The French energy minister, Ségolène Royal, has said that a postponement of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power project was still a possibility.

She also stated that the project must not be allowed to drain funds away from planned investments in renewable energy to bring France towards its 40% green power target.

The comments came in a French television interview on Thursday on the BMFTV channel, in which she was asked whether Hinkley Point would be postponed. (See 9.35 in video)

“It’s still under discussion”, Royal replied. “There’s an agreement between France and Britain, so things should go ahead. But the trade unions are right to ask for the stakes to be re-examined.”

Asked if she was in favour of a postponing the £18 billion project, Royal ducked the question and said she would not make rash comments. However, she did not want to “decisively throw the project into question just like that.”

Royal continued: “I think the project should bring supplementary proof that it is well founded and provide assurances that investment in this project is not going to turn aside or dry out investments that need to be made in renewable energy.”

She then spoke at length of France’s ambitions to generate 40% of its electricity from renewable sources, wind in particular, and France’s broader ambitions to establish itself as an environmental super-power with global expertise across the gamut of green technologies – all without mentioning nuclear power once.

Her comments fit in with EDF’s broader strategy to become a global player in renewable energy. It is already the US’s largest wind power developer and is on track to be producing more wind power in the US every year by 2025 than would Hinkley Point C.

A further delay in EDF’s ‘final investment decision’?

EDF, the energy company controlled by the French government, has still not made a firm commitment to build the new nuclear power station. Its board had been expected to make a final investment decision on the project at its next meeting on 11 May, however this is now looking less likely following Royal’s pointed intervention.

Also weighing against an immediate decision, EDF’s Force Ouvriere (FO) union this week threatened strike action if the company was to hold a meeting to decide on the project before its Annual General Meeting on 12th May.

“If a board meeting is scheduled, we will launch a strike to demand that the Hinkley Point project is delayed”, FO union leader Jacky Chorin told Reuters. “Once the strike is on, I could see CGT and CFE-CGC follow, as they are also against the project.”

Last week an EDF board member called for Hinkley Point C to be postponed, in the latest sign of discord at the top of the French energy company over the troubled project. Christian Taxil, an employee director, said a raft of changes to the Somerset reactor scheme agreed over the past three years significantly raised the risk for EDF.

The dissent follows weeks of behind the scenes bickering and theresignation last month of EDF finance director, Thomas Piquemal, despite continual promises from EDF chief executive Jean-Bernard Lévy that the controversial project will go ahead.

EDF’s litany of nuclear woes

EDF has been hit by falling power prices, cost overruns on other projects, and demands to upgrade French nuclear reactors to make them safer. Its Paris-listed shares are down by almost 60% over the past 12 months.

The company is being compelled by the French government to buy the reactors division of Areva, which is also state-controlled.

Areva’s European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) technology is slated to be used at Hinkley Point. However, the first power station to use it – which is being built in Finland – is running nine years behind schedule due to problems and cost overruns. The problems had left Areva virtually bankrupt after four years of losses.

Concerns about the EPR technology has also delayed EDF’s construction of another EPR reactor at Flamanville, on France’s west coast. Its budget has gone from €3bn to €10.5bn and it is running six years late.

Building two new nuclear reactors at Hinkley has been heavily backed by the UK government in order to keep the lights on in Britain. The last of the UK’s coal-fired power stations will be closed in 2025.

Simon Taylor, a specialist in nuclear financing and a lecturer at Cambridge University, said last month that the Hinkley project appeared to be “poor value for money” and it would be best if the French government abandoned it.

“It would preserve the rest of the nuclear options in the UK, as it would not cast any doubt on the UK’s underlying commitment,” he said. “But if the UK cancels the project it could jeopardise all the other projects in the pipeline.”

Angelique Chrisafis is the Guardian’s Paris correspondent. Follow her on Twitter: @achrisafis

Chris Johnston is a London-based freelance journalist for the Guardian.

This article was originally published by Guardian Environment. This version includes additional reporting by The Ecologist.

The French energy minister, Ségolène Royal, has said that a postponement of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power project was still a possibility.

She also stated that the project must not be allowed to drain funds away from planned investments in renewable energy to bring France towards its 40% green power target.

The comments came in a French television interview on Thursday on the BMFTV channel, in which she was asked whether Hinkley Point would be postponed. (See 9.35 in video)

“It’s still under discussion”, Royal replied. “There’s an agreement between France and Britain, so things should go ahead. But the trade unions are right to ask for the stakes to be re-examined.”

