existence of climate change has involved robust debate and repeated re-examination and testing of the science and supporting evidence in a classic application of the scientific method. Recent evidence may be the tipping point and the support for deniers should dwindle relentlessly hereon.
A different kind of milestone is the fact that a democracy like Australia voted for a pioneering carbon tax; the vote represents an implicit acceptance of Anthropogenic global warming. However the ultimate goal would be for the idea to be overwhelmingly acknowledged around the world. This may sound optimistic, but then I am sure no one a hundred years ago would have expected the overwhelming agreement on the basic principles of human rights, equal rights for women, racial equality.

There needs to

Depends on how you look at it - the amount of radioactive material released isn't the sole indicator.
No one has died yet from direct exposure to radiation, I remember the reported deaths of two workers but they were killed by the tsunami, not radiation.
However it is estimated that long term there will be a small percentage increase in cancer cases.
There were deaths among hospital patients in the hurried and botched evacuation of the area.
Still, the human impact is absolutely dwarfed by the death toll from the earthquake and tsunami.
I don't think any credible voice has denied the extent of TEPCO's incompetence and failure.

However, if this is the worst case scenario with previous generation reactors, it is rather insignificant compared to the magnitude of the crisis facing humanity in the very near future. I generally despise the far left for their dogged ideological immovability, which is why one person surprised me after Fukushima.

George Monbiot is a journalist for the left leaning Guardian newspaper in Britain. He has strong left wing views and sympathies with environmental movements. Until Fukushima, he was a vocal opponent of nuclear power. And after Fukushima, he changed his views in one of the most amazing displays of intellectual honesty I have ever seen: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/21/going-critical/
He has continued to be a strong advocate, taking on people from 'green' movements he previously supported and exposing how the movement has misled the world about the dangers of radiation and nuclear power: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/evidence-meltdown/
He continues to take on the very unscientific, almost irrational opinions in the green movement: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/08/08/the-moral-case-for-nuclear-power/

The point is, he is one of the few who demonstrated the capacity to be rational. I continue to be amazed just how badly misguided and stubborn otherwise intelligent, rational people are about anything related to nuclear power. Very few take the initiative that Monbiot did and closely examine all the information thrown at us by the media, environmentalist movements and the plainly ignorant.

There are many lessons to be learnt from Fukushima, but the world is learning all the wrong ones. It is concerning to see two engineering powerhouses, Germany and Japan abandon nuclear power. With Japan it was quite inevitable after the events, there is a point where the reasoning ability of the general public breaks down, even in a highly educated and technologically advanced nation like Japan. However, it was incredibly disappointing to see Germany pick the cowardly and backward looking option of abandoning nuclear power. Now they are again importing power from France, and the question I wish more had asked is do they really think Germany would be unaffected in the case of a large scale nuclear disaster in France?

The worldwide drive pushing for the acceptance of the validity of the science and evidence supporting the existence of climate change has involved robust debate and repeated re-examination and testing of the science and supporting evidence in a classic application of the scientific method. Recent evidence may be the tipping point and the support for deniers should dwindle relentlessly hereon.
A different kind of milestone is the fact that a democracy like Australia voted for a pioneering carbon tax; the vote represents an implicit acceptance of Anthropogenic global warming. However the ultimate goal would be for the idea to be overwhelmingly acknowledged around the world. This may sound optimistic, but then I am sure no one a hundred years ago would have expected the overwhelming agreement on the basic principles of human rights, equal rights for women, racial equality.

There needs to

Depends on how you look at it - the amount of radioactive material released isn't the sole indicator.
No one has died yet from direct exposure to radiation, I remember the reported deaths of two workers but they were killed by the tsunami, not radiation.
However it is estimated that long term there will be a small percentage increase in cancer cases.
There were deaths among hospital patients in the hurried and botched evacuation of the area.
Still, the human impact is absolutely dwarfed by the death toll from the earthquake and tsunami.
I don't think any credible voice has denied the extent of TEPCO's incompetence and failure.

