Sure they campaigned against nuclear, but that doesn't mean they approve of whatever other means the EU has been using as an alternative, as they themselves say on their website[1].
I'm sure if they got their way we wouldn't have nuclear or "bad" biofuels, and would just be paying a higher tax rate to scale up our sustainable energy production. That the EU has been dropping nuclear power without that investment in sustainable energy isn't Greenpeace's fault.
1. https://www.greenpeace.org/archive-eu-unit/en/campaigns/Clim...
It is all very well to say that orangutans _should_ be more important than a standard of living, but in practice people will say one thing and vote in a completely different way when they are actually tested. Orangutan are not important compared to keeping families struggling between financially viable and non-viable on the good side of the margins.
* Producing aluminium (Apple products) * Producing & storing food (Haber process is energy -> fertiliser @ ~1-2% of worlds energy, refrigeration will also be a big deal) * Transport (of food and goods) * Heating (probably a bigger deal in places like Europe)
Energy is secretly quite fungible - eg, we can burn fossil fuels directly for grid electricity and use grid electricity as a substitute for fossil fuels if the price differential between the two gets large.
If general energy costs go up, food prices go up. That is the most obvious link between energy prices and poverty, but there are other less clear ones.
"Well, good," I think, "sounds like exactly what we need."
We are generating 4x the electricity we were in just the early 1970s, that sort of increase isn't sustainable and we're already seeing consequences of our actions. Unless a fleet of alien ships show up in orbit and charitably give us a bunch of fusion reactors... we've got to start making some pretty radical changes in our lives.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/historic...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
I keep saying "nuclear", you keep saying "no". So I'm not going to consider myself part of the problem.
Uhhhh, I never said no to nuclear. I said at best it's a bandaid.
We have a few decades to make some very considerable changes, maybe two centuries to find alternative means of energy (fusion, mining asteroids for PV and battery materials etc as there's a very finite amount of the materials needed for manufacturing batteries and panels on earth too).
People like to say nuclear is our savior but, at current energy production levels, with a moderate estimate for continued growth, there's maybe 100 years of fuel there. Nuclear just isn't a solution for the world's energy needs, it however is a GREAT solution for generating considerable amounts of power in small spaces (ice breakers, submarines) and for portable power for emergencies like with the Russian floating nuclear power stations (Google the Akademik Lomonosov).
At least you have not made the mistake of inclusion "waste" as a problem in the same post.
Breeder reactors solve this. Yes, fuel will be significantly more expensive because of them. But all these "issues" with nuclear (except capital intensivity, that will likely stay) will go away.
Two firms said they were willing to build offshore wind farms for a guaranteed price of £57.50 per megawatt hour for 2022-23.
This compares with the new Hinkley Point C nuclear plant securing subsidies of £92.50 per megawatt hour.
Palm oil for biofuel/heating constitutes 55% of palm oil imports, but food and feedstock usage accounts for 40-45%, so it's still a significant area of use
Understandably a campaign in this particular area is going to be more visible to the end consumer because of the companies that it targets.
And everything is political.
Where did you get that from? Greenpeace has a history of working with corporations to improve their practices and promoting the efforts of corporations to engage in sustainable production:
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/greener-electronics-2...
https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/mcd/sustainability-old/libra...
This is necessary if they want public support because the general public tend to look at matters much further away then immediately under their nose as being nothing they can do anything significant about, so it is hard to get them engaged even if they actually care.
Furthermore, from a cynical sounding but unfortunately true PoV: if you can bring an issue down to "this product/company you deal with every day" many social influencers will jump on the band wagon even if they don't really care...
It is not specifically that they target retail brands over all other organisations, but that those are the campaigns that get most public pushing & traction so are the ones you are exposed to more commonly.
> while staying silent when governments destroy the environment intentionally or through badly conceived regulation.
This is demonstrably not true, and I shall prove my point by providing as many well researched references as you have for your assertion... :-)
Less facetiously: your own post contradicts this point by mentioning their strong opposition to nuclear power (while I understand their stance I disagree with being as dogmatic: it is dangerous but the danger is understood and (if well managed until other tech is more ready in a generation or two) offers a less damaging solution overall than other practical options in the near/middle term, and some arguments I've seen include significant scientific misunderstanding or misrepresentation).
A strong anti-nuclear stance is hardly just going after retail brands.
I think a lot of greens are wary of nuclear power as they see it as a front for nuclear weapons (don't forget the 'peace' in Greenpeace's name!).
