The unusually hot summers in Europe over the last three decades are further evidence that human activities are largely responsible for recent global warming, according to new research.

The scientists say they have found no 30-year periods in the last 2,000 years that have exceeded the mean average European summer temperature of the years from 1986 to 2015.

The new research says that already most of Europe has experienced strong summer warming in the past few decades, with severe heatwaves in 2003, as well as in 2010 and in 2015.

This new data adds to the fears expressed by scientists this week that parts of the Mediterranean and Arctic regions will heat up by 3.4C and 6C respectively above pre-industrial levels.

Sonia Seneviratne, head of the land-climate dynamics group at Switzerland’s Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science (ETH Zurich), and colleagues reported in Nature on the meaning of a 2C global average warming. She says:

“We even see starkly different rates of extreme warming over land when global average temperatures reach just 1.5C, which is the limit to the rate of warming agreed to at the Paris climate talks. At 1.5C, we would still see temperature extremes in the Arctic rise by 4.4C, and a 2.2C warming of extremes around the Mediterranean basin.”

Historical evidence

According to the new report, published in Environmental Research Letters “reconstructions indicate that the mean 20th century European summer temperature was not significantly different from some earlier centuries, including the 1st, 2nd, 8th and 10th centuries CE …

“Recent summers, however, have been unusually warm in the context of the last two millennia and there are no 30 year periods in either reconstruction that exceed the mean average European summer temperature of the last three decades (1986-2015 CE).”

The 45 scientists, from 13 countries, say their research now puts the current warmth in the context of the last 2,100 years, using tree-ring information and historical documentary evidence. Their interdisciplinary study involved the collaboration of researchers from Past Global Changes (PAGES), a core project of the global sustainability science programme, Future Earth.

During Roman times, up until the 3rd century, there were warm summers, followed by generally cooler conditions from the 4th to the 7th centuries. A generally warm medieval period was followed by a mostly cold Little Ice Age from the 14th to the 19th centuries.

The scientists say the pronounced warming early in the 20th century and in recent decades is well represented by the tree-ring data and historical evidence on which their reconstruction is based.

Time to prepare for future extreme climate events

They also say the evidence suggests that past natural changes in summer temperature are greater than previously thought, suggesting that climate models may underestimate the full range of future extreme events, including heatwaves.

This past variability has been associated with large volcanic eruptions and changes in the amount of energy received from the sun.

The scientists say their finding that temperatures over the last 30 years lie outside the range of these natural variations supports the conclusion reached by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that recent warming is mainly caused by human activity.

“We now have a detailed picture of how summer temperatures have changed over Europe for more than 2,000 years and we can use that to test the climate models that are used to predict the impacts of future global warming“, says the co-ordinator of the study, Professor Jürg Luterbacher, director of the department of geography at the Justus Liebig University of Giessen, Germany.

Professor Luterbacher co-authored a 2014 report titled ‘The year-long unprecedented European heat and drought of 1540 – a worst case‘, published in Climate Change. The report drew on more than 300 first-hand documentary weather report sources.

He and his colleagues wrote then that Europe was affected in 1540 by “an unprecedented 11-month-long megadrought … We found that an event of this severity cannot be simulated by state-of-the-art climate models.”

They concluded: “Given the large spatial extent, the long duration and the intensity of the 1540 heat and drought, the return of such an event in the course of intensified global warming involves staggering losses.”

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

For billions of years, life on Earth remained relatively simple. Only single-celled organisms that could live with little or no oxygen were able to survive in the seas.

Eventually, the rise of oxygen led to a proliferation of diverse, multicellular life. However the oceans have not remained unchanged since that chemical and biological revolution.

At several times in geological history, they have partially reverted back to their original bacterially-dominated, oxygen-free state – and they could do so again.

Today rising CO₂ levels are making the oceans warmer and more acidic. Deforestation and intensive farming are causing soils and nutrients to be flushed into the sea.

And increasingly, the oceans are being stripped of oxygen, leaving large ‘dead zones‘ in the Gulf of Mexico, the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic off West Africa.

These dead zones, smaller-scale revivals of the primeval oceans that existed before complex life, appear to be caused by poor land management, such as fertilisers draining from farms into the sea. It is a process that could be exacerbated by climate change – as has happened in the past.