Asked if she was in favour of a postponing the £18 billion project, Royal ducked the question and said she would not make rash comments. However, she did not want to “decisively throw the project into question just like that.”

Royal continued: “I think the project should bring supplementary proof that it is well founded and provide assurances that investment in this project is not going to turn aside or dry out investments that need to be made in renewable energy.”

She then spoke at length of France’s ambitions to generate 40% of its electricity from renewable sources, wind in particular, and France’s broader ambitions to establish itself as an environmental super-power with global expertise across the gamut of green technologies – all without mentioning nuclear power once.

Her comments fit in with EDF’s broader strategy to become a global player in renewable energy. It is already the US’s largest wind power developer and is on track to be producing more wind power in the US every year by 2025 than would Hinkley Point C.

A further delay in EDF’s ‘final investment decision’?

EDF, the energy company controlled by the French government, has still not made a firm commitment to build the new nuclear power station. Its board had been expected to make a final investment decision on the project at its next meeting on 11 May, however this is now looking less likely following Royal’s pointed intervention.

Also weighing against an immediate decision, EDF’s Force Ouvriere (FO) union this week threatened strike action if the company was to hold a meeting to decide on the project before its Annual General Meeting on 12th May.

“If a board meeting is scheduled, we will launch a strike to demand that the Hinkley Point project is delayed”, FO union leader Jacky Chorin told Reuters. “Once the strike is on, I could see CGT and CFE-CGC follow, as they are also against the project.”

Last week an EDF board member called for Hinkley Point C to be postponed, in the latest sign of discord at the top of the French energy company over the troubled project. Christian Taxil, an employee director, said a raft of changes to the Somerset reactor scheme agreed over the past three years significantly raised the risk for EDF.

The dissent follows weeks of behind the scenes bickering and theresignation last month of EDF finance director, Thomas Piquemal, despite continual promises from EDF chief executive Jean-Bernard Lévy that the controversial project will go ahead.

EDF’s litany of nuclear woes

EDF has been hit by falling power prices, cost overruns on other projects, and demands to upgrade French nuclear reactors to make them safer. Its Paris-listed shares are down by almost 60% over the past 12 months.

The company is being compelled by the French government to buy the reactors division of Areva, which is also state-controlled.

Areva’s European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) technology is slated to be used at Hinkley Point. However, the first power station to use it – which is being built in Finland – is running nine years behind schedule due to problems and cost overruns. The problems had left Areva virtually bankrupt after four years of losses.

Concerns about the EPR technology has also delayed EDF’s construction of another EPR reactor at Flamanville, on France’s west coast. Its budget has gone from €3bn to €10.5bn and it is running six years late.

Building two new nuclear reactors at Hinkley has been heavily backed by the UK government in order to keep the lights on in Britain. The last of the UK’s coal-fired power stations will be closed in 2025.

Simon Taylor, a specialist in nuclear financing and a lecturer at Cambridge University, said last month that the Hinkley project appeared to be “poor value for money” and it would be best if the French government abandoned it.

“It would preserve the rest of the nuclear options in the UK, as it would not cast any doubt on the UK’s underlying commitment,” he said. “But if the UK cancels the project it could jeopardise all the other projects in the pipeline.”

Angelique Chrisafis is the Guardian’s Paris correspondent. Follow her on Twitter: @achrisafis

Chris Johnston is a London-based freelance journalist for the Guardian.

This article was originally published by Guardian Environment. This version includes additional reporting by The Ecologist.

The French energy minister, Ségolène Royal, has said that a postponement of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power project was still a possibility.

She also stated that the project must not be allowed to drain funds away from planned investments in renewable energy to bring France towards its 40% green power target.

The comments came in a French television interview on Thursday on the BMFTV channel, in which she was asked whether Hinkley Point would be postponed. (See 9.35 in video)

“It’s still under discussion”, Royal replied. “There’s an agreement between France and Britain, so things should go ahead. But the trade unions are right to ask for the stakes to be re-examined.”

Asked if she was in favour of a postponing the £18 billion project, Royal ducked the question and said she would not make rash comments. However, she did not want to “decisively throw the project into question just like that.”

Royal continued: “I think the project should bring supplementary proof that it is well founded and provide assurances that investment in this project is not going to turn aside or dry out investments that need to be made in renewable energy.”