However, if this is the worst case scenario with previous generation reactors, it is rather insignificant compared to the magnitude of the crisis facing humanity in the very near future. I generally despise the far left for their dogged ideological immovability, which is why one person surprised me after Fukushima.

George Monbiot is a journalist for the left leaning Guardian newspaper in Britain. He has strong left wing views and sympathies with environmental movements. Until Fukushima, he was a vocal opponent of nuclear power. And after Fukushima, he changed his views in one of the most amazing displays of intellectual honesty I have ever seen: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/21/going-critical/
He has continued to be a strong advocate, taking on people from 'green' movements he previously supported and exposing how the movement has misled the world about the dangers of radiation and nuclear power: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/evidence-meltdown/
He continues to take on the very unscientific, almost irrational opinions in the green movement: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/08/08/the-moral-case-for-nuclear-power/

The point is, he is one of the few who demonstrated the capacity to be rational. I continue to be amazed just how badly misguided and stubborn otherwise intelligent, rational people are about anything related to nuclear power. Very few take the initiative that Monbiot did and closely examine all the information thrown at us by the media, environmentalist movements and the plainly ignorant.

There are many lessons to be learnt from Fukushima, but the world is learning all the wrong ones. It is concerning to see two engineering powerhouses, Germany and Japan abandon nuclear power. With Japan it was quite inevitable after the events, there is a point where the reasoning ability of the general public breaks down, even in a highly educated and technologically advanced nation like Japan. However, it was incredibly disappointing to see Germany pick the cowardly and backward looking option of abandoning nuclear power. Now they are again importing power from France, and the question I wish more had asked is do they really think Germany would be unaffected in the case of a large scale nuclear disaster in France?

The worldwide drive pushing for the acceptance of the validity of the science and evidence supporting the existence of climate change has involved robust debate and repeated re-examination and testing of the science and supporting evidence in a classic application of the scientific method. Recent evidence may be the tipping point and the support for deniers should dwindle relentlessly hereon.
A different kind of milestone is the fact that a democracy like Australia voted for a pioneering carbon tax; the vote represents an implicit acceptance of Anthropogenic global warming. However the ultimate goal would be for the idea to be overwhelmingly acknowledged around the world. This may sound optimistic, but then I am sure no one a hundred years ago would have expected the overwhelming agreement on the basic principles of human rights, equal rights for women, racial equality.

There needs to

IANAL, but if the person in question is not a UK citizen, does the UK law, which says the injunction can be sent by fax or email, apply?

See http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/07/15/censored-by-money/

Please provide a reference to that. As far as I know (and I have done some study on this) no major Christian denominations hold that Armageddon is something to be desired or promoted. Many Christians are convinced that Armageddon is just around the corner, but few see this as a good thing (except in so far as they see it as a pre-requisite to the return of Christ).

You put your finger on it with the "pre-requisite to the return of Christ" part. This is the best reference I can turn up at short notice. It's an essay by George Monbiot, but it is heavily referenced with various citations. Assess it as you wish. I find him to be a genuinely reputable writer.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/04/20/apocalypse-please

I'll only address your final question (regarding the relative scariness of Christian vs. Muslim fundamentalists) by observing that either is scary, that of the around 1.5 billion muslims in the world, those flying planes into skyscrapers are receiving rather a lot more than their share of media coverage and that, if you're comparing fundamentalist Christians in the US to fundamentalist Muslims in, say, Iraq or Palestine, then you'll note that the former don't live destitute in an occupied country having to improvise weapons. If they did, you might see them engage in exactly the same sort of improvised, asymetrical warfare and terrorism that anyone else does. Whether you use yourself as a bomb delivery method or not is less a factor of religion and more one of if you have a tank to use instead. IMO, anyway.

Actually, small farms produce more food per hectare than large ones.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/06/10/small-is-bountiful/

It's odd that they're still using the Public Order Act 1986, when the Protection From Harassment Act 1997 or Serious Organised Crime and Policing Act 2005 pretty much give the authorities carte blanche to silence protest. One would have thought the police would have realised the amount of power they actually have now.

