End of an Era

If you can tear yourself away from the synthetic culture wars that pass for political debate in this country, there was a real milestone to note in Japan this week. For the first time since 1970, Japan stopped producing nuclear power. May 5th was the date of the last day of nuclear power generation when Tomari No. 3 in Hokkaido was shut down. Japanese nuclear plants produced thirty percent of the nation's electricity. Thousands of anti-nuclear protesters have forced this action on the government in the deadly aftermath of the Fukushima triple meltdowns. Government has not ruled out restarting reactors if Japan suffers electricity shortages.  But Japanese nuclear activists are adamant about keeping nuclear power in its unexpectedly sudden grave. Nuclear decisions in Japan are made on the basis of local consensus. Industry and government leaders have been arguing for a restart of Ohi units 3 and 4 located in sparsely populated Fukui prefecture, north of Osaka. Without the restarts, Kansai Electric Power will be 16.3% short of peak demand this summer based on government estimates. 67% of the prefecture opposes the restart according to an Asahi Shimbun newspaper poll. Toru Hashimoto, mayor of Osaka, has become a standard bearing for citizens opposing nuclear power, calling the reactivation "absolutely unreasonable". 63% of polled Japanese do not trust government safety standards.

Japan operated 54 reactors, 17 of which were damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami or where shut down at government request.
On Wednesday Japan's government approved a $12.6 billion bailout for TEPCo, the operator of Fukushima Daiichi. The expected move to temporary state control will prevent TEPCo from collapsing. The government will become the majority shareholder and force the company to follow a restructuring plan that includes management changes, rate increases, and $41.4 billion in cost cutting. The TEPCo monopoly provides electricity to northeast Japan including Tokyo.

The the latest news confirming that new nuclear construction is economically unsustainable is the conclusion of French developer EDF that the cost of building a nuclear power plant is £7 billion, up from £4.5 last year. According to a Citi Group analyst that cost makes building new plants in the UK commercially nonviable, exceeding the cost of offshore wind power. Only with taxpayer subsidization such as that available in the United States makes nuclear economic sense.  A tentatively approved loan guarantee for the new Vogtle plants in Georgia is running into problems because owner-operator Southern Company wants all financial risk of construction shifted to taxpayers.  The nuclear power generation industry is clearly an industry whose moment under the sun has past.

Creature Feature: American Avocet

gary.thesix

The Klamath Basin has been such an conservation mess for so long, US Person missed posting this story earlier and that was remiss of him. The lack of rain required officials managing the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge to drastically reduce the amount of water available in the wetlands for migrating waterfowl and wading birds this past winter. The largest die off in a decade resulted with up to 20,000 birds dying of avian cholera. The reason for the natural disaster is water is also reserved for irrigation and the preservation of fish habitat. Overuse of a scarce resource has resulted in a systemic imbalance in the Basin that has exited for decades. The Refuge was the first established in 1908 by President Teddy Roosevelt, and it has lost 80% of its original wetlands; even so commercial farming is allowed by the USF&WS within the refuge boundaries without benefit to wildlife. Lack of rain and prior water rights on the Upper Klamath Lake left the wetlands dry during peak migration season. Volunteers and staff picked up 3,500 carcasses between February and April to prevent the disease from spreading further. About 2 million birds use the Klamath Basin during their migrations. Snow goose, American coot and widgeon, northern pintail and white fronted goose were the species most impacted by mismanagement.

Chart of the Week: The Broken Economy

The Obamanator will have to do some fast talking and fancy walking on the campaign trail because 'Kid Economy' {17.06.11} is doing some damage to his midsection. Obamanator answers the re-election bell this week, and the charts below tell the score. Housing prices are down, reflecting not only a faltering economy, but the drag on the market of thousands of underwater debtors trying to unload their major lifetime investment. The increase in middle class wealth provided by the real estate boom of the oughts has exploded. Increasing home equity masked the real structural inequalities of the American economy. Only the rich are still getting rich in the current economy and only the rich are still spending; for a GDP that is 70% consumer spending that is bad news. The Dow Jones casino hit a four year high on May Day. Nine cities and both composite Schiller-Price indexes hit nine-year lows last month:

The recent increase in jobs during the mild winter months, hailed by the CMM as a sign of economic recovery, was an artifact of climate change induced optimism more than an increase in economic activity. Most of the April gains were in low-wage sectors like retail and restaurants where jobs are often temporary. Lost family income jobs are not being replaced as companies have learned to cut costs with less labor:

For the first time since the Great Depression, there has been no job growth for a decade.  That statistical fact makes this recession different from all others:

Productivity gains are going to the owners of capital, not workers. Stimulus spending is a dirty word in Washington, a city suffering from the latest inducement of budget austerity delusion. The sycophants of the plutocracy would rather let you eat cake than, for example, pass a financial transactions tax or end Repugnant tax cuts for the rich which could pay for a greener economic rebuilding. When the major spending cuts take effect in 2013, America's stalling economy will fall off the cliff, says Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary. Someone should explain the concept of marginal utility of money to politicians, if you can get their attention away from the cameras.

'Toontime: Mission Accomplished, Redux

[credit: Rick McKee, Augusta Chronicle]
Wackydoodle sez, "I got me some parts too I can show y'all!"

