Re: The Long Ecological Revolution
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2023 2:13 pm
IPCC report fails on equity and urgency
April 3, 2023
Catastrophic climate change can’t be prevented without fundamental economic and social changes
by Kevin Anderson
Professor of Energy and Climate Change, University of Manchester
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) synthesis report recently landed with an authoritative thump, giving voice to hundreds of scientists endeavoring to understand the unfolding calamity of global heating. What’s changed since the last one in 2014? Well, we’ve dumped an additional third of a trillion tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere, primarily from burning fossil fuels. While world leaders promised to cut global emissions, they have presided over a 5% rise.
The new report evokes a mild sense of urgency, calling on governments to mobilize finance to accelerate the uptake of green technology. But its conclusions are far removed from a direct interpretation of the IPCC’s own carbon budgets (the total amount of CO₂ scientists estimate can be put into the atmosphere for a given temperature rise).
The report claims that, to maintain a 50:50 chance of warming not exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, CO₂ emissions must be cut to “net-zero” by the “early 2050s.” Yet, updating the IPCC’s estimate of the 1.5°C carbon budget, from 2020 to 2023, and then drawing a straight line down from today’s total emissions to the point where all carbon emissions must cease, and without exceeding this budget, gives a zero CO₂ date of 2040.
If emissions stay at their current levels, we will exhaust the 50% chance of 1.5°C in 9 years. If we begin to immediately cut emissions following the blue line, then to stay within the carbon budget for 50:50 chance of not exceeding 1.5°C we need zero global emissions by 2040. The vertical axis represents how much carbon is emitted each year – note the pandemic-related blip in 2020. (Graph: Kevin Anderson / Climate Uncensored)
Given it will take a few years to organize the necessary political structures and technical deployment, the date for eliminating all CO₂ emissions to remain within 1.5°C of warming comes closer still, to around the mid-2030s. This is a strikingly different level of urgency to that evoked by the IPCC’s “early 2050s.” Similar smoke and mirrors lie behind the “early 2070s” timeline the IPCC conjures for limiting global heating to 2°C.
IPCC science embeds colonial attitudes
For over two decades, the IPCC’s work on cutting emissions (what experts call “mitigation”) has been dominated by a particular group of modelers who use huge computer models to simulate what may happen to emissions under different assumptions, primarily related to price and technology. I’ve raised concerns before about how this select cadre, almost entirely based in wealthy, high-emitting nations, has undermined the necessary scale of emission reductions.
In 2023, I can no longer tiptoe around the sensibilities of those overseeing this bias. In my view, they have been as damaging to the agenda of cutting emissions as Exxon was in misleading the public about climate science. The IPCC’s mitigation report in 2022 did include a chapter on “demand, services and social aspects” as a repository for alternative voices, but these were reduced to an inaudible whisper in the latest report’s influential summary for policymakers.
The specialist modelling groups (referred to as Integrated Assessment Modelling, or IAMs) have successfully crowded out competing voices, reducing the task of mitigation to price-induced shifts in technology – some of the most important of which, like so-called “negative emissions technologies,” are barely out of the laboratory.
The IPCC offers many “scenarios” of future low-carbon energy systems and how we might get there from here. But as the work of academic Tejal Kanitkar and others has made clear, not only do these scenarios prefer speculative technology tomorrow over deeply challenging policies today (effectively a greenwashed business-as-usual), they also systematically embed colonial attitudes towards “developing nations.”
With few if any exceptions, they maintain current levels of inequality between developed and developing nations, with several scenarios actually increasing the levels of inequality. Granted, many IAM modelers strive to work objectively, but they do so within deeply subjective boundaries established and preserved by those leading such groups.
What happened to equity?
If we step outside the rarefied realm of IAM scenarios that leading climate scientist Johan Rockström describes as “academic gymnastics that have nothing to do with reality,” it’s clear that not exceeding 1.5°C or 2°C will require fundamental changes to most facets of modern life.
Starting now, to not exceed 1.5°C of warming requires 11% year-on-year cuts in emissions, falling to nearer 5% for 2°C. However, these global average rates ignore the core concept of equity, central to all UN climate negotiations, which gives “developing country parties” a little longer to decarbonize.
Include equity and most “developed” nations need to reach zero CO₂ emissions between 2030 and 2035, with developing nations following suit up to a decade later. Any delay will shrink these timelines still further.