She then spoke at length of France’s ambitions to generate 40% of its electricity from renewable sources, wind in particular, and France’s broader ambitions to establish itself as an environmental super-power with global expertise across the gamut of green technologies – all without mentioning nuclear power once.

Her comments fit in with EDF’s broader strategy to become a global player in renewable energy. It is already the US’s largest wind power developer and is on track to be producing more wind power in the US every year by 2025 than would Hinkley Point C.

A further delay in EDF’s ‘final investment decision’?

EDF, the energy company controlled by the French government, has still not made a firm commitment to build the new nuclear power station. Its board had been expected to make a final investment decision on the project at its next meeting on 11 May, however this is now looking less likely following Royal’s pointed intervention.

Also weighing against an immediate decision, EDF’s Force Ouvriere (FO) union this week threatened strike action if the company was to hold a meeting to decide on the project before its Annual General Meeting on 12th May.

“If a board meeting is scheduled, we will launch a strike to demand that the Hinkley Point project is delayed”, FO union leader Jacky Chorin told Reuters. “Once the strike is on, I could see CGT and CFE-CGC follow, as they are also against the project.”

Last week an EDF board member called for Hinkley Point C to be postponed, in the latest sign of discord at the top of the French energy company over the troubled project. Christian Taxil, an employee director, said a raft of changes to the Somerset reactor scheme agreed over the past three years significantly raised the risk for EDF.

The dissent follows weeks of behind the scenes bickering and theresignation last month of EDF finance director, Thomas Piquemal, despite continual promises from EDF chief executive Jean-Bernard Lévy that the controversial project will go ahead.

EDF’s litany of nuclear woes

EDF has been hit by falling power prices, cost overruns on other projects, and demands to upgrade French nuclear reactors to make them safer. Its Paris-listed shares are down by almost 60% over the past 12 months.

The company is being compelled by the French government to buy the reactors division of Areva, which is also state-controlled.

Areva’s European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) technology is slated to be used at Hinkley Point. However, the first power station to use it – which is being built in Finland – is running nine years behind schedule due to problems and cost overruns. The problems had left Areva virtually bankrupt after four years of losses.

Concerns about the EPR technology has also delayed EDF’s construction of another EPR reactor at Flamanville, on France’s west coast. Its budget has gone from €3bn to €10.5bn and it is running six years late.

Building two new nuclear reactors at Hinkley has been heavily backed by the UK government in order to keep the lights on in Britain. The last of the UK’s coal-fired power stations will be closed in 2025.

Simon Taylor, a specialist in nuclear financing and a lecturer at Cambridge University, said last month that the Hinkley project appeared to be “poor value for money” and it would be best if the French government abandoned it.

“It would preserve the rest of the nuclear options in the UK, as it would not cast any doubt on the UK’s underlying commitment,” he said. “But if the UK cancels the project it could jeopardise all the other projects in the pipeline.”

Angelique Chrisafis is the Guardian’s Paris correspondent. Follow her on Twitter: @achrisafis

Chris Johnston is a London-based freelance journalist for the Guardian.

This article was originally published by Guardian Environment. This version includes additional reporting by The Ecologist.

The French energy minister, Ségolène Royal, has said that a postponement of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power project was still a possibility.

She also stated that the project must not be allowed to drain funds away from planned investments in renewable energy to bring France towards its 40% green power target.

The comments came in a French television interview on Thursday on the BMFTV channel, in which she was asked whether Hinkley Point would be postponed. (See 9.35 in video)

“It’s still under discussion”, Royal replied. “There’s an agreement between France and Britain, so things should go ahead. But the trade unions are right to ask for the stakes to be re-examined.”

Asked if she was in favour of a postponing the £18 billion project, Royal ducked the question and said she would not make rash comments. However, she did not want to “decisively throw the project into question just like that.”

Royal continued: “I think the project should bring supplementary proof that it is well founded and provide assurances that investment in this project is not going to turn aside or dry out investments that need to be made in renewable energy.”

She then spoke at length of France’s ambitions to generate 40% of its electricity from renewable sources, wind in particular, and France’s broader ambitions to establish itself as an environmental super-power with global expertise across the gamut of green technologies – all without mentioning nuclear power once.

Her comments fit in with EDF’s broader strategy to become a global player in renewable energy. It is already the US’s largest wind power developer and is on track to be producing more wind power in the US every year by 2025 than would Hinkley Point C.