Environmentalists generally advocate decentralised solutions that give people autonomy (e.g. rooftop solar). Nuclear power is basically the opposite of that.
First, mining uranium is not exactly environmentally friendly and those involved in the mining process are at a considerably higher risk of lung and non-lung cancers.
Second, it takes about 10 metric tons of raw uranium to make enough low enriched uranium to generate 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. If you take known reserves, and estimated undiscovered reserves, we only have 200ish years worth at current energy demands.
Energy demands increase over time, for example we are generating 4x the energy we were in the early 1970s and more and more people are being able to afford electronic devices, if you go adding electric vehicles in worthwhile numbers you'll see a rapid spike as well so if we switched the entire world over to uranium based power, we might have 50 years worth.
Even if you then use the waste from those reactors, via a different process like YC funded Oklo Inc is attempting to do using nuclear waste as an energy source, you still might only buy the world a century of clean nuclear energy.
All we need are a couple of centuries to develop better technology than nuclear. We don't need it forever. It buys us time until we can develop storage and eliminate the need for fueled baseload power entirely.
Hey buddy, the mining isn't much cleaner for the lithium, the cobalt, the REEs, the copper, or really anything required for PVs or the batteries which store their energy. And at least most of the uranium supply is in developed countries.
Heck if you actually factored in the externalities then coal/oil/gas would also not be economical.
"Meanwhile, global warming lurches ahead. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow. So do solar and wind power. But do you know how much of the world’s primary energy comes from fossil fuels today? It’s 81 percent—the same as in 2006."
I didn't check the numbers by myself, but it sounds reasonable: while renewable sources grow, the consumption grows as well. So maybe we need nuclear power too in addition to solar/wind/etc? I don't see too much alternatives around.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18411991
[2] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-we-nee...
Nuclear isn't an option, it's simply too expensive compared to renewables.
Here in The Netherlands there's pressure to close the last coal power stations. The liberals (i.e. Republicans minus the religious and racist blocks) have been pushing for new nuclear power stations only for the energy suppliers themselves to turn around and call them lunatics because renewables are better.
Sure, let's ignore energy storage and subsidies altogether. I would believe e.g. solar thermal in Spain to be cost-effective, but these empty claims of "cheap renewables" are tiring.
Then they were against the dumping of nuclear waste at sea.
I don't get that either, seems like the ideal way to get rid of it. Cheap, secure and with negligible impact on people or the environment.
Here's a starter for 10:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-eu-climatechange-palmoil/e...
Interestingly the figure quoted here is half rather than 60%, and it seems the EU want to phase it out entirely, which might explain Greenpeace's "targeting of food companies" and relative lack of apparent interest in biofuels (assuming that's a thing).
What I'm interested in are the sources that the author is using so that I can read them, and then compare to searches I might conduct myself.[1]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0oa3Qiz5tw
[1] https://study.com/academy/lesson/comparing-and-contrasting-s...
Sometimes when you are honestly trying to convey some information, people who are contrary are just shouting you down. It's usually better to ignore them because otherwise you end up going down a rabbit hole of their choosing. But, at least for me, if I see that someone is genuinely interested in exploring the subject I'll usually go the extra mile and prepare the information I have. Sometimes it leads me to find out I'm wrong, and I'm always grateful for the prompting.
Agree. To me it almost feels like a pre-programmed response/reaction or, at best, something that might be said to try and be funny, which can be frustrating depending on the context.
Greenpeace has been targeting European food companies over palm oil where the majority of the increased palm oil demand from Europe that has directly caused the clearing of rainforest to meet this demand, has been for biofuels because the EU had a mandatory biofuels component in fuel. This biofuels policy was driven by anti-nuclear organisations like Greenpeace, and yet they blame food producers whose demand has actually been sustainable without the need for massive clearing out of forests before biofuels came into the picture.
The EU has now moved to ban the use of palm oil for biofuel, but it's only being phased out slowly until 2030. This is being replaced by rapeseed oil in Europe. Unfortunately protecting the seeds of this crop was one of the biggest uses of neonicotinoid pesticides which is blamed for the decline in bee populations. The EU now also put a moratorium on using these pesticides so now older and more harmful pesticides are being used instead and with the increased demand I am worried about the impacts we'll see in the future.
Yet Greenpeace targets food companies. It's because Greenpeace is a political organisation, their purpose is to be anti-corporation and they just use the environment just as a tool to that end. They target retail brands while staying silent when governments destroy the environment intentionally or through badly conceived regulation.