The Protection from Harassment Act allows the Crown to prosecute anyone causing a person "alarm or distress" if this involves "conduct on at least two occasions." Conduct, it tells us, "includes speech"(5). Under this law, in other words, it is not necessary to demonstrate "threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour" to secure a prosecution. ... the first three people prosecuted were all peaceful protesters. It is now used routinely against non-violent animal rights protesters and people demonstrating peacefully outside military bases and at arms fairs.

...

The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act would have been even more useful. Buried in the middle of this enormous piece of legislation, and missed by every MP who debated the bill, is a section on "harassment intended to deter lawful activities". Under this act, the definition of a "course of conduct" is broadened to include causing alarm or distress to "two or more persons"(6). In other words, Green would only have had to approach two revellers once to have fallen under suspicion of breaching the act. It appears to have been deliberately designed to criminalise protest. "Harassment" now involves seeking "to persuade any person ... not to do something that he is entitled or required to do, or to do something that he is not under any obligation to do."(7) Again, there is no defence for peaceful protest.

Some nutty environmentalist.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/10/19/selling-indulgences/
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/67034/

Now, solar energy comes 'for free', but fertilizers, pesticides, harvesting and processing don't. As it stands, we can't feed the 6 billion people on this planet without chemical fertilizers. Furthermore, production of biofuels competes with food production. George Monbiot was one of the first people to write about this, and we can see effects in the rising price of food staples such as tortillas and pasta.

Now, solar energy comes 'for free', but fertilizers, pesticides, harvesting and processing don't. As it stands, we can't feed the 6 billion people on this planet without chemical fertilizers. Furthermore, production of biofuels competes with food production. George Monbiot was one of the first people to write about this, and we can see effects in the rising price of food staples such as tortillas and pasta.

And how does any system - political or technological - cope with the timescales involved? If, as a result of slow leakage into the groundwater, radioactive materials from a burial site kill an average of only one person a year for one million years, those who made the decision to bury them will - through their infinitesimal and unrecorded impacts - be responsible for the deaths of a million people.

Perfect. (I wish you weren't AC.) It's worth quoting Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials, when he was told that it was only easy for a dictatorship to push an unwilling population towards war: "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

Without this enemy, we'd have had to invent another.

A great way to invent new threats is to torture someone until they invent a new plot to please their interrogators - that's how the 'Dirty Bomb' - useless in practice, was invented.

I suspect we'll get some equally bogus threats to instill popular fear through this new exercise.

I am starting a biodiesel co-op here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I've read Monbiot's arguments. Every few months, someone brings them up. While I greatly respect The Guardian, they insist on printing his stuff. A lot of what I so vehemently dislike about Monbiot is not necessarily what he's saying. It is possible to easily produce sound counterarguments. Soy-based biodiesel and corn-based ethanol are temporary bases for fuel. Another reader pointed out that there is great potential for making biodiesel from algae. One plant apparently made it from turkey carcases. You can make biodiesel from a huge variety of sources, including fry grease.

If biodiesel production causes food prices to spike, capitalists will find something different that does not cause this to occur. It may take longer than we wish, but it will happen.

As for land-stripping, it is well known tht most stripping has occurred to plant inefficient farms. This was happening well before the recent enthusiasm for biofuels, and it will continue. I'd love to see it stop. But I'm not going to give up biodiesel to try and stop it or even help it. My fuel comes from America, not Saudi Arabia, Brazil, or even Canada, as does a great deal of our oil.

The last thing I have to say about Monbiot, the most insulting, doubtlessly the one thing that will make people say "you lose this argument because you got personal, hell, you might as well just get it over with and violate Godwin's Law," is about his style of presentation. George Monbiot makes himself out being omniscient, and if only the world would listen to him, all would be well and people would live in peace. I had enough of that sort of person when I lived in Madison, Wisconsin. They're everywhere there. It is, IMNSHO, this sort of person that enrages the reactionaries among us like no other, the ones who think that they know better than everyone else how to live, function, even breathe.

