The Guardian reports this morning: The dispute between energy firms and the government over the level of tax paid for offshore UK drilling dramatically escalated on Sunday with British Gas threatening to shut down an important gas field on the Irish Sea. Centrica, which owns British Gas, closed the Morecambe Bay field for routine maintenance and warned
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The Guardian has reported: Japan has raised the severity level of its nuclear crisis to the maximum seven, putting the emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant on a par with Chernobyl. Officials from the nuclear and industrial safety agency (Nisa) confirmed that the crisis level had been raised from five to seven on the
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On Saturday I wrote a blog entitled This is not just nuclear melt down – it’s the next world financial crisis too. The usual right wingers (in the main) rolled out to say there was no risk of nuclear melt down in Japan and that I’d got everything wrong. Even yesterday there were economic commentators
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I have noticed that UK discussion on the threat from nuclear power in the wake of the Japanese crisis concentrates on reactor design. I have yet to see discussion of the combination of environmental threat combining with nuclear risk creating a UK crisis. But it could, very easily. I have always found it bizarre, for
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A nuclear power plant in Japan is failing – part has already exploded. The melt down of the core is being discussed. It’s been my nightmare since realising the folly of Sizewell and nuclear power as a teenager living in Suffolk. If that melt down happens – and I sincerely hope it does not –
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I’ve just blogged a letter sent to the FT by some of the leaders of the UK’s financial services industry in which they say: If the only question is, “Is it legal and profitable?”, then all that matters is that what is done complies with the regulations in force and makes a profit for the
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My Green New Deal colleague Jeremy Leggett is a world expert on peak oil. As he’s written today: In the run up to the UK election, evidence of an imminent global oil crunch has continued to build, un-noticed by the majority of people, almost entirely uncommented on in the election campaign. The CEO of a
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Society ignores the oil crunch at its peril | Jeremy Leggett | Environment | guardian.co.uk . This time the warning [of an impending crisis] is not limited to a prescient few individuals. Major British companies, led by Virgin, Scottish and Southern and Stagecoach, are flagging the danger, in today’s report from the UK industry taskforce
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A young hamster doubles its weight each week between birth and puberty. But if it grew at the same rate until its first birthday, we’d be looking at a nine billion tonne hamster, which ate more than a year’s worth of world maize production every day. There are good reasons why things don’t grow indefinitely.
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