How oceans become ‘dead’

Oceans lose their oxygen when animals and bacteria consume it faster than it can be replenished. This usually comes about in stagnant or algae-rich waters. In severe cases, all oxygen can be consumed rendering the waters ‘anoxic’ and inhospitable to animal life.

This happens today in isolated fjords and basins. And it has happened on a larger scale throughout Earth’s history, especially during the Cretaceous, towards the end of the dinosaur era 145-66m years ago. Then, large parts of the ancient oceans became anoxic, allowing vast amounts of organic matter to escape degradation, and in many cases forming deposits of oil and gas.

We can examine the extent of anoxia by looking for a certain type of ‘green sulfur bacteria‘ which require both sunlight and oxygen-depleted waters in order to conduct their rather exotic form of photosynthesis. Evidence of their presence can be found in ancient rocks – molecular proof that anoxia once extended from the seafloor almost all the way to the ocean’s surface.

These oceans thrived with microbial life. But animals need oxygen, and vast portions of these ancient oceans would have become ‘dead’ to them.

Life in the deep sea

Unlike almost every other ecosystem on our planet, the deep sea is bereft of light and plants. Animals down there largely live off marine snow, the scraps of organic matter that somehow escape from the surface world and sink to the twilight realm below. In this energy-starved world, creatures live solitary lives in emptiness, darkness and mystery.

And yet life is there. Krill thrive on the slowly-sinking snow. Sperm whales dive deep to consume the krill and emerge with scars from giant squid. And when a whale dies and its carcass plummets to the seafloor, it is set upon by sharks and fish who emerge from the darkness for the unexpected feast.

Within days the carcass is stripped to the bones – but even then, massive colonies of tube worms spring to life. All of these animals, the fish, whales and worms, depend on oxygen. Our oxygen-rich seas are an incredible contrast to the North Atlantic during some anoxic events.

Then, plesiosaurs (see photo, above right) and ichthyosaurs, feeding on magnificent ammonites, would have been confined to the sunlit, oxygen-rich realm near the surface, their maximum depth of descent marked by a layer of pink and then green water, pigmented by bacteria.

And below it, where the deeper waters were anoxic, only single-celled organisms adapted to life without oxygen were able to survive.

Could this happen again?

Conventional wisdom has been that such extreme anoxia in the future is unlikely, that Cretaceous ‘dead zones’ were a consequence of a markedly different geography. The ancient Atlantic Ocean was smaller and more restricted, lending itself to these extreme conditions.

This is a bit like the modern Black Sea, a restricted basin where fresh river water sits stably above salty and dense marine deep water. But the Black Sea doesn’t quite match up with what we know about ancient anoxic oceans.

For a start, if driven solely by geographical shape, why were the oceans not anoxic as the norm rather than only at certain times? Sometimes much larger oceans became dead zones, or the anoxia was restricted to coastal areas. And although ocean circulation was slower during warm climates, it did not stop – unlike in the Black Sea.

This suggests geography was important but not exclusively so. Algal blooms are a more likely trigger. These algae would have flourished after dramatic increases in nutrients caused by erosion and chemical weathering, driven by higher carbon dioxide concentrations, global warming and/or changes in the hydrological cycle – all of which we now know occurred prior to several anoxic events.

It is likely that today’s coastal dead zones are due not to climate change but to our excessive use of fertilisers. And it is unlikely that our future will revisit the widespread ocean anoxia of the past.

But the lessons of the past do suggest global warming could exacerbate the impacts of our poor land management, adding yet another pressure to already stressed ecosystems.

Richard Pancost is Professor of Biogeochemistry and Director of the Cabot Institute, University of Bristol.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

For billions of years, life on Earth remained relatively simple. Only single-celled organisms that could live with little or no oxygen were able to survive in the seas.

Eventually, the rise of oxygen led to a proliferation of diverse, multicellular life. However the oceans have not remained unchanged since that chemical and biological revolution.

At several times in geological history, they have partially reverted back to their original bacterially-dominated, oxygen-free state – and they could do so again.

Today rising CO₂ levels are making the oceans warmer and more acidic. Deforestation and intensive farming are causing soils and nutrients to be flushed into the sea.

And increasingly, the oceans are being stripped of oxygen, leaving large ‘dead zones‘ in the Gulf of Mexico, the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic off West Africa.