Okay, let's put ALL biofuels on hold for five years. With that sweeping generalization, all work on it comes to an crashing end for five years. In April 2012, we will resume. And know what? We'll be right where we left off, only to find that we're five years behind, as we finally had the wisdom to listen to the one guy who knows better than us how to run the world. At least, we thought he was. You'd think we'd have learned by now to listen to people who claim to know better than everyone else, but our race is notorious for its memory deficiency. :::end of rant:::

Link

And Monbiot on the maker. I'm no big fan of Monbiot, but the factual base here rather goes to the credibility of the film maker. He has, as we say over here, "form"...

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2000/03/16/modifie d-truth/

Hmm, something happened to the formatting there - it should have been:

- I don't think it is going to be even remotely feasible to replace all our current fuel comsumption with biodiesel or similar. To quote Monbiot: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/01/30/another -species-of-denial/#more-1038:



What we need is to think of some radically new solutions. And it isn't even difficult either - we already know the technology: wind-, wave-, tidal-, solar power, just to mention a few. All that is needed is the political will to pursue this course. What would it take, technologically, to replace all the existing fossil and nuclear powerplants with eg. solar power? A lot, certainly, but far less than what most people imagine; it is certainly within our reach already now. But of course, there are businesses with far too much political power, who would lose out on doing this, so the US will certainly not be leading the world that way; not unless you guys give your political system a very major overhaul.

- I don't think it is going to be even remotely feasible to replace all our current fuel comsumption with biodiesel or similar. To quote Monbiot: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/01/30/another -species-of-denial/#more-1038:



What we need is to think of some radically new solutions. And it isn't even difficult either - we already know the technology: wind-, wave-, tidal-, solar power, just to mention a few. All that is needed is the political will to pursue this course. What would it take, technologically, to replace all the existing fossil and nuclear powerplants with eg. solar power? A lot, certainly, but far less than what most people imagine; it is certainly within our reach already now. But of course, there are businesses with far too much political power, who would lose out on doing this, so the US will certainly not be leading the world that way; not unless you guys give your political system a very major overhaul.

One of the leading campaigners in this area is George Monbiot, he has thought about how industrialised countries can make a 90% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.

In a recent article entitled Here's the Plan he set out 10 steps to achieve this while changing our every day life as little as possible.

Instead of carbon tax he suggests:

...set a personal carbon ration. Every citizen is given a free annual quota of carbon dioxide. He spends it by buying gas and electricity, petrol and train and plane tickets. If he runs out, he must buy the rest from someone who has used less than his quota(2). This accounts for about 40% of the carbon dioxide we produce. The rest is auctioned off to companies. It's a simpler and fairer approach than either green taxation or the Emissions Trading Scheme, and it also provides people with a powerful incentive to demand low-carbon technologies. Timescale: a full scheme in place by January 2009.

This scheme would not penalise the poor as carbon taxes might because they would be able to sell off their surplus rations.

One of the leading campaigners in this area is George Monbiot, he has thought about how industrialised countries can make a 90% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.

In a recent article entitled Here's the Plan he set out 10 steps to achieve this while changing our every day life as little as possible.

Instead of carbon tax he suggests:

...set a personal carbon ration. Every citizen is given a free annual quota of carbon dioxide. He spends it by buying gas and electricity, petrol and train and plane tickets. If he runs out, he must buy the rest from someone who has used less than his quota(2). This accounts for about 40% of the carbon dioxide we produce. The rest is auctioned off to companies. It's a simpler and fairer approach than either green taxation or the Emissions Trading Scheme, and it also provides people with a powerful incentive to demand low-carbon technologies. Timescale: a full scheme in place by January 2009.

This scheme would not penalise the poor as carbon taxes might because they would be able to sell off their surplus rations.

