Working like a slave

When millions of people (children and adults alike) are told to be living like slaves in the 21st century, it is not just rhetorical to refer to harsh work conditions in some parts of our planet. It is literal. Despite so many UN treaties and conventions (the last was UN 1956 Convention) banning slavery, there are still many cases of slavery practice. Millions of people are sold as objects and forced to work for extremely low salaries or no salary at all, living at the mercy of their “owners”. This is constantly reported by such associations as Anti-Slavery International, fighting against slavery since 1839, in any of its forms: from traditional slavery, in which people literally belong to an owner, to forced labour or sexual exploitation of children.
Contrary to other issues such as environmental problems, we all feel that we are not to blame for slavery because it happens very far from our home and we can do little about it. But we do not need to have slaves at home to be an accessory to slavery. Just by consuming products manufactured or grown by slaves, we are made accomplice in this savagery, we do our bit to keep things the way they are. If you are against slavery, you should first get to know where and how your purchases are produced, and you should make sure that your shopping is not part of this act of injustice. To make things easier, Anti-Slavery provides you with a useful tool: the Products of Slavery campaign. In its website, you can find a world map with the countries where slavery is still present and the products affected by this practice. Then, you will realise that a large majority of labourers in Brazil’s pineapple plantations are children aged 10 to 12 and 20% of them get no financial remuneration. Or that some factories in China manufacturing sport shoes use forced labour in prisons, without being paid. Or that, due to poverty, in Burkina Faso some children are sold by their parents as slaves to work in cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast. Or that India holds the world record of products manufactured by slaves (18 products) and it is one of the countries where bonded labour (forced labour to repay a loan) is most widespread.
As consumers, we should be aware that we do not live in a bubble: our every little action has an effect, for better or worse, on thousands of people. Our pocket money is a very powerful weapon and we should use it conscientiously.

Sources:

1. Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slavery Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/slavetrade.htm
2. Anti-slavery web site: http://www.antislavery.org/english/
3. “Products of slavery” campaign: http://www.productsofslavery.org/
4. Slavery Footprint, another very interesting web site on this issue: http://www.slaveryfootprint.org/

Some bits and pieces of antinuclear economics

Antinuclear awareness increases as we get a fright: the latest in France! After Fukushima catastrophe, the French authorities maintained that this could not happen in French nuclear plants because they are safer, but now the debate is open again. And, as always, whenever there is a nuclear accident, more supporters of antinuclear power appear. 

This debate is always based on the danger posed by nuclear plants and nuclear residues, which are dangerous for thousands of years. However, those who advocate in favour of nuclear energy use economic arguments: nuclear energy is reported to be cheaper, to create many job posts and, unlike oil, there is no dependency on other countries. Therefore, the debate seems to be focused on what should prevail: environmental and safety arguments (and thus, nuclear plants should be shut down) or economic arguments (and thus, promoting atomic energy). 

However, this debate is nonsense, because all these economic arguments are false, as nuclear energy cannot be defended from any point of view. Let’s take a look at all these economic arguments to check whether they are true or false.

1.- First, we have been told that nuclear energy is the cheapest available energy at present, so in times of crises we cannot afford getting rid of it. The figures reported by nuclear lobbies truly prove that nuclear plants generate energy at really low costs, but they do not take into account the whole process. They calculate the cost of energy without taking into account the cost of building a plant, maintaining the premises and managing residues. In this sense, the MIT report of 2003 revealed the investment cost, the building time and the useful life of a nuclear plant, concluding that nuclear energy cannot be competitive because it is far too expensive. And this study does not include the costs of residue management –nuclear residues should be stored in a safe place for thousands of years until they are no longer dangerous. According to ENRESA (the public company in charge of the safe management, storage and disposal of radioactive wastes produced in Spain), residue management will amount to more than 13 thousand million euros only until 2070 in Spain. Therefore, nuclear energy is not as cheap as allegedly reported. 

2.- Secondly, it is reported that nuclear plants generate job posts. This is irrefutable, but the question should be if nuclear energy generates more job posts that any other energy model. According to a report of 2008 by the Spanish trade union CCOO, renewable energies generated 89,000 direct job posts and 99,000 indirect job posts in 2007 in Spain, whereas nuclear energy did not get up to 10% of these figures. 

3.- And thirdly, nuclear power is alleged to allow energy independence because countries do not need to import oil, gas or coal, as nuclear energy can be produced in situ. However, this is not the case of Spain (and many more countries), at least since the year 2000, when the mine in Saelices el Chico (Salamanca) shut down, being the last uranium mine in the country. At present, Spain imports 100% of the necessary uranium from such countries as Niger, which makes us dependent of international countries in the same way as with oil. Sure, but at least Nigerien people can be energetically independent, can’t they? Well, not exactly, because building nuclear plants (unlike most renewable energies) requires high technologies only available in developed countries. Moreover, the high costs of maintaining nuclear plants cannot be afforded by Third World countries. In short, in a nuclear world, poor countries should buy energy from rich countries. 

Do you need more arguments? How many nuclear accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima do we need to be convinced that nuclear plants should be shut down? Our future prospects are clean, renewable energies, accessible to everybody.

For further information, read this Greenpeace report about the lies of nuclear industry. 

