Russia is on fire. There are more than 800 wildfires burning in russia. 52 people have died. More than 3,500 people vsh burned out of their homes. It's the deadliest spat of wildfires Russia has seen in 40 years. More than 160,000 firefighters have been called up to fight them. Right now the air in Moscow is so thick with smoke, it's too dangerous for anybody to go outside. If that's not reason enough to put a mask on, officials are saying they're now worried that forests near the red hot nuclear wasteland of Chernobyl may burn. They say that the trees near Chernobyl that have soaked up nuclear contaminants for the past 40 -- excuse me, 20 years, those forests could, if they burn, release those radioactive contaminants back into the air. Russia is also reportedly moving some nuclear weapons sites out of the way of the raging out of control inferno. But remember, nukes are safe now.
Yup. One of the most basic flaws in the "nukes are safe now" myth is that it totally ignores how the projected future of global warming will make the world considerably more chaotic and less safe overall, including at least two no-brainer problems: fire and water. The fire problem is richly illustrated by what's going on in Russia right now--a scenario that will only become increasingly common as global warming intensifies. The water problem is that nukes need water in order to function safely--and global warming makes the secure availability of water increasingly problematic.
For more on the Russian fires & heat wave, Darksyde at Dkos suggests you go here, and I agree. Among other things, it's got this killer map:
Figure 3. Fire danger in Russia for August 5, 2010. Extreme fire danger (Category 5, red colors) was seen over much of the European portion of Russia. Image credit: Hydrometcentre, Russia.
For perspective, Darksyde notes:
To put this in rough perspective -- and note this is not absolutely precise, it's purely ballpark to give you some feel for what the Russian people are enduring -- if this heat wave was hitting North America, it would be near 100°F in Fairbanks, Alaska. Most of Canada would be baking at 100° or higher, the northeast, from Maine to the Great Lakes region would be hitting upwards of 105° everyday, even the nightly low in the massive urban heat islands of New York and Chicago would be over 90°! The midwest grain belt and parts of the Pacific Northwest would not see a drop of rain for two months and pushing as high as 110° in places. The desert southwest, even some of the higher elevations of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas, would be as uninhabitable as Death Valley or the Sahara.
But, hey! It snowed last winter! In Washington, DC! So global warming can't be real.
President Obama has proposed a whopping $54 billion in loan guarantees for the construction of new nuclear power plants.
What does that mean? If the costly new nuclear plants aren't finished, then taxpayers cover the huge financial loss.
If they are built, then we're stuck with power plants that generate overpriced electricity and create deadly radioactive waste that will remain toxic for thousands of years.
Either way, the nuclear industry wins, and we lose.
Nuclear power creates deadly radioactive waste, from the mining process onwards. It's got a scary history: think Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
Just recently, a nuclear plant in Vermont was ordered shut down after radioactive tritium, which is linked to cancer, leaked from the plant into local water supplies.
Nuclear power is so financially risky that even Wall Street won't bet on it. It's a public health and financial disaster waiting to happen.
Instead, our government should promote energy efficiency and a decentralized power system based on safe, clean, renewable energy.
This week brought disappointing news that Asian-Pacifie world leaders--including President Obama--do not foresee a climate change treaty being signed in Copenhagen next month. This set-back comes on top of a legislative process in Congress that shares many of the shortcomings of the health care reform legislative process. The two are obviously related, as both represent major needed changes in direction that a deeply opposed by entrenched special interests with enormous economic and political clout.
In my previous diary, "Finding the keys," I argued that what we need to be about is building progressive hegemonic power, and that expecting to win pristine major victories right away--such as single-payer health care--was, unfortunately, not only unrealistic (I'm all for demanding the impossible), but also very likely to misdirect us in terms of long-term strategic thinking. The same thing applies to the struggle to combat global warming.
It's not that I don't want the best legislation possible--I wrote several diaries promoting the work of 350.org, which I think is utterly invaluable. But we have to seriously grasp the extent of what we're up against and the extent of the deficits we have in order to be effective over the long haul. 350.org is particularly valuable because it's about shifting the whole framework of debate, and that's arguably the most important thing we need to do. But we also need to connect the shifting framework to everything within the macro-framework as well.
Toward that end, I want to step back from the disappointing big news for a moment to focus on three different story fronts that merit attention in order to reflect on the broader strategic struggle to bring rational decisionmaking to the fore, and put special interest propaganda campaigns in their place. These three fronts are denialism (which involves two different stories), nuclear (concerning a study that undermines claims about the role it can play) and coal (concerning a study that shows its true cost makes it uneconomical even for coal-producing regions). None of these stories is closely coupled with the intricacies of ongoing Congressional action, all are intimately related to the basic conditions in which those intricacies play out.
I've said a few times in comments recently that I'm pretty optimistic, from my antiwar and similar perspective, on the Iran and sanctions issue. The reasons are various, but centered on the analysis of India career diplomat M K Bhadrakumar, who also believes the sanctions effort will fail. More on those ideas a couple paragraphs down.
As for my perspective, first of all, not that it's stopped the U.S. before but there is pretty much zero justification for U.S. saber-rattling, as indicated by the mundane headlines (i.e., Iran vows to stick with low-level nuclear enrichment) only two days after the three imperials (Obama, Sarkozy, Brown) news conference about a 'secret' low-grade nuclear 'facility' that was neither secret nor a facility, since it won't be a functioning one till construction ends 18 months from now. This is weak soup for crippling sanctions, naval blockades, and worse. Today, even weaker stuff, 'IRAN TESTS (short-range) MISSILES! Oh my gawd y-a-w-n, weak stuff for scaring us up and dealing death.
Secondly, and Bhadrakumar's analysis is critical here, despite Beltway pundits fishing for wish fulfillment, both China (emphatically) and Russia oppose sanctions on Iran. And this time the U.S. needs international cover, imho, or its 'X must prove it doesn't have WMD' campaign (Hillary Clinton) won't have the outcome (severe sanctions and an attack on Iran's nuclear power facilities) desired by the U.S. & Israeli military-industrial complexes.
One of my biggest frustrations with Democratic leaders is their refusal to embrace the energy policy Al Gore outlined this summer, which could "end our reliance on carbon-based fuels" in the next decade.
Barack Obama has offered an energy policy that's a big improvement on what George Bush has done. Unfortunately, Obama still supports more investment in so-called "clean coal" and has not ruled out expanding nuclear power.
On the plus side, Obama also calls for generating 10 percent of our country's electricity from renewable sources by 2012--which sounds great until you learn that the U.S. has already surpassed that goal.
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