A further delay in EDF’s ‘final investment decision’?

EDF, the energy company controlled by the French government, has still not made a firm commitment to build the new nuclear power station. Its board had been expected to make a final investment decision on the project at its next meeting on 11 May, however this is now looking less likely following Royal’s pointed intervention.

Also weighing against an immediate decision, EDF’s Force Ouvriere (FO) union this week threatened strike action if the company was to hold a meeting to decide on the project before its Annual General Meeting on 12th May.

“If a board meeting is scheduled, we will launch a strike to demand that the Hinkley Point project is delayed”, FO union leader Jacky Chorin told Reuters. “Once the strike is on, I could see CGT and CFE-CGC follow, as they are also against the project.”

Last week an EDF board member called for Hinkley Point C to be postponed, in the latest sign of discord at the top of the French energy company over the troubled project. Christian Taxil, an employee director, said a raft of changes to the Somerset reactor scheme agreed over the past three years significantly raised the risk for EDF.

The dissent follows weeks of behind the scenes bickering and theresignation last month of EDF finance director, Thomas Piquemal, despite continual promises from EDF chief executive Jean-Bernard Lévy that the controversial project will go ahead.

EDF’s litany of nuclear woes

EDF has been hit by falling power prices, cost overruns on other projects, and demands to upgrade French nuclear reactors to make them safer. Its Paris-listed shares are down by almost 60% over the past 12 months.

The company is being compelled by the French government to buy the reactors division of Areva, which is also state-controlled.

Areva’s European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) technology is slated to be used at Hinkley Point. However, the first power station to use it – which is being built in Finland – is running nine years behind schedule due to problems and cost overruns. The problems had left Areva virtually bankrupt after four years of losses.

Concerns about the EPR technology has also delayed EDF’s construction of another EPR reactor at Flamanville, on France’s west coast. Its budget has gone from €3bn to €10.5bn and it is running six years late.

Building two new nuclear reactors at Hinkley has been heavily backed by the UK government in order to keep the lights on in Britain. The last of the UK’s coal-fired power stations will be closed in 2025.

Simon Taylor, a specialist in nuclear financing and a lecturer at Cambridge University, said last month that the Hinkley project appeared to be “poor value for money” and it would be best if the French government abandoned it.

“It would preserve the rest of the nuclear options in the UK, as it would not cast any doubt on the UK’s underlying commitment,” he said. “But if the UK cancels the project it could jeopardise all the other projects in the pipeline.”

Angelique Chrisafis is the Guardian’s Paris correspondent. Follow her on Twitter: @achrisafis

Chris Johnston is a London-based freelance journalist for the Guardian.

This article was originally published by Guardian Environment. This version includes additional reporting by The Ecologist.

The French energy minister, Ségolène Royal, has said that a postponement of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power project was still a possibility.

She also stated that the project must not be allowed to drain funds away from planned investments in renewable energy to bring France towards its 40% green power target.

The comments came in a French television interview on Thursday on the BMFTV channel, in which she was asked whether Hinkley Point would be postponed. (See 9.35 in video)

“It’s still under discussion”, Royal replied. “There’s an agreement between France and Britain, so things should go ahead. But the trade unions are right to ask for the stakes to be re-examined.”

Asked if she was in favour of a postponing the £18 billion project, Royal ducked the question and said she would not make rash comments. However, she did not want to “decisively throw the project into question just like that.”

Royal continued: “I think the project should bring supplementary proof that it is well founded and provide assurances that investment in this project is not going to turn aside or dry out investments that need to be made in renewable energy.”

She then spoke at length of France’s ambitions to generate 40% of its electricity from renewable sources, wind in particular, and France’s broader ambitions to establish itself as an environmental super-power with global expertise across the gamut of green technologies – all without mentioning nuclear power once.

Her comments fit in with EDF’s broader strategy to become a global player in renewable energy. It is already the US’s largest wind power developer and is on track to be producing more wind power in the US every year by 2025 than would Hinkley Point C.

A further delay in EDF’s ‘final investment decision’?

EDF, the energy company controlled by the French government, has still not made a firm commitment to build the new nuclear power station. Its board had been expected to make a final investment decision on the project at its next meeting on 11 May, however this is now looking less likely following Royal’s pointed intervention.