Most IAM models ignore and often even exacerbate the obscene inequality in energy use and emissions, both within nations and between individuals. As the International Energy Agency recently reported, the top 10% of emitters accounted for nearly half of global CO₂ emissions from energy use in 2021, compared with 0.2% for the bottom 10%. More disturbingly, the greenhouse gas emissions of the top 1% are 1.5 times those of the bottom half of the world’s population.
So where does this leave us? In wealthier nations, any hope of arresting global heating at 1.5 or 2°C demands a technical revolution on the scale of the post-war Marshall Plan. Rather than relying on technologies such as direct air capture of CO₂ to mature in the near future, countries like the UK must rapidly deploy tried-and-tested technologies.
Retrofit housing stock, shift from mass ownership of combustion-engine cars to expanded zero-carbon public transport, electrify industries, build new homes to Passivhaus standard, roll-out a zero-carbon energy supply and, crucially, phase out fossil fuel production.
Three decades of complacency has meant technology on its own cannot now cut emissions fast enough. A second, accompanying phase, must be the rapid reduction of energy and material consumption.
Given deep inequalities, this, and deploying zero-carbon infrastructure, is only possible by re-allocating society’s productive capacity away from enabling the private luxury of a few and austerity for everyone else, and towards wider public prosperity and private sufficiency.
For most people, tackling climate change will bring multiple benefits, from affordable housing to secure employment. But for those few of us who have disproportionately benefited from the status quo, it means a profound reduction in how much energy we use and stuff we accumulate.
The question now is, will we high-consuming few make (voluntarily or by force) the fundamental changes needed for decarbonization in a timely and organized manner? Or will we fight to maintain our privileges and let the rapidly changing climate do it, chaotically and brutally, for us?
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/0 ... d-urgency/
**********
Projected Collapse of Crucial Antarctic Current Met With Media Silence
JULIE HOLLAR
Projected Collapse of Crucial Antarctic Current Met With Media Silence
On the heels of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (3/20/23), which featured scientists running out of ways to emphasize how urgently deep cuts in fossil fuel use are needed, a troubling new climate study has emerged. Published in the prominent peer-reviewed science journal Nature (3/29/23), the study found that a little-studied deep ocean circulation system is slowing dramatically, and could collapse this century. One IPCC author not involved in the study declared it “headline news.” Unfortunately, science doesn’t guide US corporate media, which were virtually silent on the landmark study.
The authors modeled the effects of Antarctic meltwater on deep ocean currents crucial to marine ecosystems. Similar to the more well-studied Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) that the Gulf Stream is a part of, and which is also known to be dangerously weakening, the Antarctic overturning circulation has major planetary impacts. It pushes nutrient-dense water from the ocean floor up toward the surface, where those nutrients support marine life. The Nature study, which also refers to the current as the Antarctic Bottom Water, found that this circulation system is projected to slow down 42% by 2050, with a total collapse “this century,” according to study co-author Matthew England (CNN.com, 3/29/23).
CNN (3/29/23) was the only major US media outlet we could find covering the news that a crucial Antarctic ocean current could collapse in this century.
This is indeed “headline news,” with major impacts on the sustainability of marine ecosystems and the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, accelerating climate change. And this deep warming could cause further ice melt, which isn’t incorporated into the study’s models—meaning this could all happen even faster than their model predicts.
Yet FAIR could find no record of any US newspaper even mentioning the Nature study in the week since it came out—let alone giving it the front-page coverage it inarguably deserves. Nor did we find mentions on national TV news programs, aside from CNN anchor Michael Holmes interviewing England for the network’s 3 a.m. airing of CNN Newsroom (4/1/23). Aside from science- and environment-focused news outlets (Conversation, 3/29/23; Grist, 4/3/23, picked up by Salon, 4/3/23), almost no major US-based web outlets offered reports either, with the exception, again, of CNN.com (3/29/23), which ran a creditable article by Australian-based journalist Hilary Whiteman.
Toronto-based wire service Reuters (3/29/23), the London Guardian (3/29/23) and BBC (3/30/23) also published articles.
Climate activist Bill McKibben (Crucial Years, 4/2/23) argued that Donald Trump’s arrest, which dominated headlines the day the Nature study came out, was far less remarkable as news goes. “Him ending up in trouble for tax evasion to cover up an affair with a porn star seems unlikely only in its details,” McKibben wrote, while the Antarctic story was “one of the most important installments in the most important saga of our time, the rapid decline of the planet’s physical health.”
