Obama's fracked-up climate strategy will guarantee global warming disaster

Barack Obama
Barack Obama addresses students at Georgetown University. 'I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that's beyond fixing,' he said. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

President Obama's much-anticipated speech at Georgetown University unveiling America's new climate change strategy offers welcome re-affirmation of the US government's recognition of global warming dangers. Plans to regulate coal plants, beef up defences against flooding and sea level rise, increase energy efficiency for homes and businesses, and fast track permits for renewable energy on public lands, are critical steps forward.

But the new climate strategy remains fatally compromised by Obama's unflinching commitment to the maximum possible exploitation of fossil fuels - a contradiction that has set the world on course to trigger unmitigated catastrophe in coming decades.



Indeed, one study found that:



In the mix of Obama's plan are nuclear power and 'clean coal' technologies, all of which have huge questions marks over their ability to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. And though Obama promised to only ratify the Keystone XL pipeline if its "net effect" does not "significantly exacerbate" carbon pollution (which it already does), exploiting America's domestic shale oil and gas reserves through fracking remains an integral part of the new plan.





What about nuclear power? A 2008 study in the International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology pointed out that the construction, mining, milling, transporting, refining, enrichment, waste reprocessing/disposal, fabrication, operation and decommissioning processes of nuclear power all release fossil fuel emissions. Also, nuclear power is not efficient enough to replace oil, gas and coal. To do so nuclear production would need to increase by 10.5 per cent every year from 2010 to 2050 - an "unsustainable prospect" requiring a "cannibalistic effect", whereby nuclear energy itself must be used to supply the energy for future nuclear power plants.

Study author Dr. Joshua Pearce further argued last year that unless nuclear power adopts "improved technology and efficiency through the entire life cycle to prevent energy cannibalism during rapid growth", the industry could "face obsolescence" compared to renewables. And a new report by the Berlin-based Energy Watch Group warns of a "high risk of a uranium supply gap for nuclear reactors before 2020."



The financial and energy costs of CCS are therefore meteorically unsustainable.