Sources:

1. Sarkozy defends nuclear power after Fukushima catastrophe: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14913133,00.html
2. Massachussetts Institute of Technology: http://web.mit.edu/
3. List of the most significant nuclear accidents:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents
4. Greenpeace report The economics of nuclear power:
   http://www.greenpeace.org/international/PageFiles/24160/the-economics-of-nuclear-power.pdf

Transition towns or transition network

There are so many evidences of the on-going climatic change that, at present, people who deny the climatic change are just a minority driven by dark interests and without any scientific base –like those who deny the Holocaust or the evolution of species. However, being aware that we are destroying our planet does not seem enough to change things, which is at least surprising. Somehow, it is as if we were expecting that someone finds a solution for us and (without spending too much money or changing our everyday routines) new renewable, non-pollutant sources of energy are discovered, leaving our planet clean from all our debris. 

Our problem is that the current energy and consumption model can last for many more years and the alternatives may arrive too late. These are not the words of a prophet of the doom, but just the way things are at present. Therefore, a change is needed from now on, even if it is only implemented locally (in other words, at home).

With this idea in mind, some hundred villages and towns worldwide carry out a social experiment on a massive scale: transition towns or transition network. The idea is quite simple: organizing networks of citizens who wish to provide a local response for the shortage of oil, being aware that the release of greenhouse gases triggers a climatic change. These transition towns are like thousands of small laboratories looking for self-sufficiency in terms of food and energy. Grassroots citizens cannot make up a hydrogen fuel cell or put an end to the excess of CO2 emissions nationwide, but we can do plenty of other things, such as eating products grown nearby (or even grow your own products), improve the re-use cycle and the recycling of our own residues, or advocate for the renewable energies at a smaller scale. And if these actions are carried out in small (or not so small) communities, the effects are multiplied and it is easier to make society aware of it. 

Some towns, neighbourhoods or villages join this network to share creative resources with the rest of transition towns. Little by little, with simple changes, we can make really good progress. Take a look at some examples of transition towns and their significance in the documentary film In transition 1.0. 

The end of oil may be a disaster, but it may also be a chance for a positive and even pleasant change.

Sources

Climatic change denial: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial

World network of transition towns: http://www.transitionnetwork.org/

Post at Delivering data about eating local food:

http://www.deliveringdata.com/2011/08/food-without-borders.html

Guide to turn your village or neighbourhood into a transition town (pdf document): http://www.transitionnetwork.org/sites/default/files/TransitionInitiativesPrimer%283%29.pdf

Documentary film In transition 1.0: http://transitionculture.org/in-transition/

Invasive species

Every year, new animal and vegetal species are included in the Red List of Threatened Species.
There have already been five major extinction events in our planet and it seems that the sixth is on-going. The first five extinctions were not our fault (basically because we did not exist yet) but it seems that we are to blame for this sixth extinction event.
However, this post is not about the threatened species, but just the opposite: the so-called invasive species. Because of us, these threatening species are developing too much, to the point that they threaten the biodiversity of our planet. Not so long ago, oceans and mountains were natural borders preventing some species of flora and fauna from spreading around the Earth (or at least making it really difficult). However, this is no longer so. Some species, with our help, have invaded new ecosystems to the point that they threaten the rest of species and the whole ecosystem itself.
To raise awareness about the significance and complexity of such invasions, the Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG), under the auspices of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), draws a list with one hundred invasive species threatening biodiversity. This list is not fully-comprehensive list, and the listed species are not even the most dangerous ones either, but there are one hundred illustrative examples of varied nature. Absence from the list does not imply that a species poses a lesser threat.
This list should be compulsory reading material at school, not only to let people know the name of these one hundred species, but also to make people realise that it is very easy to destroy an ecosystem, even if we have good intentions.
Let’s see a couple of examples to better illustrate this post.
- In the 1950s, due to an overfishing in the Lake Victoria, the Nile perch was introduced. Native fish was traditionally sun-dried but the Nile Perch has a higher fat content so it needs to be smoked (increasing firewood demand), resulting in a deforestation of nearby woods. This deforestation caused soil erosion and greater residues sedimentation into the lake, which in turn resulted in an invasion of waterweed and water hyacinths –the later is also included in that list. Outcome: more than 200 fish and plant species have disappeared from this lake, and perch and hyacinths colonized the whole place.
- The read-eared slider turtle has recently become the most common marketed water turtle kept as pet. Indeed, you guess it right: we are talking about those little cute turtles we see in many aquariums. But when people get tired of it, the turtle is released into the drains (or into a river, for those cases of sensitive people). And the rest goes without saying: these turtles can transmit diseases and, on top of that, they are omnivorous so they predate small invertebrates and plants in the ecosystem –the same invertebrates and plants which feed other species, thus affecting the whole ecosystem.
Besides these two examples, the list also includes wild board, deer, rabbit, five species of ants, giant toad, Australian blackwood, maritime pine or mussel. When reading through this list, however, there is only one species missing: us.

Sources:

1. UICN’s red list of threatened species: http://www.iucnredlist.org/
2. Major extinction events: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event
3. About invasive species: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species
4. Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG) by UICN: http://www.issg.org/
5. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN): http://www.iucn.org/
6. List of the 100 World's Worst Invasive Alien Species: http://www.issg.org/database/species/search.asp?st=100ss
7. Nile perch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile_perch
8. Water hyacinth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_hyacinth
9. Red-eared slider: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-eared_slider