Off Topic Political Debate

"Green" policies are not restricted to the "green" party! Is it not a "green" political policy to chase these renewable targets? I don't care about the authors political bias or his axes to grind, what's important is weeding out the facts in the article and others and coming to an assessment of does the "Green" agenda of renewable energy by wind/solar stack up as a realistic alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear? Can it be practically harnessed and provide the foundation for a modern society or not? My position based on all the evidence I see is that 1) Climate change is not a proven or understood concept, it may or may not be adversely affecting our planet but we are still insignificant compared to nature (solar flares and volcanic activity) 2) Wind and Solar are very inefficient technologies that require significant conventional backup and when assessing full carbon cycle actually negatively impact on the environment in terms of carbon footprint (deforestation/components/access/lubricants/peat) 3) We would be better concentrating on reforestation to balance the footprint. Any excess carbon being lost to atmosphere is as much if not more a result of lack of natural secuestration rather than increased output 4) The planet cannot continue to support the population if it continues to grow as over the past 100 years. The defining point is water and a lot more effort needs to be focused on water management and birth control. Politically we should build society to strive for not a longer life but a better quality of life. The obsession with keeping hearts beating is obscene, the only ones benefiting being private care homes, pharaceutical companies and governments taking the taxes, all at the expense of the individuals being kept breathing just to show a decent "life" expectancy statistic. The strain on the NHS and other organizations caused by this obligation to maintain human existence rather than life is obscene.

 

Not in Scotland. The SNP already own it and doesn't matter whether the locals want a wind factory on their doorstep or not, the SNP will put one there!!!!

 

We've been investigating geothermal for years. It works very well in NZ and if you count ground source heating can be quite useful here too though it isn't the solution. An energy mix is the solution with cost being affordable to enable the whole of society access to heat and light as a "human right".

 

Agree completely. Any so called "green party" must have a radical population policy. 7 billion people is too many - the Earth needs that figure to halve - and then some. Never mind sitting in little local workshops to stop big bad companies - we need a controlled policy of population reduction. Until I see that at the forefront of a Green Manifesto I will know they have not grasped the real issue. The economic management that goes with that is a massive problem.

Forgive me if I quarrel with this. After my wife had her heart attack she and I are very grateful they kept her heart beating. A lot of people feel the same.

 

Don't see the problem with that myself - if faced with the choice of wind farm, nuclear power station, coal-fired power station, oil-fired power station or oil refinery in the immediate vicinity, I know which I'd prefer. There are plenty around here, as well as most houses having solar panels, a few having domestic wind turbines and some with geothermal power. The need for energy is a fact of life that we have to live with - and clean is better than dirty in my opinion.

 

I'm not saying that medical care should not sustain life for those still living a fulfilling life as indeed friends have who have had strokes and heart attacks and cancer in my inner circle. It's the sustaining of life even in the vegetative state that needs to be looked at carefully. There are instances and many of them one very close to me where humans are keeping a pulse but really suffering as a result of life sustained by medicine. My point is the distinction between sustaining life when the person can live happily and sustaining suffering life for the sake of it.

 

The point is it is not clean! The cool aid from the Greenpeace, SNP and wind farm operators is that it is the solution when that is far from the case when you look at the footprint properly and realize that it doesn't provide the base load you need anyway so you need conventional back up at higher "emergency" unit cost as well. Personally given all the options I'll take a gas fired power station with carbon capture on my doorstep any time over the others but the point is with centralized power generation the source can be zone sited rather than having to disperse across the nation ruining every piece of highland heritage we have... Add in that by going the wind route it has to be subsidized and these subsidies end up on fuel bills or taxes in our case a combination of both and you price poor families out of the ability to pay for their energy it's just a complete cluster. We'll see how long it takes before GreenPeace get off this bandwagon, I'm all for finding sustainable energy sources and those exist in our coastal waters but are not the full answer (tidal). Politicians overriding local authorities and communities to impose these money generators for foreign usually German or Scandanavian companies on areas is plain wrong.

 

OK - yes, I can agree that sustaining life where it is more existing that living does not seem always right

 

We're talking at cross purposes here - my definition of clean seems to be different from yours.

What I'm saying is that I would rather have this...



than this...

 

I find wind farms strangely attractive - but you would not want to have a wind turbine too close to you - they do make a surprising amount of noise. We had some not too far away from where we were in Wales

The real problem seems to be storage of the electricity produced by such things as solar panels and the like. There is still some way to go on development of batteries which will cope

 