Last year, FAIR (4/21/22) found that after paying brief lip service to that year’s IPCC report, TV news networks virtually ignored the climate crisis for the next six weeks—when they had a chance to pay lip service to the crisis again on Earth Day. Perhaps the Nature study came too soon after the IPCC report, and corporate media had had their fill of news requiring viewers to question the grip the fossil fuel industry—a major news advertiser—has on politics. In any case, the shocking lack of coverage of Nature‘s devastating study demonstrates, once again, that corporate media’s commitment to a livable planet comes nowhere close to matching the urgency of the situation.
https://fair.org/home/projected-collaps ... a-silence/
********
An aerial view shows the storage tanks for treated water at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan Feb 13, 2021, in this photo taken by Kyodo. [Photo/Agencies]
Japan needs to reconsider wastewater discharge plan
Originally published: China Daily on March 31, 2023 by Anna Malindog-Uy (more by China Daily) | (Posted Apr 05, 2023)
\It may be recalled that after Japan alarmingly announced in April 2021 its plan to start releasing around 1.3 million metric tons of contaminated wastewater from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, countries in the rest of eastern Asia and the Pacific region protested. Environmental groups and even the Japanese people opposed it.
Yet earlier this year, the Japanese government announced that it is pressing ahead with its unilateral decision to release the radioactive wastewater from the disabled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean, starting this spring or summer.
Japan’s mulishness is disquieting and perplexing.
Those opposed to the dumping say it would be hazardous to the marine ecosystem and resources and affect the fishing industries of countries in East Asia and the wider Asia-Pacific region, such as the Philippines and Fiji. If Japan pushes ahead, the planned dumping will not only cause serious damage to the marine ecosystem and resources, but will also have an adverse impact on international public health and safety and the vital interests of the Asia-Pacific region and its people.
Nevertheless, what’s disquieting is the fact that, thus far, there has never been any precedent in the world or actual practice of discharging such a massive volume of nuclear wastewater into the sea, which makes it hard to assess the long-term effects of such planned dumping of radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean. According to some reports, no independent testing of the wastewater has been allowed or conducted thus far, which makes this whole venture a pretty risky gamble for the Japanese government.
What’s even more worrisome is the fact that Tokyo Electric Power Co, which owns the power station, claims the International Atomic Energy Agency has given the green light to proceed with the planned discharge.
Accordingly, in a briefing on Jan 20, the IAEA nuclear safety official Gustavo Caruso, who heads a special agency task force on Fukushima, said Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority has procedures in place to ensure that the discharge meets international safety standards. This is rather a dreadful statement from the IAEA, given that it has no relevant experience or even a concrete study on the possible adverse impact of such dumping.
Marine scientists and opposition groups are challenging the IAEA’s attitude. Robert Richmond, a marine biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said that Japan’s planned release of contaminated nuclear wastewater would set a dire precedent. Richmond also said that “there is a strong consensus internationally that continued use of the ocean for dumping waste is simply not sustainable”.
The United States has not openly opposed Japan’s unilateral decision, although imports of many sea products from Japan reportedly are banned. Washington seems willing to sacrifice the welfare of the wider Asia-Pacific region to prioritize its geopolitical and geostrategic interests in cahoots with the Japanese government by turning a blind eye to the risks and dangers posed by Japan’s move.
No doubt, given the uncertainty regarding adverse impacts on and risks to the marine environment, the Japanese government as an act of courtesy should at least conduct comprehensive and sufficient consultations with countries in the region to further discuss the issue and possible alternative solutions.
The unilateral plan of the Japanese government to begin dumping millions of tons of nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean needs to be reconsidered.
Moreover, the Japanese government’s plan to discharge the wastewater is akin to disregarding international law on the protection of the environment–principles that aim to curb pollution and the depletion of natural resources. The spirit and principles of international environmental law purport that we are one ecosystem, that we are interconnected and that the polluter must pay.
It should be noted that bodies of water in Asia are very much connected, and pollutants originating from the Fukushima nuclear wastewater will no doubt reach nearby areas, affecting local marine and coastal environments and people’s health. Thus, if Japan is indeed a responsible member of the community of nations, it should think twice before proceeding with its plan and prudently consult with countries that would be directly affected by such a decision.