George Monbiot always posts his stories in the Guardian to his website and they are always cross-referenced against various sources there (where it's feasable to do). Say what you like about him but Monbiot knows what he's doing and has covered a lot of very interesting stories - the usually turn out to be backed up with substance.

Sensationalist? Yes. Smart? Fuck yes. A "moonbat"? Dumb names tell you more about the people using them than anything else.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/09/19/the-smo ke-behind-the-deniers-fire-3/

The thing is... all the time I find someone that says "ho, climate change is not that bad, yada yada" they always refer to some thing the nefew of the aunt of the mother-in-law read somewhere.
And its good (even if it feels bad) to know that people know that a misinformation war is going on, we are lobbyed to believe we shouldnt do nothing about it!

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/09/19/the-smo ke-behind-the-deniers-fire-3/

This idea is only a suggestion which has not been researched much, and there are a number of reasons why it is unlikely to be a solution. See here for a short investigation and rebuttal: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/08/29/no-quic k-fix/#more-1004

some high(low)lights:

- high carbon dioxide levels create an acidic sea destroying ecosystems
- sulphate aerosols are probably responsible for the Saharan drought which killed hundreds of thousands of people
- the enormous cost of the exercise in itself

etc.

>I'm much more interested in how you came up
>with a food crisis. North and South America
>already produce way more food than is necessary

What about if people start using arable land to grow corn/rapeseed in order to fuel vehicles with bio-diesel?

Such a policy, which many enviromental campaigners could support, is likely to have very profound effects on land-use and food-supply. George Monbiot has written an interesting article on the topic with some numbers:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-t han-fossil-fuel/

I'm going to need to see data on that.
here
more here
One nice quote:
Every day sometimes several times a day the protesters were stopped and searched under section 44.(12) The police, according to a parliamentary answer, used the act 995 times, though they knew that no one at the camp was a terrorist.
Another:
Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely (Lord Acton, a historian)

Read George Monbiot Protesters are Criminals published in "The Guardian"

I'm also waiting for the flood of global warming denial posts from people who have managed to see what all those foolish climatologists have missed - it would mean SUVs are a bad thing so cannot possible be true.

We have a similarly inspired great thinker here in Britain by the name of David Bellamy. He was a sort cuddly beardy bloke who used be on tv a lot in the 70s and 80s hiding in bushes and getting excited about birds.

Up until last year he was a well respected environmentalist having set up half a dozen environmental organisations and been invited to the board of half a dozen others. But he has a weakness.

He likes birds.

A lot.

His logic when it comes to global warming seems to be.

Global warming = must use less fossil fuel
less fossil fuel = more renewable energy
more renewable energy = more wind farms
more wind farms = more birds killed by turbines
dead birds = bad thing

Therefore global warming does not exist. QED.

So figuring that his credentials as a ornithologist made him fully qualified to dismiss any arguments put forward to the contrary by people who'd merely studied climatology he wrote piece denying global warming for the Daily Mail that was based on a load of psuedo science he'd found on random web sites.

George Monbiot did quite a nice job of demolishing him here :-

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/05/10/junk-sc ience/

If you manage to find a copy of the debate that Channel 4 news ran between George and David it's well worth seeing.

Wind farms, while necessary, are a classic example of what environmentalists call an "end of the pipe solution." Instead of tackling the problem - our massive demand for energy - at source, they provide less damaging means of accommodating it. Or part of it.

The Whinash project, by replacing energy generation from power stations burning fossil fuel, will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 178,000 tonnes per year.

This is impressive, until you discover that a single jumbo jet, flying from London to Miami and back every day, releases the climate change equivalent of 520,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

One daily connection between Britain and Florida costs three giant wind farms.

Wind farms, while necessary, are a classic example of what environmentalists call an "end of the pipe solution." Instead of tackling the problem - our massive demand for energy - at source, they provide less damaging means of accommodating it. Or part of it.

The Whinash project, by replacing energy generation from power stations burning fossil fuel, will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 178,000 tonnes per year.

