Environment Forum

from The Great Debate UK:

The safest form of power: Everything in moderation

By Morven McCulloch

The ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in north-eastern Japan, seriously damaged by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami, has led to anti-nuclear protests in several countries and forced governments to rethink their energy policies.

The UK currently has 10 nuclear power stations, representing 18 percent of the country’s energy supply according to Energy UK. Should British Prime Minister David Cameron, like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, reverse his position on the safety of nuclear power?

Environment and climate scientist Lord Julian Hunt told Reuters in a video interview that although the situation at the Fukushima plant is an “extremely serious event,” there are risks to consider with every type of power.

Hunt says: "I think the difficulty about a public debate is to weigh up very short-term risks with longer-term risks that happen all the time.

“Take for example coal, which is still used very widely in India, China and Denmark (80 percent of Danish power comes from coal). The coal is mined... which leads to massive air, water and ground pollution. A million people die a year from air pollution, according to the World Health Organisation figures, and that’s a global figure. So there are risks associated with fossil fuels, let alone the question of climate change.

“Part of the strategy has got to be to consider how climate change itself is affecting conditions for different sorts of energy supply. Because we really can't predict everything, and all possible interactions, it seems to me to be a strong argument for continuing to have an energy mix and to invest in new kinds of technology.”

Appropriately enough, it’s National Tsunami Awareness Week

The U.S. government has announced this as National Tsunami Awareness Week, starting just days after a disastrous tsunami powered over Japan’s northeast coast. Not that anyone necessarily needed reminding.

This week’s advisory, which urges U.S. residents to be prepared for a damaging series of waves, was scheduled before the March 11 Japanese catastrophe, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is the second annual observance of Tsunami Awareness Week. It’s too soon to tell if there might be a pattern emerging: last year’s observance came not long after a giant wave hit the Chilean port of Talcahuano following an 8.8 magnitude quake along Chile’s coast.

Here’s how the Japanese tsunami spread its force across the Pacific:

While the United States may not seem like a prime tsunami target, the Hawaiian Islands and Alaska have long been susceptible. NOAA notes the United States has more coastline than any country on Earth and is in proximity to several major fault lines. Any coastline is potentially in a tsunami’s path.

Because the danger from tsunamis can’t be eliminated, NOAA is concentrating on preparedness, including its main tsunami website. President Barack Obama stressed early warning systems in a statement this week.

“As we offer our assistance to those impacted by this tragedy, we also renew our commitment to ensuring preparedness along our shores,” Obama said. “Efficient warning systems and awareness in coastal communities are vital to protecting Americans in at-risk areas of the country.”

Haiti’s tragedy belongs to the environment

This commentary by Stephan Faris originally appeared in GlobalPost. The views expressed are his own.

Most people wouldn’t consider an earthquake to be an environmental issue. But while the tremors that shattered Haiti early this month have nothing to do with the island’s degradation, the extent of the suffering they unleashed is a direct result of the country’s ecological woes.

The reason can be seen from the sky. The devastated nation shares its island with the Dominican Republic, but misfortune always seems to strike on its side of a border that is demarcated by an abrupt shift from lush green to bare brown. While the Dominican Republic has largely managed to preserve its trees, Haiti has lost 98 percent of its forest cover.

In 2004, Hurricane Jeanne struck the Dominican Republic, and killed 18 people. In Haiti, where the storm didn’t even make landfall, more than 3,000 lives were lost under floodwater and mudslides. Deforestation had left the slopes too weak to be able to retain the downpour. But while some of the extra body count can be attributed to barren hillsides giving way, the true cause goes deeper. The country’s environmental troubles have become entangled in its economic and political problems, making all of them harder to fix.

It’s no coincidence that Haiti is both the poorest country in the western hemisphere and the most environmentally devastated. Decades of poverty, population growth and near anarchy have stripped the countryside of its forests and split farms into small, infertile plots. “What you see in Port-au-Prince — the concentration of people in the slums, which creates violence, which creates disease — it’s because the people cannot produce more in the countryside,” Max Antoine, executive director of Haiti’s Presidential Commission on Border Development, told me when I visited the country in 2007.

If deforestation has made the country poor, the resulting destitution exasperates the environmental degradation. Forests disappear. The slopes lose their soil. Farm land slips away. Entire villages disappear under mudslides. Roads and bridges are wiped away. The slums continue to swell. The country sinks deeper into poverty. Pressed to survive, another farmer chops down another tree to sell in the city as charcoal. “It’s not a vicious circle,” said Philippe Mathieu, the Haiti director for the Canadian charity Oxfam-Quebec. “It is a spiral. Each time you make a turn, you have less space.”