However, Japan might not heed the call of its neighbors, probably because it has the backing of the U.S. But if something goes wrong with the plan, developing countries like the Philippines will undoubtedly be adversely affected and left alone to suffer the negative consequences.
We depend on our natural environment. When we destroy our environment, we all suffer. We should remember that environmental problems and issues alike, including the planned dumping of Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, threaten humanity and all species and warrant serious attention.
Hence, Asia-Pacific countries must talk about and oppose this critical environmental issue, which might soon cause marine pollution in the Pacific Ocean and beyond.
https://mronline.org/2023/04/05/japan-n ... arge-plan/
**********
Mexican Environmental Activist Is Found Dead In Michoacan State
Indigenous activist Eustacio Alcala, Mexico. | Photo: Twitter/ @VIM_Media
Published 5 April 2023
Eustacio Alcala had successfully prevented the opening of an iron mine that would contaminate the water resources of the San Juan Huitzontla community.
On Tuesday, Mexican authorities confirmed that Eustacio Alcala, an Indigenous activist who opposed mining activities, was found dead in a hilly area in the San Juan Huizontla community in the Michoacan state.
"Alcala's body had several gunshot wounds," the Attorney General’s Office (FGE) lamented and promised to investigate this murder thoroughly.
On Saturday, Alcala was transporting three nuns in his truck when armed men ordered him to stop the vehicle and detained him and the women. Hours later, the nuns were released. Alcala, however, remained missing for three days.
This activist had successfully prevented the opening of an iron mine that would contaminate the water resources of the San Juan Huitzontla community, where drug cartels usually extort mining companies and kill activists.
Mexico is the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists. The Global Witness non-governmental organization registered that at least 54 activists were killed in this country in 2021.
Environmental activists Antonio Diaz and Ricardo Lagunes have been missing since January. The van in which they used to travel was found riddled with bullets near where Alcala’s body appeared.
In February, activist Alfredo Cisneros, who opposed cartels-related violence and illegal logging of pine and fir forests in the Michoacan state, was also shot dead in the Sicuicho Indigenous town.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Mex ... -0002.html
April 3, 2023
Catastrophic climate change can’t be prevented without fundamental economic and social changes
by Kevin Anderson
Professor of Energy and Climate Change, University of Manchester
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) synthesis report recently landed with an authoritative thump, giving voice to hundreds of scientists endeavoring to understand the unfolding calamity of global heating. What’s changed since the last one in 2014? Well, we’ve dumped an additional third of a trillion tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere, primarily from burning fossil fuels. While world leaders promised to cut global emissions, they have presided over a 5% rise.
The new report evokes a mild sense of urgency, calling on governments to mobilize finance to accelerate the uptake of green technology. But its conclusions are far removed from a direct interpretation of the IPCC’s own carbon budgets (the total amount of CO₂ scientists estimate can be put into the atmosphere for a given temperature rise).
The report claims that, to maintain a 50:50 chance of warming not exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, CO₂ emissions must be cut to “net-zero” by the “early 2050s.” Yet, updating the IPCC’s estimate of the 1.5°C carbon budget, from 2020 to 2023, and then drawing a straight line down from today’s total emissions to the point where all carbon emissions must cease, and without exceeding this budget, gives a zero CO₂ date of 2040.
If emissions stay at their current levels, we will exhaust the 50% chance of 1.5°C in 9 years. If we begin to immediately cut emissions following the blue line, then to stay within the carbon budget for 50:50 chance of not exceeding 1.5°C we need zero global emissions by 2040. The vertical axis represents how much carbon is emitted each year – note the pandemic-related blip in 2020. (Graph: Kevin Anderson / Climate Uncensored)
Given it will take a few years to organize the necessary political structures and technical deployment, the date for eliminating all CO₂ emissions to remain within 1.5°C of warming comes closer still, to around the mid-2030s. This is a strikingly different level of urgency to that evoked by the IPCC’s “early 2050s.” Similar smoke and mirrors lie behind the “early 2070s” timeline the IPCC conjures for limiting global heating to 2°C.