This is impressive, until you discover that a single jumbo jet, flying from London to Miami and back every day, releases the climate change equivalent of 520,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

One daily connection between Britain and Florida costs three giant wind farms.

We are not poor due to our stupidity. We are poor by design. Just a 100 years ago, we were the richest nation on earth.

No you weren't.

Well here's some food for thought:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2003/10/21/the-fli ght-to-india/

There's a very illustrative example of what can happen in the following article

Here he mentions the Iraqi war may have had more to do with the US dollar than WMDs or Human rights, and here's another look at falling oil supplies.

Here he mentions the Iraqi war may have had more to do with the US dollar than WMDs or Human rights, and here's another look at falling oil supplies.

Here he mentions the Iraqi war may have had more to do with the US dollar than WMDs or Human rights, and here's another look at falling oil supplies.

One of the early airplane evangelists hanged himself after seeing the destruction it caused in war.

That may be so, but the Wright brothers invented the plane for the specific purpose of aerial bombing.

The Flight to India

The jobs Britain stole from the Asian subcontinent 300 years ago are now returning. Is this a good thing or a bad one?

If you live in a rich nation in the English-speaking world, and most of your work involves a computer or a telephone, don't expect to have a job in five years' time. Almost every large company which relies upon remote transactions is starting to dump its workers and hire a cheaper labour force overseas. All those concerned about economic justice and the distribution of wealth at home should despair. All those concerned about global justice and the distribution of wealth around the world should rejoice. As we are, by and large, the same people, we have a problem.

Britain's industrialisation was secured by destroying the manufacturing capacity of India. In 1699, the British government banned the import of woollen cloth from Ireland, and in 1700 the import of cotton cloth (or calico) from India.1 Both products were forbidden because they were superior to our own. As the industrial revolution was built on the textiles industry, we could not have achieved our global economic dominance if we had let them in. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, India was forced to supply raw materials to Britain's manufacturers, but forbidden to produce competing finished products.2 We are rich because the Indians are poor.

Now the jobs we stole 300 years ago are returning to India. Last week the Guardian revealed that the National Rail Enquiries service is likely to move to Bangalore, in south-west India. Two days later, the HSBC bank announced that it is cutting 4000 customer service jobs in Britain, and shifting them to Asia. BT, British Airways, Lloyds TSB, Prudential, Standard Chartered, Norwich Union, BUPA, Reuters, Abbey National and Powergen have already begun to move their call centres to India. The British workers at the end of the line are approaching the end of the line.

There is a profound historical irony here. Indian workers can outcompete British workers today because Britain smashed their ability to compete in the past. Having destroyed India's own industries, the East India Company and the colonial authorities obliged its people to speak our language, adopt our working practices and surrender their labour to multinational corporations. Workers in call centres in Germany and Holland are less vulnerable than ours, as Germany and Holland were less successful colonists, with the result that fewer people in the poor world now speak their languages.

The impact on British workers will be devastating. Service jobs of the kind now being exported were supposed to make up for the loss of employment in the manufacturing industries which disappeared overseas in the 1980s and 1990s. The government handed out grants for cybersweatshops in places whose industrial workforce had been crushed by the closure of mines, shipyards and steelworks. But the companies running the call centres appear to have been testing their systems at government expense before exporting them somewhere cheaper.

It is not hard to see why almost all of them have chosen India. The wages of workers in the service and technology industries there are roughly one tenth of those of workers in the same sectors over here. Standards of education are high, and almost all educated Indians speak English. While British workers will take call centre jobs only when they have no choice, Indian workers see them as glamorous.3 One technical support company in Bangalore recently advertised 800 jobs. It received 87,000 applications.4 British call centres moving to India can choose the most charming, patient, biddable, intelligent workers the labour market has to offer.

There is nothing new about multinational corporations forcing workers in distant parts of the world to undercut each o

Probably because when the British Empire was around, it forbade our colonies from producing competing finished products in order to protect our national industries.

