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Coal isn't the climate enemy, Mr Monbiot. It's the solution

A Reply by Arthur Scargill to a pro-nuclear article by green campaigner George Monbiot.

The Guardian Friday August 8 2008

Has George Monbiot sold out on his environmental credentials or is he suffering from amnesia? In his article on these pages last Tuesday he states that he has now reached the point where he no longer cares whether or not the answer to climate change is nuclear - let it happen, he says.

Has he not read the evidence presented by environmentalists such as Tony Benn and me at the Windscale, Sizewell and Hinckley Point public inquiries? Is he unaware that nuclear-power generated electricity is the most expensive form of energy - 400% more expensive than coal - or that it received £6bn in subsidies, with £70bn to be paid by taxpayers in decommissioning costs? Is he unaware that there is no known way of disposing of nuclear waste, which will contaminate the planet for thousands of years? Has he forgotten the nuclear disasters at Windscale, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl?

We are facing an economic and political crisis on a scale similar to the Wall Street crash in 1929, the mass unemployment which affected the UK and Europe in the 1930s and the energy crisis in the early 70s.

We are facing a monumental energy crisis, yet we live on an island with more than 1,000 years of coal reserves from which we can provide all the electricity, oil, gas and petrochemicals that people need, without causing harm to the environment. Britain - despite its massive indigenous deep-mine coal reserves - has never had an integrated energy policy based on coal and renewables, and as a consequence we are now facing the worst energy crisis in our history.

Since the end of the second world war, both Labour and Tory governments have sought to replace Britain's vast coal reserves with a false promise of "cheap" imported oil, "cheap, safe" nuclear energy and "cheap" natural gas - policies that have not only cost the British people billions of pounds, but resulted in the near-extinction of Britain's deep-mine coal industry, the virtual exhaustion of North Sea gas and oil, and massive economic costs and environmental problems associated with nuclear power.

After the closure of 192 pits since 1980, the loss of 170,000 jobs and the closure or non-operation of nearly 70% of coal-fired power stations on the false premise that they were uneconomic and the worst polluter of carbon dioxide, it is reasonable to expect that there would have been a dramatic fall in CO2 emissions. But in fact CO2 emissions have actually increased - not that surprising, since more than 80% of CO2 emissions are produced by oil and gas from power stations, road transport, industry, shipping and domestic use. That fact alone should cause Monbiot to rethink.

Britain needs an integrated energy policy that will produce 250m tonnes of indigenous deep-mine clean coal per year - from which could be extracted all the electricity, oil, gas and petrochemicals that our people need.

All existing and new coal-fired power stations should be fitted with clean coal technology - including carbon capture that would remove all CO2 - and at the same time we should be developing a massive renewable energy policy based on wind, wave, tide, barrage, hydro, geothermal, solar power, together with insulation, conservation and reforestation.

We must end the import of coal, (currently 43m tonnes a year) which is produced by subsidies, "slave labour" and child labour, and end the import of shale oil, tar sands and other so-called unconventional oils, which are the dirtiest fuels on the planet but are being used to produce electricity.

We still do not know - because of the security and secrecy laws - the full extent of the disaster at Windscale (Sellafield) in 1957 or Three Mile Island in the US in 1979, but we do know that the incidence of cancer and leukaemia - particularly among children - is 10% higher in or around nuclear power stations, and we know from experts such as Robert Gale - who treated the victims at Chernobyl in 1986 - that more than 100,000 will die over a 30-year period.

We need an end to all nuclear-powered electricity generation, the most dangerous and uneconomic method of producing electricity. We need an end to deforestation, which is the cause of 20% of CO2 emissions worldwide, and an end to biofuel development - which not only produces substantial CO2 emissions but is causing mass starvation and higher food prices throughout the world.

Only by the introduction of a real integrated energy policy based on clean coal technology and renewable energies, can we begin to meet the needs of people in the UK and throughout the world.

I challenge George Monbiot to test out which is the most dangerous fuel - coal or nuclear power. I am prepared to go into a room full of CO2 for two minutes, if he is prepared to go into a room full of radiation for two minutes.

· Arthur Scargill is the leader of the Socialist Labour Party. He was president of the National Union of Mineworkers 1982-2002

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Below is an audio link to an interview Arthur gave to the Guardian in connection with this article. The recording lasts approximately 5 minutes.

Subject: Arthur sound recording of Guardian interview at the link

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/08/nuclearpower.fossilfuels

Behind Labour’s ‘Low Key’ Budget.