IPCC science embeds colonial attitudes
For over two decades, the IPCC’s work on cutting emissions (what experts call “mitigation”) has been dominated by a particular group of modelers who use huge computer models to simulate what may happen to emissions under different assumptions, primarily related to price and technology. I’ve raised concerns before about how this select cadre, almost entirely based in wealthy, high-emitting nations, has undermined the necessary scale of emission reductions.
In 2023, I can no longer tiptoe around the sensibilities of those overseeing this bias. In my view, they have been as damaging to the agenda of cutting emissions as Exxon was in misleading the public about climate science. The IPCC’s mitigation report in 2022 did include a chapter on “demand, services and social aspects” as a repository for alternative voices, but these were reduced to an inaudible whisper in the latest report’s influential summary for policymakers.
The specialist modelling groups (referred to as Integrated Assessment Modelling, or IAMs) have successfully crowded out competing voices, reducing the task of mitigation to price-induced shifts in technology – some of the most important of which, like so-called “negative emissions technologies,” are barely out of the laboratory.
The IPCC offers many “scenarios” of future low-carbon energy systems and how we might get there from here. But as the work of academic Tejal Kanitkar and others has made clear, not only do these scenarios prefer speculative technology tomorrow over deeply challenging policies today (effectively a greenwashed business-as-usual), they also systematically embed colonial attitudes towards “developing nations.”
With few if any exceptions, they maintain current levels of inequality between developed and developing nations, with several scenarios actually increasing the levels of inequality. Granted, many IAM modelers strive to work objectively, but they do so within deeply subjective boundaries established and preserved by those leading such groups.
What happened to equity?
If we step outside the rarefied realm of IAM scenarios that leading climate scientist Johan Rockström describes as “academic gymnastics that have nothing to do with reality,” it’s clear that not exceeding 1.5°C or 2°C will require fundamental changes to most facets of modern life.
Starting now, to not exceed 1.5°C of warming requires 11% year-on-year cuts in emissions, falling to nearer 5% for 2°C. However, these global average rates ignore the core concept of equity, central to all UN climate negotiations, which gives “developing country parties” a little longer to decarbonize.
Include equity and most “developed” nations need to reach zero CO₂ emissions between 2030 and 2035, with developing nations following suit up to a decade later. Any delay will shrink these timelines still further.
Most IAM models ignore and often even exacerbate the obscene inequality in energy use and emissions, both within nations and between individuals. As the International Energy Agency recently reported, the top 10% of emitters accounted for nearly half of global CO₂ emissions from energy use in 2021, compared with 0.2% for the bottom 10%. More disturbingly, the greenhouse gas emissions of the top 1% are 1.5 times those of the bottom half of the world’s population.
So where does this leave us? In wealthier nations, any hope of arresting global heating at 1.5 or 2°C demands a technical revolution on the scale of the post-war Marshall Plan. Rather than relying on technologies such as direct air capture of CO₂ to mature in the near future, countries like the UK must rapidly deploy tried-and-tested technologies.
Retrofit housing stock, shift from mass ownership of combustion-engine cars to expanded zero-carbon public transport, electrify industries, build new homes to Passivhaus standard, roll-out a zero-carbon energy supply and, crucially, phase out fossil fuel production.
Three decades of complacency has meant technology on its own cannot now cut emissions fast enough. A second, accompanying phase, must be the rapid reduction of energy and material consumption.
Given deep inequalities, this, and deploying zero-carbon infrastructure, is only possible by re-allocating society’s productive capacity away from enabling the private luxury of a few and austerity for everyone else, and towards wider public prosperity and private sufficiency.
For most people, tackling climate change will bring multiple benefits, from affordable housing to secure employment. But for those few of us who have disproportionately benefited from the status quo, it means a profound reduction in how much energy we use and stuff we accumulate.
The question now is, will we high-consuming few make (voluntarily or by force) the fundamental changes needed for decarbonization in a timely and organized manner? Or will we fight to maintain our privileges and let the rapidly changing climate do it, chaotically and brutally, for us?
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2023/0 ... d-urgency/
**********
Projected Collapse of Crucial Antarctic Current Met With Media Silence
JULIE HOLLAR
Projected Collapse of Crucial Antarctic Current Met With Media Silence
On the heels of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (3/20/23), which featured scientists running out of ways to emphasize how urgently deep cuts in fossil fuel use are needed, a troubling new climate study has emerged. Published in the prominent peer-reviewed science journal Nature (3/29/23), the study found that a little-studied deep ocean circulation system is slowing dramatically, and could collapse this century. One IPCC author not involved in the study declared it “headline news.” Unfortunately, science doesn’t guide US corporate media, which were virtually silent on the landmark study.