Also weighing against an immediate decision, EDF’s Force Ouvriere (FO) union this week threatened strike action if the company was to hold a meeting to decide on the project before its Annual General Meeting on 12th May.

“If a board meeting is scheduled, we will launch a strike to demand that the Hinkley Point project is delayed”, FO union leader Jacky Chorin told Reuters. “Once the strike is on, I could see CGT and CFE-CGC follow, as they are also against the project.”

Last week an EDF board member called for Hinkley Point C to be postponed, in the latest sign of discord at the top of the French energy company over the troubled project. Christian Taxil, an employee director, said a raft of changes to the Somerset reactor scheme agreed over the past three years significantly raised the risk for EDF.

The dissent follows weeks of behind the scenes bickering and theresignation last month of EDF finance director, Thomas Piquemal, despite continual promises from EDF chief executive Jean-Bernard Lévy that the controversial project will go ahead.

EDF’s litany of nuclear woes

EDF has been hit by falling power prices, cost overruns on other projects, and demands to upgrade French nuclear reactors to make them safer. Its Paris-listed shares are down by almost 60% over the past 12 months.

The company is being compelled by the French government to buy the reactors division of Areva, which is also state-controlled.

Areva’s European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) technology is slated to be used at Hinkley Point. However, the first power station to use it – which is being built in Finland – is running nine years behind schedule due to problems and cost overruns. The problems had left Areva virtually bankrupt after four years of losses.

Concerns about the EPR technology has also delayed EDF’s construction of another EPR reactor at Flamanville, on France’s west coast. Its budget has gone from €3bn to €10.5bn and it is running six years late.

Building two new nuclear reactors at Hinkley has been heavily backed by the UK government in order to keep the lights on in Britain. The last of the UK’s coal-fired power stations will be closed in 2025.

Simon Taylor, a specialist in nuclear financing and a lecturer at Cambridge University, said last month that the Hinkley project appeared to be “poor value for money” and it would be best if the French government abandoned it.

“It would preserve the rest of the nuclear options in the UK, as it would not cast any doubt on the UK’s underlying commitment,” he said. “But if the UK cancels the project it could jeopardise all the other projects in the pipeline.”

Angelique Chrisafis is the Guardian’s Paris correspondent. Follow her on Twitter: @achrisafis

Chris Johnston is a London-based freelance journalist for the Guardian.

This article was originally published by Guardian Environment. This version includes additional reporting by The Ecologist.

When it comes to global warming, what else don’t we know?

What science does know, and what it can infer from studying archeological records, already makes anybody who thinks the long-term habitability of Earth is more important than short-term profits very worried.

One detail that may have been under-appreciated is meltwater. Melting ice sheets, especially in Greenland and Antarctica, is well understood to raise the sea level. But the effects might not be simply the additional water added to the oceans.

In this scenario, the melted freshwater will additionally increase warming, thereby creating a feedback loop that will accelerate the loss of polar ice sheets, thus accelerating the rate of sea-level rise. How fast? Fast enough that the sea level could rise by “several meters”, possibly six to nine meters, in 50 to 150 years.

This sobering prediction of what might happen without a drastic reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions is the conclusion of 19 climate scientists from the United States, France, Germany and China who studied the effect of growing ice melt from Greenland and Antarctica through the use of climate simulations, paleoclimate data and modern observations.

The paper, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and led by James Hansen (see his article on The Ecologist), concludes that swift action is necessary in the face of a “global emergency”.

Predictions of a future catastrophic rise in the oceans, threatening to drown many of the world’s biggest cities, are by now far from novel. Two other recent papers conclude that humanity has already committed itself to a six-meter rise in sea level because of the greenhouse gases already thrown into the atmosphere and the retention and later slow release of much of those gases by the world’s oceans.

A study in the journal Science estimates that more than 1,115,000 sq.km (444,000 sq.miles) of land, where more than 375 million people live today, would be inundated by such a rise.

Compare that to the complacency of the world’s governments at the Paris Climate Summit in December 2015. Despite a thunder of plaudits from the corporate media, the governments committed themselves to goals that, even if achieved, would lead to a global temperature rise of nearly 3 degrees Celsius by 2100, with further increases beyond that.

That is far beyond the goal of 1.5 degrees set at the summit. But even the summit’s actual modest goals are not necessarily attainable because peer pressure is the primary mechanism to induce compliance; there are no binding legal agreements.