These dead zones, smaller-scale revivals of the primeval oceans that existed before complex life, appear to be caused by poor land management, such as fertilisers draining from farms into the sea. It is a process that could be exacerbated by climate change – as has happened in the past.

How oceans become ‘dead’

Oceans lose their oxygen when animals and bacteria consume it faster than it can be replenished. This usually comes about in stagnant or algae-rich waters. In severe cases, all oxygen can be consumed rendering the waters ‘anoxic’ and inhospitable to animal life.

This happens today in isolated fjords and basins. And it has happened on a larger scale throughout Earth’s history, especially during the Cretaceous, towards the end of the dinosaur era 145-66m years ago. Then, large parts of the ancient oceans became anoxic, allowing vast amounts of organic matter to escape degradation, and in many cases forming deposits of oil and gas.

We can examine the extent of anoxia by looking for a certain type of ‘green sulfur bacteria‘ which require both sunlight and oxygen-depleted waters in order to conduct their rather exotic form of photosynthesis. Evidence of their presence can be found in ancient rocks – molecular proof that anoxia once extended from the seafloor almost all the way to the ocean’s surface.

These oceans thrived with microbial life. But animals need oxygen, and vast portions of these ancient oceans would have become ‘dead’ to them.

Life in the deep sea

Unlike almost every other ecosystem on our planet, the deep sea is bereft of light and plants. Animals down there largely live off marine snow, the scraps of organic matter that somehow escape from the surface world and sink to the twilight realm below. In this energy-starved world, creatures live solitary lives in emptiness, darkness and mystery.

And yet life is there. Krill thrive on the slowly-sinking snow. Sperm whales dive deep to consume the krill and emerge with scars from giant squid. And when a whale dies and its carcass plummets to the seafloor, it is set upon by sharks and fish who emerge from the darkness for the unexpected feast.

Within days the carcass is stripped to the bones – but even then, massive colonies of tube worms spring to life. All of these animals, the fish, whales and worms, depend on oxygen. Our oxygen-rich seas are an incredible contrast to the North Atlantic during some anoxic events.

Then, plesiosaurs (see photo, above right) and ichthyosaurs, feeding on magnificent ammonites, would have been confined to the sunlit, oxygen-rich realm near the surface, their maximum depth of descent marked by a layer of pink and then green water, pigmented by bacteria.

And below it, where the deeper waters were anoxic, only single-celled organisms adapted to life without oxygen were able to survive.

Could this happen again?

Conventional wisdom has been that such extreme anoxia in the future is unlikely, that Cretaceous ‘dead zones’ were a consequence of a markedly different geography. The ancient Atlantic Ocean was smaller and more restricted, lending itself to these extreme conditions.

This is a bit like the modern Black Sea, a restricted basin where fresh river water sits stably above salty and dense marine deep water. But the Black Sea doesn’t quite match up with what we know about ancient anoxic oceans.

For a start, if driven solely by geographical shape, why were the oceans not anoxic as the norm rather than only at certain times? Sometimes much larger oceans became dead zones, or the anoxia was restricted to coastal areas. And although ocean circulation was slower during warm climates, it did not stop – unlike in the Black Sea.

This suggests geography was important but not exclusively so. Algal blooms are a more likely trigger. These algae would have flourished after dramatic increases in nutrients caused by erosion and chemical weathering, driven by higher carbon dioxide concentrations, global warming and/or changes in the hydrological cycle – all of which we now know occurred prior to several anoxic events.

It is likely that today’s coastal dead zones are due not to climate change but to our excessive use of fertilisers. And it is unlikely that our future will revisit the widespread ocean anoxia of the past.

But the lessons of the past do suggest global warming could exacerbate the impacts of our poor land management, adding yet another pressure to already stressed ecosystems.

Richard Pancost is Professor of Biogeochemistry and Director of the Cabot Institute, University of Bristol.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The College of Real Farming and Food Culture (CRFFC) aims to kick-start the Agrarian Renaissance – a complete rethink and recasting of farming and cooking and all that goes with them. Since farming and cooking sit right at the heart of all the world’s affairs, this in turn requires a complete rethink of absolutely everything, from growing beans and feeding cows to the philosophy of science, to economics, politics and moral philosophy, and into the depths of metaphysics.