The authors modeled the effects of Antarctic meltwater on deep ocean currents crucial to marine ecosystems. Similar to the more well-studied Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) that the Gulf Stream is a part of, and which is also known to be dangerously weakening, the Antarctic overturning circulation has major planetary impacts. It pushes nutrient-dense water from the ocean floor up toward the surface, where those nutrients support marine life. The Nature study, which also refers to the current as the Antarctic Bottom Water, found that this circulation system is projected to slow down 42% by 2050, with a total collapse “this century,” according to study co-author Matthew England (CNN.com, 3/29/23).
CNN (3/29/23) was the only major US media outlet we could find covering the news that a crucial Antarctic ocean current could collapse in this century.
This is indeed “headline news,” with major impacts on the sustainability of marine ecosystems and the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, accelerating climate change. And this deep warming could cause further ice melt, which isn’t incorporated into the study’s models—meaning this could all happen even faster than their model predicts.
Yet FAIR could find no record of any US newspaper even mentioning the Nature study in the week since it came out—let alone giving it the front-page coverage it inarguably deserves. Nor did we find mentions on national TV news programs, aside from CNN anchor Michael Holmes interviewing England for the network’s 3 a.m. airing of CNN Newsroom (4/1/23). Aside from science- and environment-focused news outlets (Conversation, 3/29/23; Grist, 4/3/23, picked up by Salon, 4/3/23), almost no major US-based web outlets offered reports either, with the exception, again, of CNN.com (3/29/23), which ran a creditable article by Australian-based journalist Hilary Whiteman.
Toronto-based wire service Reuters (3/29/23), the London Guardian (3/29/23) and BBC (3/30/23) also published articles.
Climate activist Bill McKibben (Crucial Years, 4/2/23) argued that Donald Trump’s arrest, which dominated headlines the day the Nature study came out, was far less remarkable as news goes. “Him ending up in trouble for tax evasion to cover up an affair with a porn star seems unlikely only in its details,” McKibben wrote, while the Antarctic story was “one of the most important installments in the most important saga of our time, the rapid decline of the planet’s physical health.”
Last year, FAIR (4/21/22) found that after paying brief lip service to that year’s IPCC report, TV news networks virtually ignored the climate crisis for the next six weeks—when they had a chance to pay lip service to the crisis again on Earth Day. Perhaps the Nature study came too soon after the IPCC report, and corporate media had had their fill of news requiring viewers to question the grip the fossil fuel industry—a major news advertiser—has on politics. In any case, the shocking lack of coverage of Nature‘s devastating study demonstrates, once again, that corporate media’s commitment to a livable planet comes nowhere close to matching the urgency of the situation.
https://fair.org/home/projected-collaps ... a-silence/
********
An aerial view shows the storage tanks for treated water at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan Feb 13, 2021, in this photo taken by Kyodo. [Photo/Agencies]
Japan needs to reconsider wastewater discharge plan
Originally published: China Daily on March 31, 2023 by Anna Malindog-Uy (more by China Daily) | (Posted Apr 05, 2023)
\It may be recalled that after Japan alarmingly announced in April 2021 its plan to start releasing around 1.3 million metric tons of contaminated wastewater from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, countries in the rest of eastern Asia and the Pacific region protested. Environmental groups and even the Japanese people opposed it.
Yet earlier this year, the Japanese government announced that it is pressing ahead with its unilateral decision to release the radioactive wastewater from the disabled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean, starting this spring or summer.
Japan’s mulishness is disquieting and perplexing.
Those opposed to the dumping say it would be hazardous to the marine ecosystem and resources and affect the fishing industries of countries in East Asia and the wider Asia-Pacific region, such as the Philippines and Fiji. If Japan pushes ahead, the planned dumping will not only cause serious damage to the marine ecosystem and resources, but will also have an adverse impact on international public health and safety and the vital interests of the Asia-Pacific region and its people.
Nevertheless, what’s disquieting is the fact that, thus far, there has never been any precedent in the world or actual practice of discharging such a massive volume of nuclear wastewater into the sea, which makes it hard to assess the long-term effects of such planned dumping of radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean. According to some reports, no independent testing of the wastewater has been allowed or conducted thus far, which makes this whole venture a pretty risky gamble for the Japanese government.
