Ecology, Socialism and Capitalism

An interview between Chris Williams and David Barsamian.

Chris Williams (left) is a long-time environmental activist based in New York City. He is professor of physics and chemistry at Pace University and chair of the science department at Packer Collegiate Institute. Williams is also a frequent contributor to the International Socialist Review (ISR), and The Indypendent, an online newspaper that looks at news and culture through a critical lens, exploring how systems of power—economic, political and social—affects the lives of people locally and globally.

Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis is Williams’ first book.

David Barsamian is the founder and director of Alternative Radio, an independent award-winning weekly series based in Boulder, Colorado. He has been working in radio since 1978 where he has interviewed the likes of Angela Davis, Ralph Nader, Vandana Shiva, and Carlos Fuentes. The one-hour program is broadcast on public radio stations in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries. His publications include Targeting Iran, What We Say Goes with Noam Chomsky, Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics with Howard Zinn, Imperial Ambitions with Noam Chomsky, and Speaking of Empire & Resistance with Tariq Ali. His earlier books include The Checkbook & the Cruise Missile with Arundhati Roy, Propaganda and the Public Mind with Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire, and The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting.


The Institute for Alternative Journalism named him one of its “Top Ten Media Heroes.” Barsamian lectures throughout the U.S. on foreign policy, the media, propaganda, and corporate power. In 2003 he received the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism and the Democracy Media Award, and in 2006, the Rocky Mountain Peace & Justice Center Award. Barsamian interviewed Andrew Bacevich for Lannan’s Readings & Conversations in 2010.

This video first published on http://www.lannan.org/

Clean Energy Future Can Happen

A new report by The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) shows that almost all of our energy needs could be met without recourse to nuclear power, by tapping renewable power resources, developing carbon capture techniques and sharing energy across Europe.

Renewable sources of energy could meet between 60-90% of the UK’s electricity demand by 2030. That’s a key finding of our new Positive Energy report, widely welcomed by businesses, individuals and organisations as a valuable contribution to the energy debate. More here

The report is further covered in The Guardian newspaper….

"This report is inspiring, but also entirely realistic. It shows that a clean, renewable energy future really is within our grasp," said David Nussbaum, chief executive of WWF-UK. "Failure to commit to a high-renewables future would leave us facing the prospect of dangerous levels of climate change and high energy prices." More here

Nuclear Power Plant Crisis in Japan

If it wasn’t bad enough for the people of north eastern Japan, that the strongest earthquake in the country’s history, and the second strongest recorded anywhere in the world, followed by a devastating ten metre high tsunami, with probably thousands killed, now two of the country’s nuclear power plants have exploded. Reports are coming in that a third reactor has over-heated and exploded adding to radiation emissions that have led to an exclusion zone being created, and an evacuation of the population in a 20 kilometre radius of the power plants.

Whether a 20 kilometre exclusion zone is large enough has to be called into question, as the US navy has reported detecting low level radiation 160 kilometres off shore from these nuclear installations. Unfortunately, governments and nuclear authorities do not always divulge the full truth about nuclear leaks, with the old USSR supressing accurate information for years about radiation emissions from their nuclear plants, and I remember reading in Tony Benn’s diaries, that when he was Energy minister in the 1970’s, he was informed, by ironically, a Japanese diplomat, that there had been a leak at Britain’s Windscale (now renamed Sellafield) nuclear plant, when he had received no such information in the UK.

Why nuclear power plants were built so close to seismic fault lines as they have been in Japan, defies all sense, and I have read in the British press that some Japanese scientists’ have been warning the authorities about this for years. Japan has been very enthusiastic about nuclear power, and has a plan to increase their capability from a third to a half, of electricity generation over the next few years. But, at what risk?

The whole nuclear power debate in the UK has gone rather quiet lately, with the Lib Dems doing one of their numerous U turns, and now backing the ConDem government’s stance on increasing nuclear power capability here. The last Labour government, also did a volte face and started looking more favourably on the nuclear industry, once it dawned on them that reducing carbon emissions, and so slowing climate change, would be extremely difficult without recourse to nuclear power.

Even some greens like James Lovelock and George Monbiot have sided with nuclear in an effort to halt climate change, and some in the English Green party itself have become advocates of this approach. But nuclear is not carbon free and stocks of uranium, needed to power these plants, is estimated to be fairly low, whilst non uranium based nuclear power is at least fifty years away, if indeed it will ever become feasible.

This debate needs to be reopened, and potential risks need to be reassessed, as well as costs and the disposal of waste. Although the UK is not particularly susceptible to earthquakes, these nuclear installations are always built on the coast, and if the oceans rise as a result of climate change, which seems to be highly likely, the same sort of problems experienced in Japan as a result of the tsunami, could be coming to a town near you.

Lib Dem U-Turn on Nuclear Power

This video of Chris Huhne, Lib Dem MP and ConDem Coalition Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, outlines the Lib Dem policy on nuclear power BEFORE this year’s general election.

He now supports nuclear power, along with the rest of the coalition government, and this video has been removed from the Lib Dem’s website. But you can still see it here on this blog, in all its breathtaking duplicity.

How can you trust whatever the Lib Dems say in future?