One of the least attractive characteristics of American democracy, as such, is: politicians pandering to the lowest common instincts of the masses. There is an unfortunate strain of perverse exhibitionism in the American character and apparently our "warrior" President is not an exception. The head on the wall belonged to a frustrated, isolated and increasingly irrelevant leader of international jihad, but has cost America dearly to put it there.

[credit: Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune]

In case you have buried your head in your television set or other distraction, it is the "Land of the Free" that now has a President who claims doit du roi to kill his subjects suspected of terrorism without due process of any kind; allows Wall Street malfeasance that endangers the national economy to go unpunished while thousands of fraudulently induced home mortgages are foreclosed without debtor relief; authorizes surveillance of law-abiding citizens to an extent that rivals the security apparatus of Cold War Germany (East and West); accepts the policy of New York City police to stop and search without probable cause (600,000 stops last year of mostly Blacks and Latinos); obtains 1,745 secret warrants in 2011 for wiretaps and searches from the secret "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court" which did not reject any of the requests, an increase over requests in 2010 of 1,579; and permits the use of excessive force on citizens naive enough to take their grievances against the proto-facist state into the street as they were lead to believe they had a constitutional right to do. News item: A San Diego college student was detained and forgotten in a DEA cell for four days without food, water or toilet. To prevent dehydration he was forced to drink his own urine. Daniel Chong was not charged with any crime. Yes, it's a brave new Amerika, and it is not a beautiful.

Chickens Are Not Machines

Several states have passed humane laws prohibiting or regulating the use of battery cages for laying hens. The egg industry is fighting back by introducing into Congress a bill intended to keep hens where they think they belong, in cramped metal cages. In these metal boxes they live out an unimaginable existence without the ability to stretch their legs and wings or engage in normal behavior, laying eggs until they die. Supporters of the legislation, HR3798, claim that cages will be "enriched" and lead to eventual banning of battery cages by 2030. No so, according to the Human Farming Association. The bill's effect if passed by Congress would be to preempt state humane laws that already prohibit the use of inhumane cages. The bill also purports to improve air quality in egg factory warehouses, but in actuality does nothing to reduce harmful levels of ammonia. It merely adopts the United Egg Producers standards which are too high for animal health. Under the bill's provisions producers could label their eggs with the misleading label "enriched cages" when the cages are nothing more than larger metal cages. Finally the industry proposal has no criminal penalties for egregious cases of abuse and cruelty and shifts control of egg factories to the captured federal agency, US Department of Agriculture. Wonder why free range eggs taste better? The simple answer is, the chickens are happier and healthier. US Person uses only cage-free eggs. You should too. Help stop the "rotten egg" bill before industry succeeds in inserting it into the 'must pass' farm bill without discussion or debate. Go to StopTheRottenEggBill.org and tell your representatives to vote no on HR 3798.

More Dead Elephants in Central Africa

Poachers slaughtered twenty-two elephants of Garamba National Park in Democratic Republic of Congo last month. The carcasses were discovered by aerial survey and ground patrols conducted after collared elephants monitored daily by satellite did not move for twenty-four hours. All the elephants were killed within a day or two of eachother and included eighteen adults and four calves. The poachers were apparently experienced and armed with AK-47 assault rifles, killing the elephants with a few shots to the head. A substantial reward has been offered for information and villagers were interviewed to obtain information about the poachers. The park is located in a politically volatile area where the armed forces of several countries and the Lord's Resistance Army are operating. The Park shelters two to three thousand remaining elephants, one of the largest populations in Central Africa. Until this incident the Park was spared the onslaught of mass slaughter across West and Central Africa.

Idaho Obsessive War on Wolves

Conservationists saw it coming. The federal delisting of grey wolves has resulted in in unethical and unconscionable slaughter of wolves in Idaho, the most virulent wolf-hating state. Almost half the state's wolves, four hundred, have been killed in one year. Idaho wants to drive down the wolf population to an extremely low level of 150. That figure is not based on biological science, but on the human greed for elk and the revenue generated by elk and other big game hunters. Federal officials were naive to rely on Idaho officials' representations to maintain between 518 and 732 wolves, and the Obama administration was complicit in a poltical decision to delist wolvesin the Northern Rockies by doing nothing to stop Congress from taking such unprecedented action. The state has returned to its traditional policy of treating a ecologically necessary predator as vermin to be eradicated. This policy means no quotas on the number of wolves killed in most of the state, wolf killing for 8-10 months of the year including denning season in some areas, using aerial slaughter to wipe out entire packs. If wolves were people, Idaho's irrational wolf policy is genocide*. Help Defenders of Wildlife, help wolves by putting political pressure on Idaho Governor "Butch" Otter. Sign the Defenders petition to stop the slaughter now or post a message on the Governor's Facebook page.

 *in stark contrast that justifies the use of strong language, the citizens of Michigan, a state with a wolf population of about 550 living in the Upper Peninsula, responded to a poll conducted by Michigan State and Michigan Technological Universities. 82% agreed wolves have value even though 78% of residents contacted also believed wolves could be hunted if biologists concluded the population could sustain a hunt. Nothing in the name of sportsmanship or management justifies the harsh, inhumane treatment Idaho is imposing on Canis lupis residing within its borders.