Feedback loops accelerate ice-sheet melting

The Atmospheric Chemistry paper says that sea level was at times six to nine meters higher than today approximately 115,000 years ago when the average global temperature “probably was only a few tenths of a degree warmer than today.” Ice-sheet stability may be a key to understanding rapid sea-level rise, the authors write.

The injection of added freshwater into the oceans from faster ice-sheet melting reduces the mixing of ocean waters, causing warmer water to remain at lower depths and thus making warmer water more available to melt the remaining ice shelves. This additional impact of meltwater on the global climate and its feedbacks had not been appreciated before, the authors write. They summarize this as follows:

“Our principal finding concerns the effect of meltwater on stratification of the high-latitude ocean and resulting ocean heat sequestration that leads to melting of ice shelves and catastrophic ice sheet collapse. Stratification contrasts with homogenization.

“Winter conditions on parts of the North Atlantic Ocean and around the edges of Antarctica normally produce cold, salty water that is dense enough to sink to the deep ocean, thus stirring and tending to homogenize the water column. Injection of fresh meltwater reduces the density of the upper ocean wind-stirred mixed layer, thus reducing the rate at which cold surface water sinks in winter at high latitudes.”

Existing models, including the authors’ own, underplays this mixing effect, the paper states, and thus anthropogenic warming “may be even more imminent than in our model.” Regardless of the exact timing, a tipping point will be reached:

“If the ocean continues to accumulate heat and increase melting of marine-terminating ice shelves of Antarctica and Greenland, a point will be reached at which it is impossible to avoid large-scale ice sheet disintegration with sea level rise of at least several meters. The economic and social cost of losing functionality of all coastal cities is practically incalculable.”

What might happen if the global temperature rises 2 degrees C. from pre-industrial levels? The possibilities are these:

“Continued high fossil fuel emissions this century are predicted to yield:
(1) cooling of the Southern Ocean, especially in the Western Hemisphere;
(2) slowing of the Southern Ocean overturning circulation, warming of the ice shelves, and growing ice sheet mass loss;(3) slowdown and eventual shutdown of the Atlantic overturning circulation with cooling of the North Atlantic region;
(4) increasingly powerful storms; and
(5) non-linearly growing sea level rise, reaching several meters over a timescale of 50-150 years. These predictions, especially the cooling in the Southern Ocean and North Atlantic with markedly reduced warming or even cooling in Europe, differ fundamentally from existing climate change assessments.”

A cold and arid Europe

The authors cite evidence that at the end of the interglacial period in which sea level was believed to be six to nine meters higher than today, there was a dramatic cooling in northern Europe, estimated at 3C in summer and 5C to 10C in winter in southern Germany, accompanied by four centuries of arid weather and a decline in trees.

During the period of sea-level rise, the North Atlantic is also believed to have suffered from more severe storms, with archeological evidence from Bermuda and the Bahamas used as evidence.

As a consensus for global warming emerges, there is less certainty that capping global temperature increase to 2C would be ‘safe’; thus the Paris Climate Summit’s surprise conclusion to set a goal of a 1.5C limit. To achieve such a goal, however, would, as noted above, require cuts to greenhouse-gas emissions far beyond anything pledged.

The studies indicating that humanity has already committed itself to a six- to nine-meter sea-level rise imply that temperatures will rise past 1.5 degrees as greenhouse gas-generated heat trapped by the oceans is slowly released into the atmosphere over many decades, if not centuries.

There is no alternative to a massive change to industrial activity – no amount of re-forestation can come close to canceling out the effect of industrial activity. The Atmospheric Chemistry paper concludes with this sober assessment:

“There is a possibility, a real danger, that we will hand young people and future generations a climate system that is practically out of their control. We conclude that the message our climate science delivers to society, policymakers, and the public alike is this: we have a global emergency. Fossil fuel CO₂ emissions should be reduced as rapidly as practical.”

Unfortunately, we live in an economic system that requires constant growth and offers no alternative work for those whose jobs would be eliminated were we to shut down the most polluting industries. In one of his novels, Arthur C. Clarke wrote of a 23rd century world that was finally eliminating the clutter and pollution of the 20th century.

Sad to say, the late science fiction master was overly optimistic.

Pete Dolack is an activist, writer, poet and photographer, and writes on Systemic Disorder. His forthcoming book ‘It’s Not Over: Lessons from the Socialist Experiment‘, a study of attempts to create societies on a basis other than capitalism, will be published by Zero Books in February 2016.