What’s even more worrisome is the fact that Tokyo Electric Power Co, which owns the power station, claims the International Atomic Energy Agency has given the green light to proceed with the planned discharge.
Accordingly, in a briefing on Jan 20, the IAEA nuclear safety official Gustavo Caruso, who heads a special agency task force on Fukushima, said Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority has procedures in place to ensure that the discharge meets international safety standards. This is rather a dreadful statement from the IAEA, given that it has no relevant experience or even a concrete study on the possible adverse impact of such dumping.
Marine scientists and opposition groups are challenging the IAEA’s attitude. Robert Richmond, a marine biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said that Japan’s planned release of contaminated nuclear wastewater would set a dire precedent. Richmond also said that “there is a strong consensus internationally that continued use of the ocean for dumping waste is simply not sustainable”.
The United States has not openly opposed Japan’s unilateral decision, although imports of many sea products from Japan reportedly are banned. Washington seems willing to sacrifice the welfare of the wider Asia-Pacific region to prioritize its geopolitical and geostrategic interests in cahoots with the Japanese government by turning a blind eye to the risks and dangers posed by Japan’s move.
No doubt, given the uncertainty regarding adverse impacts on and risks to the marine environment, the Japanese government as an act of courtesy should at least conduct comprehensive and sufficient consultations with countries in the region to further discuss the issue and possible alternative solutions.
The unilateral plan of the Japanese government to begin dumping millions of tons of nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean needs to be reconsidered.
Moreover, the Japanese government’s plan to discharge the wastewater is akin to disregarding international law on the protection of the environment–principles that aim to curb pollution and the depletion of natural resources. The spirit and principles of international environmental law purport that we are one ecosystem, that we are interconnected and that the polluter must pay.
It should be noted that bodies of water in Asia are very much connected, and pollutants originating from the Fukushima nuclear wastewater will no doubt reach nearby areas, affecting local marine and coastal environments and people’s health. Thus, if Japan is indeed a responsible member of the community of nations, it should think twice before proceeding with its plan and prudently consult with countries that would be directly affected by such a decision.
However, Japan might not heed the call of its neighbors, probably because it has the backing of the U.S. But if something goes wrong with the plan, developing countries like the Philippines will undoubtedly be adversely affected and left alone to suffer the negative consequences.
We depend on our natural environment. When we destroy our environment, we all suffer. We should remember that environmental problems and issues alike, including the planned dumping of Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, threaten humanity and all species and warrant serious attention.
Hence, Asia-Pacific countries must talk about and oppose this critical environmental issue, which might soon cause marine pollution in the Pacific Ocean and beyond.
https://mronline.org/2023/04/05/japan-n ... arge-plan/
**********
Mexican Environmental Activist Is Found Dead In Michoacan State
Indigenous activist Eustacio Alcala, Mexico. | Photo: Twitter/ @VIM_Media
Published 5 April 2023
Eustacio Alcala had successfully prevented the opening of an iron mine that would contaminate the water resources of the San Juan Huitzontla community.
On Tuesday, Mexican authorities confirmed that Eustacio Alcala, an Indigenous activist who opposed mining activities, was found dead in a hilly area in the San Juan Huizontla community in the Michoacan state.
"Alcala's body had several gunshot wounds," the Attorney General’s Office (FGE) lamented and promised to investigate this murder thoroughly.
On Saturday, Alcala was transporting three nuns in his truck when armed men ordered him to stop the vehicle and detained him and the women. Hours later, the nuns were released. Alcala, however, remained missing for three days.
This activist had successfully prevented the opening of an iron mine that would contaminate the water resources of the San Juan Huitzontla community, where drug cartels usually extort mining companies and kill activists.
Mexico is the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists. The Global Witness non-governmental organization registered that at least 54 activists were killed in this country in 2021.
Environmental activists Antonio Diaz and Ricardo Lagunes have been missing since January. The van in which they used to travel was found riddled with bullets near where Alcala’s body appeared.
In February, activist Alfredo Cisneros, who opposed cartels-related violence and illegal logging of pine and fir forests in the Michoacan state, was also shot dead in the Sicuicho Indigenous town.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Mex ... -0002.html