Then, or at the same time, the ideas must be translated into action. In effect, we need to start the world all over again – not through step-by-step reform of the status quo, because that won’t get us where we need to be; or by revolution, a head-on fight with the present powers-that-be, because nobody wants that, and the outcome of revolution is far too uncertain; but by creating the kind of world we want to see, in situ, and allowing the present methods and the institutions that are serving the world so badly to wither on the vine. Hence ‘Renaissance’. But the Agrarian Renaissance must not be a top-down affair. It should be led and driven by ordinary people – a giant exercise in democracy.

The ambition may sound too vaunting, even ludicrous – yet it is all quite doable. All the ideas that are needed to transform the fortunes of the world are out there. They need further refinement – no idea is ever perfect – but all are essentially benign, many, if not most, have arisen through democratic movements, and all have been shown to work when given a chance.

Do we want to survive beyond 21st century?
Billions of people worldwide are dissatisfied with the current inequality, the injustice, and the destruction of our fellow creatures and the fabric of the Earth. Many millions are trying to farm according to the principles of what I have been calling enlightened agriculture – aka real farming – rooted in the methods of agro-ecology and designed expressly to provide good food for everyone without wrecking the rest. Others are setting up related, complementary enterprises, from charcuteries to micro-breweries and bakeries, and many thousands of NGOs, clubs and institutions are trying to help them on their way, from the Slow Food movement, which began in Italy in 1986, to the global peasant movement Via Campesina, which began in the 1990s, to consortia seeking to acquire land to be farmed along enlightened lines, including Britain’s Ecological Land Co-operative and Biodynamic Land Trust, and France’s Terre de Liens. All that is needed to turn the global frustration into a critical mass is a little more coordination – which the College will help to provide.

The rethink is certainly necessary. The UN tells us that a billion out of 7 billion people are chronically hungry, while another billion suffer from food that is not fit for purpose – the world population of diabetics is now more than twice the total population of Russia, and diet is almost the sole cause. Biologists estimate, conservatively, that half of all our fellow species are in realistic danger of imminent extinction. All wild habitats, and a large proportion of the world’s farmland, are degraded. As the coup de grâce, we face climate change. The Pope, archbishops, senior scientists and enlightened economists have warned us of late that we will be lucky to survive the 21st century in tolerable form if we go on as we are. Yet if we farmed as if we really cared about the human race and our fellow species, and adjusted our eating to match – not necessarily austere veganism, but traditional cooking – our descendants and most of our fellow species could still be here in a million years and have a far better time than most people do now.

Enlightened agriculture must be the norm
Though agriculture is a prime, and sometimes the sole, cause of all these disasters, the corporates and governments like Britain’s, and their chosen advisers who run it, simply offer more of the same: more high tech (with GMOs the latest gizmo), and the neoliberal global economy that is supposed to promote efficiency – and all, of course, with the present oligarchy still in charge. Yet it is easy to show that if only we farmed as if we really did intend to produce good food for all, without destroying the rest, and if only people reacquired the skills to turn what grows best into great cooking, as shown over centuries in Italy, France, Turkey, India, China, and so on, we could all live well. The world already produces enough for 14 billion people – twice as many as are now on Earth – and 40% more than will ever be needed, since the UN tells us that numbers will level out at around 10 billion. Yet still the powers that be advocate more production, because that is profitable. (“Pile ’em high!” as Tesco’s founder, Jack Cohen, used to say.) We need instead to acknowledge that enough is enough, and focus on quality and provenance.

But nothing of a robust kind can be achieved ad hoc. Enlightened agriculture needs to be the norm, but it can’t be if the land is owned by banks that seek only to maximise their short-term profits. All countries need to focus more than they do on self-reliance – not to be confused with total self-sufficiency – but all are pressured instead to treat all crops and livestock as commodities to be sold on the world market to the highest bidder, and to hell with the home population. The world has drifted so far to the Right that those who suggest that we should cooperate to make a better world are seen as dangerous subversives. Neoliberalism rules – a form of brute Darwinism that says that the world will be better if we all compete, ruthlessly – and those with the most power still believe Margaret Thatcher’s dictum “There is no alternative.”

A curriculum for a different worldview
So the curriculum of the College of Real Farming and Food Culture, the CRFFC, must be broad. I’ve summarised it in tiers:

The top tier – the goal – defines what we want to achieve: convivial societies in a flourishing biosphere.