This article was originally published on Systemic Disorder.

We are living in the most explosive era of infrastructure expansion in human history.

The G20 nations, when they met in Australia in 2014, argued for between US$60 trillion and US$70 trillion in new infrastructure investments by 2030, which would more than double the global total value of infrastructure.

Some of the key players in this worldwide infrastructure boom are huge investors such as the World Bank.

The past few years and decades have seen the rise of major new investment banks, such as the recently founded Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the dramatic growth of funds such as the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES).

The new banks, along with traditional big lenders such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Asian, African, and Inter-American Development Banks, are very fond of funding big infrastructure such as roads, dams, gas lines, mining projects, and so on.

Some people had hoped that these banks would promote sustainable and socially equitable development, but it now seems that they could end up doing precisely the opposite.

The infrastructure tsunami

The next few decades are expected to see some 25 million km of new paved roads, thousands more hydroelectric dams, and hundreds of thousands of new mining, oil and gas projects. The environmental impacts of the modern infrastructure tsunami could easily dwarf climate change and many other human pressures, as thousands of projects penetrate into the world’s last surviving wild areas.

Roughly 90% of the new projects are in developing nations, often in the tropics or subtropics which harbour the planet’s biologically richest and environmentally most critical ecosystems. In these contexts, new infrastructures such as roads can open a Pandora’s box of environmental problems, by promoting widespread deforestation, habitat fragmentation, poaching, fires, illegal mining and land speculation.

For instance, our research in the Brazilian Amazon has shown that 95% of all deforestation occurs within 5.5 km of a legal or illegal road. In Brazil, 12 new dams planned for the Tapajós River (and their associated road networks) are expected to increase Amazon deforestation by nearly a million hectares. Across the Amazon, more than 330 dams are now planned or under construction.

In the Congo Basin, an avalanche of new logging roads has opened up vast areas of rainforest to poachers armed with rifles and cable snares. As a result, the past decade has seen two-thirds of all Forest Elephants slaughtered for their valuable ivory tusks.

Fears of fast-tracking

Brazil’s BNDES has been heavily criticised for funding scores of environmentally and socially harmful projects, such as mega-dams in the Amazon. Fears were raised that China’s AIIB would behave similarly, especially when it announced that it would be using ‘streamlined’ procedures for evaluating its projects.

Such fast-tracked procedures would differ from those used by other major lenders such as the World Bank, which after years of criticism have gradually implemented measures designed to limit the environmental and social impacts of its projects. Even these safeguards are often inadequate, as I and others argued in a recent article, but at least they are a big improvement over past practices.

When China opened up its AIIB to other countries, 30 nations initially joined as founding members. Many of these are western economies, including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Australia and New Zealand.

At the time, many observers hoped that the bank’s broader membership would encourage the AIIB to moderate its hard-charging stance – perhaps fostering environmental and social safeguards more akin to those of the existing major lenders.

But in fact the exact opposite appears to be happening. Rather than the AIIB raising its game, the World Bank recently concluded a review of its environmental standards – a move that has been criticised as weakening its environmental and social safeguards.

It is doing so, it says, in order to keep up with “new and varied development demands“. This is widely seen as a response to increasing competition with other investors such as the AIIB.

Race to the bottom?

What will this mean? The global economy has slowed for the moment, giving environmental planners a tiny window of breathing space. But make no mistake, the infrastructure tsunami is still happening. If the global economy rebounds to a degree, the feeding frenzy of projects seen in recent years could easily return.

This could be bad news for the global environment and socially disempowered peoples. For instance, a 2009 analysis found that many developing nations had become “pollution havens” for projects funded by China or Chinese investors, who were attracted to nations with weak environmental controls. Notably, other advanced (OECD) economies showed no such tendency.

Will other major lenders follow suit? Will there simply be a ‘race to the bottom’ among big lenders in order to remain competitive? Only time will tell. The other key question revolves around the role of western nations that are parties to the AIIB, such as the EU members and Australia.

Do they have enough influence and determination to make a difference? With China, India and Russia holding the biggest shares of the bank’s capitalisation, it’ll be an uphill battle.

Right now, for the environment and human rights, the signs are all pointing in the wrong direction.

Bill Laurance is Distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate at the James Cook University.

