George Monbiot meets Shaun Spiers

George Monbiot gives the head of the countryside watchdog, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, an unforgettable grilling, asking why it opposes windfarms - but not opencast coal mines

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• campaign
• to
• protect
• rural
• england
• windfarms
• opencast
• coal
• mining
• environment
• green
• issues
• shaun
• spiers
• george
• monbiot

[52111centrumcz]

@PEL1175

cause modern LWR generators are a paramilitary dual use design - used to manufacture plutonium while co-generating electricity for civilian use (during the Cold war the fuel is remanufactured by the state and the plutonium is extracted for warhead manufacture). As such, new reactor designs specifically designed for ease of use and economic operation would be a first of a kind. Also look at LFTR and why it was stopped...makes you want to shoot random politicians >.<

[52111centrumcz]

Turn 30% of the time is about right if you look on the power tables. And "expensive" is relative - of course its more expensive than coal, gas, or even LWR nuclear, per KWh.

[david222444]

The Climate is your Master and dictator, you are simply forced to adapt. Resistance is futile.

[david222444]

The Climate is your Master and dictator, you are simply forced to adapt. Resistance is futile.

[david222444]

Atmospheric co2 enrichment for a Green Planet. The Sun now enters a Grand Minimum and society will not tolerate deep ecologists.

[humouriseverything]

@webdav1 Actually the objective is to expose the misguided priorities of the CPRE and show that while a lot of the work they do is beneficial for the environment, their stance on wind farming and lack of involvement in the regulation of coalmining is in fact very detrimental.

[PEL1175]

@Chronosaur, yes someone else mentioned Thorium to me as a possible fuel and it sounded a bit like a solution, but like you, I wonder why they've not been developed.

[Chronosaur]

@PEL1175 I've heard of other nuclear reactor designs that don't use U235, like Travelling Wave and Thorium Molten Salt reactors. U235's pretty rare, but Thorium and U238 aint. They're also meant to be a lot simpler and less bloody dangerous than the current designs (although if that's the case, why haven't they been developed already I suppose..?), and I think the chinese are looking into the latter at the moment. Look 'em up - nuclear might not be such a bad option.

[henrythesteinberg]

1:58

"Yes that's uh.... I didn't want to... hahaha.. your researchers... hahaha ha ha... well, (nervous scratching) I kinda thought you might have picked that one up,.."

[webdav1]

I personally think this is extremely poor journalism. The objective is to make the interviewee look as awkward as possible and thereby imply some great conspiracy is at work against the environment. This does not help advance our understanding of the complex issues at the heart of the environmental debate and is primarily designed to build a 'Monibot' brand of activist journalism. It is easy to criticise, especially when you are not accountable for delivering anything yourself other than copy.