My point was, refering to this article, that the idea may have been part of the Green plan, but it was here administered by a conservative government (ie. the German CDU). Germany has not had the Green Party in a coalition for the last 16 odd years, and so I don't see how they should take the blame here. Alternative energy is a very small part of the 'Green' way - and by no means the most important. Many do not believe that you can continue to produce and consume at the same rate just using alternative technology. If you take man made CO2 reductions Worldwide, then power stations make up about 30% of these direct emissions. Mobility takes up another 30% and other industrial production another 30% (all of these are rounded off). Potentially more serious are Methane emissions which are 10 times more aggressive - the main producers here being agriculture, oil production and waste disposal. Even more serious is Nitrous Oxide which is almost totally a problem of agriculture. Even if all of the electricity in the UK or Germany were produced from clean sources the actual effects upon CO2 emissions would be seriously insufficient - because agriculture and mobility are proportionally bigger problems. To actually reduce emissions to the required levels would need wholesale agricultural changes, more self sufficiency and bio diversity of products, mixed culture and rotation etc. It would also need a revolution in public transport - the idea that we can have the same amounts of traffic on the roads just using electric cars is an illusion. We would need better insulation of all homes in Britain to try to save energy as well as producing it in different ways. There are so many changes needed (too much freight on the roads and the seeways, too many internal flights, too many exotic holiday destinations etc.) to be a consequent 'Green' is to be a critic of both growth and globalization (at least in terms of goods). Little wonder then that most 'Greens' concentrate solely upon alternative energy because it can, at least, create some jobs, and sounds more attractive to voters than going on about all the things they should give up. The German government wants the 'greening' of Germany to also come from below ie. that towns and cities have the means to calculate their own carbon footprints and also feel themselves responsible (the carbon footprint of eg. Engelskirchen is 11.7 tons CO2 per head per year). Every individual is also capable of calculating their own footprint online - not a bad idea if anyone has time.

 

The, for want of a better word, industrial sized ones that I've experienced certainly make a noise, but I'd describe it as a 'soporific beat' more than anything else. The free-standing domestic ones barely make a noise at all, and if the roof top ones here make a noise, it's drowned out by the gulls.

Agree about the storage problem with solar panels - and would also add the problem of the proliferation of installation contractors. They do seem to have a habit of installing them, making a quick profit then going bankrupt - leaving the householder high and dry when something does go wrong. I've had a few neighbours caught like that - when their connection to the national grid goes wrong, there's no-one prepared to fix the problem.

 

I agree that this is a massive challenge. Germany is the only industrialized country in the western World with a declining population - which up to now has been seen as a problem, but maybe calls for other ways of thinking in the future.

 

So we might say Germany is ahead of the game. What we need to do is find a system that results in living standards/quality of life/opportunities for "happiness" all increasing in a declining population and also how to decrease population without resorting to making the place we live unattractive to migrants (forcing emigration), forcing death by poverty or any other draconian or drastic measures (quotas etc.). I actually believe we all on here have a common objective just different opinions about how best to get there and what is counter to those objectives. Listing top 5 "wishes" but not pretending to have all the answers 1) Good Health 2) No crime 3) Full education available to all 4) Healthy Work-Life balance available to all 5) Sense of Self Worth available to all. I seriously don't think any of the tories on here want to see the destruction of the world to create money, I don't think the socialists want to see the destruction of industry to create a lazy beholden society. Whilst at University I started to rewrite Marx and Engels Communist manifesto as even in my leftie days I saw that the principles were outdated. I still believe we need a new system but it needs to be a development of what has been proven to work. The Nation is not so broken that we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater but we do need to add a bit of bubble bath to improve things, we'll see how things progress.....

 

A few years ago, there was talk by the Environment Minister at the time of looking at the possibility of using tidal power here but that's as far as it got.

 

In a way I agree Leo. The best thing any person can do for the environment is to refrain from having children. But how on earth can any political party in a democracy have that in their manifesto and expect votes. The difficulty for the Greens is trying to dress up the needs of environmental protection and CO2 reduction in a way which is appealing for the electorate.

 

Easily solved - send childless couples to Butlins for a couple of days, including travelling in a family carriage, and nobody will ever have a child again!

 

Well - for a start you reverse the tax breaks we currently have encouraging over-population. If you get a large dog it can cost as much to keep as a small child but you don't expect someone else (i.e. the state) to pay for it so why do we give child benefit, free nursery places and so forth. It is of course radical but the Greens are not shy on that score. China had to adopt such a policy - of course it is not a democracy so is easier. HOwever to perhaps give only tax breaks for the first child - if you must give any at all could be a start.i

People also need to stop burying their heads in the sand and pretending it is not mankind causing global warming.

 

But the problem is not really one of over population, because population is only in relation to resources. The USA is not over populated for its size but they are the biggest polluters on our planet (per head that is). Other countries pollute less with very much higher population densities. In order to counter global warming a whole range of measures would be necessary all in unison with each other. If any party were to tell their electorate that they needed to use less electricity, or use it only over the day, eat less meat, avoid inland flights or exotic holidays, use public transport more often, buy locally grown food, leave their car at home and buy clothing only once every 6 months etc. etc. then I do not think that such a party would win many votes. So, the Green Party concentrates more on alternative energy (windmills and electric cars) because it satisfies the illusion that we can go on consuming just as before but with different technology. The Green Party is not geared up to winning elections but rather to taking votes away from the established parties and influencing them through those means - it is a testament to their success that all the major parties in Germany have taken over so many Green policies as their own.