Environmental risks over energy demand in our ‘Big global Society’

The risks associated with nuclear power have reared recently following the Fukushima disaster in Japan, with the fall out travelling thousands of miles to America and even reaching our shores. There has been widespread public concern around the globe. Interestingly Germany has kept several power stations shut whilst they decide whether to cease production entirely and cancel all future plans for new nuclear power stations and China paused their plans for new nuclear power stations. In the UK our government still supports nuclear power and is subtly reducing planning restrictions on future developments through de-regulation.

Another looming disaster is gaining some support in the UK. Shale gas extracted from rocks by inserting water, chemicals & sand under pressure to fracture rocks (known as fracking) and release gases has also come under fire from environmentalists over the potential risks of ground water pollution and chemical releases, interestingly the French have now banned commercial ‘fracking’ but still support nuclear power.

 We appear to be at a stage in our energy consumption cycle where high environmental risks associated with the extraction and use of energy reserves are considered acceptable, whilst simultaneously knocking back large scale PV and not investing adequately in other green lower risk & low carbon technologies such as wave power. This is an international problem as most of Europe has now stopped PV feed in Tariffs excluding the UK.

The best way forward for our ‘big global society’ is to collectively use less energy and support green lower risk technologies. To stay up to date on the environmental issues keep an eye on Friends of the Earth activities & campaigns.