Renew Extra Weekly

A powerful new US film from Michael Moore has been doing the rounds. Directed by Jeff Gibbs, this full length documentary challenges just about all aspects of environmentalism as currently practiced in the USA, and by implication elsewhere. Paralleling some other deep green critiques , and drawing on Ozzie Zehner’s work , it claims that we have been misled into believing that renewables like wind and PV can save the day, whereas the reality is that their construction (and in some cases operation) requires fossil fuel, as well as other dangerous materials. And despite the widespread deployment of renewables, emissions have not fallen, and coal use continues. Biomass is if anything even worse: it’s seen as basically being about burning trees for profit, with a net rise in emissions, loss of biodiversity and destruction of carbon sinks. The film attacks the Sierra Club and other major US environmental groups and individuals for their alleged complicity in all this and in what it de...

Nuclear power was at one time touted as the brave new energy option, and attempts are still made to promote it as a non-fossil energy option, but it is nowadays facing major problems and a slow down around the world. For example in the USA , old plants are unable to compete with gas and renewables and only one new plant is under construction.   Some see that as a big problem for the US: ‘Losing a low-carbon source of electricity like nuclear power is going to make decarbonisation even harder than it already is. Nuclear has risks, it’s not a perfect technology, but there have to be trade-offs.’ So said the US Union of Concerned Scientist , looking at the case for public subsidies to keep some old   uneconomic nuclear plants going a bit longer. That view wasn’t well received : patching up old potentially unsafe plants was a poor use of money, which could be better spent on renewables and energy efficiency upgrades. That was the answer to climate change .   It’s a fam...