The second tier – action – is the core of the whole endeavour: enlightened agriculture matched by a true food culture – people who truly appreciate good food and encourage farmers to produce it, as we may still find in rural Italy.

Tier three shows what’s needed to support real farming and good cooking: politics that is true democracy; economic democracy; and law that is truly just. Britain’s most recent governments, from both big parties, have sent young men and women to war in the name of democracy, but none has been truly democratic. Economic democracy is neither far Right nor far Left, but embraces the mixed economy. Traditionally, this meant public and private ownership side by side, but now, as Martin Large discusses in his book Common Wealth, we need a tripartite mix, with private, public and – perhaps most of all – community ownership. All should be conceived as social enterprises, intended to pay their way but designed primarily for the general good of humanity and/or the biosphere. The final strut, the law, needs constant reform. It needs above all to be just, and often it is not.

But we will not install the kind of organisation we need unless we really want to – which means we need to address the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. This, as I see things, has four major components. Science aspires to tell us how the material universe works and what is physically possible. Moral philosophy seeks to define what is good – not mere cost-effectiveness, but compassion, humility, and a sense of oneness with all of Nature. Science and morality both are rooted in metaphysics, which is now much neglected in the Western world although it asks what Sayyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University calls the “ultimate questions”. I take those questions to be these: what is the universe really like? (Is the material world all there is?) What are the roots of morality? How do we know what’s true? And – the great unanswerable, but key nonetheless – how come? Finally, the zeitgeist, and hence all life, is shaped by all the arts. With Schubert, or indeed John Lennon, we look at the world differently.

Building an online forum for collaboration and cooperation
So what have been the origins of the CRFFC, and how will it work? In 2008 a group of friends and I set up the Campaign for Real Farming, from which, in January 2010, sprang the first Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC), conceived by the agricultural writer Graham Harvey as the antidote to the Establishment’s Oxford Farming Conference (OFC). Graham has now moved on to other things, but we have expanded the ORFC and now it is bigger than the OFC. At the 2012 conference we launched Funding Enlightened Agriculture to help farms of an enlightened kind, and related enterprises, to get going. The CRFFC completes the circle.

The College itself will begin in virtual form – as a website, an edited but otherwise open forum. So it will be a college in the true sense of the word: a meeting place for like-minded people. At the same time – already well in train – we will run ‘pop-up’ events wherever we are invited, from one-off lectures to weekend courses, to (some time in the future!) a full-blown MSc. If, somewhere down the line, someone leaves us a country estate with land on which to create a model farm, that will definitely take us to a new plane. But just in virtual and pop-up form the CRFFC can achieve a great deal. At the very least, it will help to coordinate the endeavours of others, and cooperation is all.
By the time this piece is published, our website should be up and running. Please watch this space and join in.

This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine, January/February issue 293. Find out more about the magazine  download a free sample copy

Colin Tudge is (with Ruth West and Graham Harvey) a co-founder of the Oxford Real Farming Conference and writes at the Campaign for Real Farming. His latest book is Six Steps Back to the Land (Green Books, 2016).

The Government’s policy of burdening bill payers with eye watering subsidies for new nuclear power has received another blow.

Just before a crucial board meeting yesterday at EDF (the French state owned energy giant relied on by the Government to invest in and operate Hinkley Point) French trade unions spoke out about their concerns.

When even staff working for EDF are raising serious doubts about numerous aspects of the proposal, UK Ministers’ cavalier attitude to Hinkley Point C needs to change, more urgently than ever.

In advance of an EDF board meeting due to take place today, where the company was rumoured to be making a final investment decision, French unions threw a welcome spanner in the works.

They’ve raise no fewer than 15 questions about the project, suggesting it would be difficult to complete on time and that financing it could threaten EDF’s survival. The good news, for now, is that EDF has, again, delayed the decision.

But the concerns of French unions are worth a closer look. They include pending legal cases, the lack of evidence Hinkley can be built on time, and the partnership with the Chinese nuclear energy company when no other investors appear to be interested.

Renewables with backup are already cheaper than nuclear

Most telling of all is the following question: “what happens if the UK government decides to look after consumer interest?”

