25 January 2010 - Cherbourg,
France — The French nuclear industry seems
to think it's fair to ship nuclear waste
to Russia and then forget about it. They
think that keeping the waste away from the
French public will protect their glossy
image. Not as long as Greenpeace is around.
Last night three teams
of Greenpeace activists blocked a train
transporting nuclear waste to Cherbourg,
the heart of the French nuclear reprocessing
industry. From Cherbourg it was due to be
loaded onto the transport ship Kapitan Kuroptev,
destination Russia. We’ve taken action to
tell them that "Russia is not your
dumping ground."
Six Greenpeace activists
chained themselves to the railway, at two
locations en route to the fuel reprocessing
facility. A third team of Greenpeace activists
placed a truck on the rails in the centre
of Cherbourg, along with a banner saying
"Russia is not a nuclear dumping ground”.
The train came to a halt just 50 meters
short of our activists. For delaying the
transport of the illegal nuclear waste they
were taken into custody by the police.
The blocked train was
carrying 500 tonnes of depleted uranium,
just a fraction of what has already been
dumped in Russia. The French nuclear companies
AREVA and EDF claim there is nothing wrong
with these transports, that the material
is not waste but a resource that will be
processed in Russia, and returned to France
as fuel. Unfortunately that’s just not the
case.
Since 2006, 33,000 tonnes
of uranium have been exported to Russia
(including 23,540 tonnes of depleted uranium),
while only 3090 tonnes of uranium made the
opposite trip. 30,000 tonnes of waste has
been abandoned in Russia. This is in direct
contradiction with both the French law and
the European Union directive, which prohibits
the export and import of hazardous wastes.
If you read French there’s a full report
on this available here.
If this behavior sounds
familiar, it should. AREVA is an expert
in the business of running a dirty business
and leaving the waste far away. Whether
it’s dumping uranium in Siberia or mining
uranium in Niger they’ve made sure the problems
of the nuclear industry are kept well away
from France.
Another deadline, another
milestone, another lurch up the curve...
Another update from
our "Post-Copenhagen" climate
campaigner - Paul Horsman:
It is 21 years since
the first scientific assessment of climate
change was published; 18 years since the
Rio Earth Summit at which the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was
agreed. Twelve years have passed since the
Kyoto Protocol was agreed and two years
since the Bali Action plan. Each of these
passing milestones has been variously described
as ‘first steps’ and ‘ways forward’, demonstrating
commitments to protect the climate. And
with each passing milestone we have moved
further up the curve of growing greenhouse
gas emissions heading inexorably towards
catastrophic climate change.
Six weeks have gone
since the December climate summit where
the Copenhagen Accord proposed a deadline
of January 31 by which governments were
to pledge how much they were going to take
action to protect the climate. And as this
latest milestone passed on Sunday, we see
again the size of the gap between the action
needed to protect the climate and the willingness
of politicians to take this action. Politicians
clearly are still listening more to the
false honeyed whispers of industrial lobbyists
and bankers than they are to the clamour
of the millions of people calling for leadership
and action.
Some would have us believe
that because countries are making pledges
it means that the governments are taking
action. Nothing could be further from the
truth. The reality is that all they have
done is to dust-off previously stated commitments,
dress them up in letters to the UN and make
believe they are doing something to protect
the climate.
The pledges will not
even achieve one aim of the accord – keeping
global temperature rises well below 2 degrees.
The combined pledges of governments commit
the world to at least 3 degrees of warming
and beyond according to the UN’s own assessment
and takes us on an unstoppable pathway where
emissions will peak well after 2020 date
(in order to stay well below the 2 degree
threshold, emissions need to peak by 2015).
And so the Accord fails its first test.
The reality is that
to stay below a warming limit of 2 degrees
C requires industrialised countries as a
block to agree to cutting greenhouse gas
emissions by 40%by 2020 and developing countries
to agree to reducing future emission by
between 15 and 30% in the same time-frame.
The pledges made by industrialised countries
mean a reduction of only between 11 and
19%. Even worse, if credits for protecting
forests are taken into account then emission
cuts from burning fossil fuels fall to between
6 and 14%. It could almost be business as
usual for these industrial interests if
uncertainties in economic forecasts are
taken into consideration.
The accord was always
a weak political agreement and now we see
what governments have pledged – the weakness
is all the more obvious.
And what would a 3 degree
plus world have in store? Average global
temperatures are now 0.8 degrees C about
pre-industrial levels and there are already
significant climate impacts. From the melting
permafrost and glaciers, inundated islands
and deltas, drought damaged farms, and storm
battered continents. The world in the grip
of global climate change is stark indeed.
The survival of tribal
communities in Russia is already under threat
from global warming as the ancient permafrost
melts. © Greenpeace / Will Rose
In the face of such
mounting evidence, thousands of credible
scientific reports, even statements from
world leaders about the dire threat which
climate change poses - how and why such
inaction?
For over 20 years an
un-holy alliance of fossil fuel interests,
climate deniers and some governments has
been working consistently to derail the
climate talks. And the knives are out again
as the science is attacked by perverse vested
interests and governments run scared of
taking the courageous stand needed. Before,
during and since the Copenhagen climate
summit, the climate change deniers, those
who put profits before people, those who
would fiddle while the planet burns have
kept up pressure against any deal to protect
the climate. And now commentary again seems
to be gearing up to reducing further out
expectations for a fair, ambitious and legally
binding agreement.
The ground is shifting
markedly. Many governments have used the
need for a global agreement to tackle this
issue before taking their own steps as an
excuse for national inaction. Now some of
these same governments trash the global
process and say national interests are more
important.
But while national legislation
is needed to cut emissions, the global framework
is essential to ensure fairness to the most
vulnerable, the appropriate ambition for
targets and a global legal framework. The
global framework is the only place where
vulnerable countries can have their say.
Simply leaving it to the wealthier countries
– whether in the G8, the G20 or Major Emitters
Forum – is like asking Dracula to share
out the blood.
Copenhagen was a point
where millions made their voice heard. The
clamour is unstoppable and no matter what
the politicians say is practical, no matter
what the commentators advise is realistic,
and no matter what industrial interests
say is affordable – the growing voice will
not be silenced – it will be turned into
action – direct action to protect the climate....