Despite the fact that, as a computer scientist, offshore outsourcing affects me directly, I'm pleased that the developing world is getting a slice of the wealth pie. Sadly, I fully expect that it won't last for long before their jobs are outsourced to somewhere cheaper again. If the folks in the developing world do manage to continue to build their power, influence and wealth, I just hope they'll be less exploitative of us then were were (and are) of them.

--

-FL

"The conflict will not be the end. We will not walk away, as the outside world has done so many times before." -- Tony Blair, on Afghanistan

A laugh or two at some American excess is one thing, but to portray America as malign is just the opposite of reality.

Firstly, before I start, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying America is evil or anything. But I'd like to make a few points, America is hardly saintly either:

• Guilty of hypocrisy over Iraq? Little known fact is that despite all the bitching from Washington about the lack of inspectors in Iraq etc, they don't allow UN inspectors into some American sites either - and we KNOW that America has weapons of mass destruction, so shouldn't they be monitored too?

• Since Bush came to power, America has ripped up more international treaties and conventions, and ignored more UN conventions than the rest of the world combined in the last 20 years. Examples: kyoto is the biggie of course, but america also attempted to dismember many other international bodies

• America is steadily isolating every single ally it has. Even the British government is seriously split on the issue. It apparently refuses to listen to anybody except big business, and has firsthand told the world that it will not do anything for the environment if that might mean harm comes to the American economy. They acknowledge the science and even agree with most of it (the rest of the world long ago agreed with all of it, but hey) - yet they still refuse to take action.

• Bush preaches free trade as the means of saving the world. Yet he has imposed massive trade barriers to protect inefficient American industries.

• The administration is prepared to invade another country pretty much without evidence, and without any political backing from anybody else at all. If the US can invade Iraq because Bush doesn't like Hussein, why is Iraq invading Kuwait bad?

Evil? No. But where do you draw the line between deliberate damage through rampant self interest and evil anyway?

Sorry, but had to get that off my chest. Politics is important, games or no. I'm not saying other countries are perfect either, far from it.

Finally, political views are frequently expressed through comedy as well. Is that infantile?

Disclaimer: I don't live in the US, so I've got a little safe distance from many of these US issues (for now: Australia looks set to become a suburb of the US any day now...).

Anyway, I think the issue with FBI surveillance is not so much that we're concerned about Them spying on Us, and finding out all of Our secrets: after all, if that were the only problem, then some of you would be quite right, and we needn't worry if we're not doing anything wrong.

No, the worry is more about who's monitoring and what they're doing with it. Can the watchers, given this degree of access to our private communications, *really* be trusted to be as dispassionate and unbiased as we hope?

The problem with *any* abrogation of authority, surveillance, administrative or enforcement powers is that they then have the ability to use if for their purposes. Okay, rooting out terrorists is a worthy aim, but can we trust that they'll stick to that? Do we know that *Their* definition of "terrorist" matches *Ours*?

My definition of terrorist includes stuff like "blowing up as many people as possible". How do I know that theirs *doesn't* include stuff like "belongs to a subversive organisation like Amnesty International"?

Check this article on the work of the NSA during the cold war. I'm tempted to buy the book, depressing as it may be, but I'm not sure how much of it hasn't already been covered in the selection of Chomsky books on my shelves. The NSA *may* have been protecting what they thought of as American freedoms, but if those schemes were enacted, how many Americans (and others) would have suffered? Is *that* justifiable?

And as for the "who's a terrorist" question, well, how about the Reclaim the Streets crowd? How about Women in Black, recent nominees for a Nobel Peace Prize? When the definition of "terrorist" stretches that far, how many of us are innocent?

Given that there are at least 2 countries right now who are using the "War on Terrorism" excuse to launch a greater offensive against their enemies, I'm not overly confident that this surveillance would be used *solely* to find and bring to justice those guilty of the Spetember 11th bombing. Anyone criticising current US government policy could be considered a suspected terrorist. Anyone protesting the indefinite detention of material witnesses could be considered a terrorist. What then? Who's made any safer by this, and who suffers?