This shows that the Conservative Government’s pro-nuclear policy flies in the face of everything they say about looking after the interests of consumers and billpayers.

Indeed, studies show that solar power coupled with energy storage and smart grid technology could generate the equivalent to Hinkley Point C at half the cost – to the Government and to you and I. Wind power, even with backup, is cheaper than nuclear power too.

The Government’s obsession with outdated, inflexible, expensive nuclear power stations is looking more economically and environmentally reckless by the day. So I’ve tabled some more urgent parliamentary questions on Hinkley.

The first question relates to the problems with a similar model of nuclear power station being built at Flamanville in France. It’s already six years behind schedule, €7.5 billion over budget, and subject to safety tests following some serious metallurgical flaws in the reactor vessel and head:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, whether the entering into force of the agreement between the UK and EDF to proceed with Hinkley Point C is conditional on the Flamanville successfully demonstrating capability of operation; what recent conversations her Department has had with EDF about the findings of the French Nuclear Safety Authority on tests on the Flamanville EPR reactor vessel head and bottom and the implications for her policies on new nuclear power; and if she will make a statement.”

The ruling on these safety concerns has itself been delayed. I’m pressing the Government on whether the agreement to proceed with Hinkley is conditional on the Flamanville plant demonstrating it’s capable of operating.

We already know from published documents that the promised £17 billion in loan guarantees for the project only take effect if the Flamanville power station is up and running by the end of 2020. Could there by other unpublished conditions we do not know about?

Will nuclear power ever be subsidy-free? (No)

My second question is about the huge cost of new nuclear to consumers. It picks up on Ministers’ mindboggling double standards when it comes to subsidies for nuclear power verses solar power, onshore wind and other renewable technologies.

In the Commons earlier this month, the Energy Secretary again attempted to justify her huge cuts to solar subsidies on grounds that “subsidies for low carbon power should be temporary, not part of a permanent business model.”

So my question asks exactly when she expects nuclear power stations to meet the same standards and operate on a subsidy free basis:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, pursuant to her oral contribution of 18 January 2016, Official Report, column 1152, on subsidies for low carbon power, what recent estimate she has made of the year by which new nuclear generation at (a) Hinkley point C, (b) Sizewell C, (c) Wylfa Newydd, (d) Oldbury and (e) Moorside is likely to operate on a subsidy-free basis; and if she will make a statement.”

Some renewable technologies are nearly there already, with the costs of others on a clear downward cost trajectory. Energy storage, interconnection and smart grids make Ministers appear stuck in the last century as they desperately argue about baseload.

The cost and climate change arguments against new nuclear power grow stronger every day. This week, workers have made their voices heard. It’s surely time the UK Government started to work for us rather than big energy companies and consign new nuclear to the dustbin of history.

Ministers need to start listening to the many voices cautioning against Hinkley and instead back 21st century clean technologies.

Caroline Lucas is the Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion.

This article was first published on Caroline’s website.

It was the decision a lot of people had been waiting for – EDF workers, the UK government, and campaigners for and against nuclear power in the UK.

As reported on The Ecologist today, The EDF board was due to make its ‘final investment decision’ on its controversial Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset, England, at a long-scheduled meeting tomorrow.

But now it has emerged in French newspaper reports that the decision has been deferred – indefinitely. No decision is now expected until after EDF presents its accounts on 16th February.

John Sauven, Executive Director of Greenpeace UK – the only national green NGO to campaign visibly on the issue – said today: “The EDF board is clearly rattled as they delay yet again this crucial investment decision. It could well signal curtains for Hinkley. EDF managers as well as employee representatives on the board are deeply concerned this project is too risky and too expensive.

“All three EPR projects are massively delayed and hugely over budget. There isn’t a shred of evidence that it’ll be fourth time lucky in Somerset. The UK government needs to join the 21st century and start backing the renewable technologies that are proven to work, are cheaper than nuclear power, create jobs in the UK and contribute to the fight against climate change.”

EDF: ‘We haven’t got the cash!’

The revelation comes in the French newspaper Les Echos, which has been consistently ahead of the pack with high-level leaks from EDF. According to its report, published today, the parastatal corporation has been unable to raise the full sum – some £18 billion – with which to progress the project:

“Two years ago EDF built a financial plan in which it would take 40-50% of the shares, which allowed it not to consolidate the investment in its accounts and so not to weigh too heavily on its balance sheet. Areva was to hold 10% and foreign shareholders the balance.