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

A coalition of farmers, scientists, campaigners and charities has come together to urge the Government to stop the planting of genetically modified (GM) potatoes and oilseeds in the UK this spring.

The applications for open-air GM trials come from from the Sainsbury’s Laboratory in Norwich (for blight resistant potatoes) and Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire (for fish-oil producing omega-3 fatty-acid camelina).

The campaign coalition claims in its evidence submitted to Defra demonstrating that the risks of the trials are not justified by any potential gains. Their concerns include:

• Antibiotic resistance. Some of the potatoes in the proposed trial include an antibiotic resistance ‘marker’ gene that could transfer to disease-causing bacteria.
• Contamination and cross-breeding with wild relatives. Pollen and seed can escape from trials and, as any gardener can tell you, viable GM potatoes could survive in the ground for many years after harvest.
• Unexpected effects of the genetic engineering process. DNA alterations can impact on how other genes are expressed and neither applicant has tested the potential environmental or food safety harms their GM plants could cause.

Blight resistance is already stronger in non-GM potatoes

The NGO coalition also questions the claimed benefits of the crops that the two trials aim to create.

“You know the chips are really down for GM when the best they can offer is a potato with a far more basic level of protection against blight than can be found in existing non-GM varieties”, said Liz O’Neill, Director of umbrella group GM Freeze, which coordinated the objections.

“What’s more, those conventional varieties have already reached the market without the tax-payer-funded subsidies that have gone into these projects.”

According to the objection submited to Defra, Marker Assisted Selection (MAS), a non-GM technique that hugely speeds up conventional breeding, offers “a quicker, and less risky, means than GM to the development ofnew potato varieties that combine resistance to late blight and many other problematic pests and diseases, with desirable quality traits.”

It continues: “The lack of public support and demand for GM potatoes from UK retailers and processors suggeststhat the GM approach should be abandoned and replaced with a publicly funded breeding programme based on MAS targeting important traits such as resistance tolate blight and potato cyst nematodes (PCN).

“This programme should also be linked with research and development into agronomic techniques to reduce potato pest and disease problems (there are 600 identified in the UK) and develop sustainable production techniques.”

Also, while the naturally blight-resistant potato cultivars have six or more genes than confer resistance, the GM varieties planned would each have only one. This would allow the blight fungus to quickly evolve resistance making them at best a “short term solution”.

Uncertain benefits from omega-3 camelina

O’Neill is also dubious as to the benefits from the GM camelina seeds, which are intended for fish food rather than direct human consumption. “Evidence on the health impacts of omega-3s is very mixed and the idea that growing them on prime agricultural land will make the fish farming industry sustainable is more than a little fishy.”

According to the objection, there is a high risk that the GMO will spread into the environment: “Pollen and seeds could escape from the trial site through dispersal by wind, wildlife or machinery. Human error and mix ups could also result in accidental releases, not only to the environment but also to the human food chain or even directly to humans.

“Therefore some consideration needs to be made of food safety in the event of the GM camelina seed / oil being consumed by humans. Food safety to humans would have to be considered in the event of possible commercialisation of this GM crop anyway, even if it is intended solely as an animal feed, so it would be unwise to proceed without properly considering the risks in this area.”

And that’s no straightforward matter: “Unfortunately, it still remains the case that there has been only rudimentary analysis of the fatty acid profile in subsequent publications and no consideration given to possible unintended consequences of the genetic modification.

“The attempted genetic engineering of a novel metabolic pathway is far more ambitious than the genetic engineering in current GM crops (eg GM Roundup Ready soya, which contains four genetic elements). Therefore, there are likely to be some unintended effects.

“It is vital that these are actively searched for, evaluated and considered in terms of food and environmental safety as they could be important to food and environmental safety in the event of an escape.”

Public money must be spent where it will help!

Pat Thomas, Director of Beyond GM, said: “These trials are promoted to the public as ultimately being about ‘public good’. But this narrative only serves as misdirection, taking our attention away from the fact that, at best, genetically engineered crops like the GM potato are unnecessary, since there are already naturally bred varieties that are more resilient and resistant to blight.

“At worst, as in the case of the GM camelina, which is being produced to feed farmed fish, they are being used to support and perpetuate some of the filthiest, most unsustainable farming practices around. After more than 20 years we know there is no magic to GMOs.

“In fact, they are the worst kind of abracadabra, distracting us from more important action on sustainable, agorecological farming and food.”