3-31-08, 9:50 am

Original source: Morning Star

There is no doubt, judging by comments from environmentalists, politicians, trade unionists and any other concerned group you can imagine, that a low carbon economy and massive reductions in the production of greenhouse gases are essential to the future of the world. It is, in short, one of the few things that everyone seems to agree about.

However, that basic agreement is just about as far as it gets. Go into the realms of how we get there and everything seems to go pear-shaped.

Solutions come from every direction and take on every political hue imaginable.

From hi-tech answers such as nuclear fission or fusion, to their antithesis in power consumption cutbacks, from windfarms and wave power to clean coal and carbon capture, even to market-based emissions-trading deals, it seems that everyone has a different answer to the problem and, inescapably, all these so-called answers serve the vested interests of those promoting them.

Some can be written off as simply self-serving or based on faulty reasoning. Others can be dismissed as hopelessly idealistic. For many so-called solutions, the power output levels are uncalculated and optimistic in the extreme. And some are even based on futurology rather than existing science.

But certain things are clear. Among them is the simple fact that any answer must base itself firmly on the politics of the diverse world that we live in.

Calls for consumption reductions emanating from environmentalists in the developed world will clearly not be acceptable to countries struggling to feed their people and drag themselves out of the underdeveloped legacy of colonialist imperialism.

Small-scale solutions will not go down well with huge nations with equally huge power requirements.

And transnational capitalism will never willingly abandon profit and economic dominance, preferring to generate the cheapest power possible and thus the highest return on investment, leaving the environmantal costs to be met by others.

Also, any answer that bases itself on reductions in existing living standards would be political suicide for the party that proposed it, whatever their hue.

In the long term, nuclear fission appears to be untenable for reasons of safety and irradiated material storage. Nuclear fusion would seem to be the best hope, but that stretches into the realms of futurology at the moment and its safety implications, while appearing positive, are largely unknown. In more isolated locations, sun, wind, water and wave power may offer some, although not all-encompassing, help.

Emissions trading should really be written off as just another way for capitalists to make a quick buck, rather than a solution with any logic behind it.

But any real answer, at least in the short to medium term, will inescapably rely on resources that countries have to hand.

Which is what gives the recent TUC clean coal task group report such importance.

Britain has huge reserves of coal, as have China, India and the US and many other big energy consumers and, for different reasons, are unlikely to abandon using them, so technology must be utilised to make them environmentally acceptable.

And that technology in itself becomes a commodity which can, by its export, be a positive factor both in the world's struggle for survival and the economy of this country. With nuclear fusion perhaps a generation away, clean coal and carbon capture are options that deserve at least to be investigated and developed.

From Morning Star