“But the difficulties of Areva, coupled with the delayed EPR under construction at Flamanville (Manche), changed last autumn: Areva will not participate in the round, and only Chinese investors (CGN), which see it as a gateway for developing their own reactors in Europe, will participate in the consortium, at 33.5%.”

The report goes on to cite the severe financial embarrassment that has overtaken EDF – its collapsing share price, negative credit outlook, increasing nuclear waste disposal liabilities, which just increased by around €10 billion yesterday, steep falls in the French wholesale power price (€37 to €28/MWh) reducing its income by €2 billion a year, and its forced €2.5 billion purchase of  its bankrupt sister company, Areva.

Now EDF is demanding French Government support too

But then comes the surprise: unable to raise funds it needs for Hinkley Point C through open market financing channels, it is asking the French Government to step in with a huge direct investment in the project, according to Les Echos:

“In this context, according to our information, EDF is now putting pressure on the State, its 84.5% shareholder, to find new financing. Since Areva would have contributed up to 10% in the project, EDF wishes to replace it with another entity.”

Considering that EDF has been desperately casting around the world in its increasingly desperate search for cash, that can only mean one thing – that the French state should step in to make good the 10% funding gap left in the wake of Areva’s financial collapse.

But just consider the implications. First, EDF is itself effectively owned by the French state as 84.5% shareholder.

Second, it is being supported by the British government with a subsidy package of guaranteed index-linked power prices for 35 years at more than double the current wholesale price, plus ceilings on decommissioning and waste disposal costs, plus £10 billion loan finance guarantees, independently valued at over €100 billion over the project lifetime, all giving EDF an estimated 10% per annum return on capital.

Third, unable to obtain open market financing even with this UK energy user and taxpayer-financed package of amazing generosity behind it, it has been forced to turn to a third state-owned entity, China General Nuclear Company (CGN) to take a 33.5% stake in the project.

But now, fourth, even that’s not enough – and EDF needs to go back to its owner, the French government, to demand that it takes (or otherwise procures) a direct 10% stake in the project – because no one else will.

If anyone ever needed any convincing that nuclear power is utterly unable to survive in a free market economy, this is it. 

But of course if any such thing happens, that would trigger yet another European Commission investigation into ‘illegal state aid’ for the Hinkley project. And even it it passes the hurdles, fresh legal challenges would surely follow, and further years of delay.

The final question – will any EPR ever be built?

It’s looking increasingly as if the Hinkley C EPR is dead in the water.

The Flamanville EPR in France is facing huge problems with its metallurgical flaws in the reactor vessel and lid and it’s odds on that it will never be completed due to the massively escalating costs, delays, and safety uncertainties.

There are also big questions over the Olkiluoto EPR in Finland, as the costs of completing the hugely over-time, over budget reactor may be greater to EDF and Areva than walking away and abandoning the site.

Most likely to be completed is the twin-reactor Taishan EPR in China, which was meant to come in last of the bunch but is now well ahead. However there are widespread suspicions that its reactors, supplied by Areva, may suffer from the same flaws as those at Flamanville, explaining a long delay in construction activity.

So even if it ever is ‘built out’, Chinese safety regulators may never allow it to be turned on.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

The last legal hurdle preventing the immediate expulsion of the Bedouin residents of Um Al-Hiran and Atir was removed last week (17th January) when Israel’s Supreme Court refused to rehear the case.

The Israeli government is now preparing to demolish the two ‘unrecognized’ Negev Bedouin villages of Um al-Hiran and Atir, and to forcibly resettle their 1,200 inhabitants, who are non-Jewish citizens of Israel, to the overcrowded township of Hura.

The government plans to build a Jewish community, to be called Hiran, on the rubble of the homes of their fellow citizens in the Bedouin village of Um al Hiran. On 23rd August 2015, bulldozers began the work. Nearby, the government plans to expand the Yatir forest to overrun the Bedouin village of Atir.

On November 22, 2015, the Israeli government approved the establishment of five more Jewish communities in the Negev, two of which will be built where Bedouin villages already exist. This decision means that many thousands of Israeli Bedouin citizens will be forced from their homes into impoverished urban townships.

