Earlier this year, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband ended years of silence
from the Government as to how they are going to address the issue of
climate change, and how they plan to replace Britain’s aging power
plants, many of which are nearing the end of their lifetime,
threatening to plunge the country into darkness due to a lack of
electricity. The Government’s answer lies in a technology called
"Carbon Capture and Storage", or CCS, which they claim will be the
silver bullet that simultaneously kills the problems of global warming
and national energy supply.

This article raises some concerns about CCS as part of the ongoing discussion inside the Labour movement about socialism and our natural resources.We welcome any comments on this contribution and the issues it raises.

On 23rd March 1989 the oil tanker Exxon Valdez left normal shipping lanes and smashed into the Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Within hours, the once mighty vessel had spilled over ten million gallons of oil into the icy waters: the largest oil spill in ever recorded in US waters.Over the coming months, around eleven thousand square miles of open sea became contaminated. Local wildlife – many species of which were rare or endangered elsewhere – perished in vast quantities. News reports brought back footage of over 1,300 miles of shoreline turned black and scattered with dead or dying fish, birds, and seals.

The
European Union set up an Emissions Trading Scheme as a market solution to deal
with pollution. Pollution is of course, overwhelmingly generated by big
business (‘market’) activities. Now the scheme has turned around to bite them.As a result
of the crisis, polluting companies have found themselves strapped for cash. So
they’ve cashed in their carbon credits for short term readies.