Most political commentators agreed that Alistair Darling’s first Budget was a ‘low key’ affair and accepted Darling’s assurances that the Labour government would “maintain stability through the world economic slowdown” and that “there will be no return to the inflation rates of the early 90s.”
The last comment being a warning that wages will continue to be held down below the rate of inflation.
 
Apart from increased ‘environment’ taxes and plans for ‘road pricing’ Darling also touched on Labour’s plans for ‘contracts’ for families “to make a commitment to improve their situations”, and a change in the rules for Housing and Council tax benefit “so that parents are better off in work than on benefits.”

In fact these measures are intended to slash public spending and not intended to benefit working class families and council tenants. 
 
What the mainstream media did not address was the economic crisis within which this budget was announced.
 
After the stock market bubble collapse in 2000, the United States and the world economy managed a temporary recovery by overseeing a housing boom based on increased consumer spending, which was itself made possible by low interest rates. 
 
However, this consumer spending was not the result of an increase in real wages but was based on an increase in consumer debt. Indeed real wages for workers fell during this period to such an extent that we now see record levels of inequality within each of the capitalist countries. Therefore workers, to meet even essential needs, used various credit facilities, including the remortgaging of homes and so forth. This growth in the mass of credit operating in the system was clearly unsustainable and the effects have duly found expression in the credit crisis now gripping the world economy.
 
This fact alone however would not lead capitalism into the acute crisis it finds itself in today. For example, if workers could no longer meet their mortgage repayments the banks or other financial institutions would simply repossess their homes as that is the asset that the credit is secured against. But one peculiar characteristic of the current crisis is that it also includes a crash in the property market, meaning the asset itself, the home, is no longer worth enough to cover what is owed. And if we remember that all this credit floating around the economy has been wrapped up into so-called ‘debt parcels’ and sold on, and sold on again, as ‘real assets’, and these ‘real assets’ used for further acquisitions, we can see that the entire financial system is affected, with not one single bank or financial institution knowing the full extent of their exposure to the crisis.
 
That is why, just two days prior to Darling’s budget speech the US Federal Reserve Bank, in conjunction with the European Central Bank, the Bank of Canada, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of England poured $200 billion into Wall Street investment banks as debt relief. This is in addition to the billions already pumped into the world’s financial markets in an attempt to stave off financial meltdown. 
 
In the UK too we have seen the government throw over 100 billion at one single bank, Northern Rock, in an attempt to stem the developing crisis. 
Darling mentioned Northern Rock and claimed that the government’s actions have “maintained confidence and stability in the banking system,” 
In reality the only thing the government’s actions regarding Northern Rock have proved is the sheer lengths they will go to in order to bail out the bankers, and this in sharp contrast to their indifference to the fate of  the victims of the ‘Farepak’ collapse.
 
To expect the UK, with its central role in the world’s financial markets, to somehow “maintain stability” during the forthcoming period is pure wishful thinking on Darling’s part and Darling knows full well that a massive assault on the living standards of the working class is this government’s only answer to the worsening economic crisis of capitalism. 
 
Ends.

MAY 2007 ELECTIONS – COMMENT

Over 30, 000 People vote for the SLP.

The 3rd May 2007 elections, covering local, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections, saw a collapse of the Labour Party vote whereby roughly only one in four of the people, who actually voted, cast their support for the Blair-Brown government.

This resulted in no overall majority for any political party either in the Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly. The significance of this is that no party could take full advantage of the Labour vote collapse. This is because none of the mainstream parties speak for, nor represent, the interests of the majority of the British people.

Consequently the Labour government can derive arrogance from seeing no opposition to their policies. Indeed, Tory leader David Cameron has already stated that should his party come to power they will continue with the policies of the Blair government.

However such a situation, where vast sections of the population are now politically disenfranchised, opens up tremendous opportunities for the SLP to put forward its socialist policies which do reflect the interests of the majority, as opposed to the existing political situation which favours the multinationals and financial institutions at the expense of the majority.

In Wales the May elections saw the SLP receive more votes than any other ‘socialist’ party and in Scotland the SLP beat the Scottish Socialist Party in seven out of the eight regions it stood in.

This is a platform of support that the SLP will build upon as it develops into a force that can give back a political voice to the millions who are currently faced with the problems inherent in a capitalist society, such as growing personal debt, attacks on welfare rights, pensions, health, education, and civil liberties.

We say no to a society that treats people like a ‘commodity’ and which sees everything in terms of ‘market value’ and we are intent on achieving a social system that truly represents the interests of the majority. Join us.