The new Jewish community of Daya will be built on the ruins of the unrecognized Bedouin village of Al-Katamat, which is home to 1,500 people, while the new Jewish community of Neve Gurion will be built on part of the land of Bir Hadaj, a recognized Bedouin village with approximately 6,000 residents.

Foir the government, there’s only one solution: explulsion

The residents of Um al-Hiran are willing to live side by side with their fellow Jews in an integrated community, or in adjacent communities. They would be happy to return to their ancestral lands where they lived before Israel moved them to their current locations in 1956.

But the Israeli government is currently offering them the one solution they do not want – forced relocation to a township where the mayor himself has testified that there is no room for them.

Even as violence rages across the land, the Israeli government continues this work, bringing closer the day when these villages will be razed to the ground and their Bedouin residents forced out so that Jews can move in.

We call upon the government: Do not allow the majority to trample the rights of the minority. Fulfill the promise of Israel’s Declaration of Independence to “ensure complete equality of social and political rights for all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or gender.” The Negev has room for all of its people; Jews and Arabs can live there in peace and tranquility, building a thriving Negev together.

Why doom the Negev’s Jewish and Bedouin residents to live in perpetual conflict, anger and distrust? Rather than take the kivsat harash, the one little lamb (II Samuel 12:1-8) of Israel’s most impoverished citizens, we urge the government to live up to the noblest values of the Jewish tradition, honoring the Torah’s repeated command not to mistreat non-Jews as Jews were mistreated (Exodus 23:9).

We call upon the Government of Israel to recognize the communities of Um al-Hiran, Atir, Al-Katamat, and all of the Negev’s ‘unrecognized’ Bedouin villages, or sit down with them as equal citizens and find another solution together; build a just and humane Israel, a model of Jewish-Arab mutual respect and comity that affirms the Image of God in all its fellow citizens.

Expelled and resettled in 1956, but never recognised

The inhabitants of the Negev Bedouin villages of Um al-Hiran and Atir, members of the Abu Elkian Bedouin tribe, are facing their third expulsion by the Israeli government since the founding of Israel. The government moved them in 1956 to their current villages, after previously expelling them from their ancestral lands.

Here they were promised that they could make new lives for themselves. Starting from scratch on barren land, they built villages and were employed by the government to plant and tend the Yatir forest that now threatens to engulf Atir.

The government has never provided them with water, electricity, roads, clinics or schools, for they are two of the Negev’s 35 ‘unrecognized’ Bedouin villages. They have managed without any of the benefits countries provide to their citizens. But now they have one simple request: “Don’t uproot us again.”

They are particularly opposed to being moved to Hura, one of the townships the government has prepared for the Bedouin. Living in Hura means giving up their way of life.

The mayor of Hura, one of the mayors most friendly to the government, has said that the township simply does not have room for all of the additional people that the government wishes to move there. Forcing tribes to live together in crowded conditions and destroying their social fabric leads to crime and conflict, exemplified by Hura’s high murder rate.

The desert is empty – why build on top of us?

Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel has made clear his intention to revive the Begin-Prawer Bill that would lead to the demolition of dozens of ‘unrecognized’ Negev Bedouin villages, force tens of thousands of people from their homes into townships, and dispossess the Bedouin of most of their remaining lands.

Israel has recognized most of the Galilee’s ‘unrecognized’ villages, proving that when there is a will there is a way. Northern Bedouin identify with the state, while Negev Bedouin are filled with anger and rage.

The premise of the Begin-Prawer Bill is that the Negev Bedouin have no legitimate land claims. Whereas the Ottomans, British and pre-state Zionist movement recognized the Bedouin land ownership system, today Israel does not.

The fact is that most of the Negev is uninhabited, and many more Jews could live there without displacing or dispossessing the Bedouin. If all outstanding Bedouin claims were to be recognized and honored, they would amount to only 5.4% of the Negev.

On the first day the bulldozers tore into their land, frantic villagers pointed to the surrounding empty vastness and asked, “Why on top of us?”

Prime Minister Netanyahu has the ability and the responsibility to stop this injustice. Only a massive outcry of public concern offers the possibility of keeping the Bedouin in their homes.

Write to Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin asking them to uphold the historic right of Israel’s Bedouin to remain in their homes, and to recognise their villages.