( Tomdispatch.com) – It’s an ocean of conflict and ecological decline. Despite its vast size — 1.3 million square miles — the South China Sea has become a microcosm of the geopolitical tensions between East and West, where territorial struggles over abundant natural resources may one day lead to environmental collapse.

While the threat of a devastating military conflict between China and the United States in the region still looms, the South China Sea has already experienced irreparable damage. Decades of over-harvesting have, for instance, had a disastrous impact on that sea’s once-flourishing fish. The tuna, mackerel, and shark populations have fallen to 50% of their 1960s levels. Biologically critical coral reef atolls, struggling to survive rising ocean temperatures, are also being buried under sand and silt as the Chinese military lays claim to and builds on the disputed Spratly Islands, an archipelago of 14 small isles and 113 reefs in that sea. Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam have also laid claim to many of the same islands.

Perhaps no one should be surprised since oil and gas deposits are plentiful in the South China Sea. The U.S. government estimates that 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are ready to be extracted from its floor. Such fossil-fuel reserves, some believe, are helping to — yes, how can anyone not use the word? — fuel the turmoil increasingly engulfing the region.

This year, the Washington-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative reported that several countries are pursuing new oil and gas development projects in those contested waters, which, the organization notes, could become a “flashpoint in the disputes.” Between 2018 and 2021, there were numerous standoffs between China, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian countries over drilling operations there, and fears are building that even more severe confrontations lie ahead.

The United States, of course, lays the blame for all of this on China, claiming its aggressive island-reclamation projects violate international law and “militarize an already tense and contested area.” Yet the U.S. is also playing a significant part in raising tensions in the region by agreeing to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines as part of its Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) security pact. The goal, no doubt, is to restrain Chinese activity with the threat of Western military might. “Next steps could include basing U.S. nuclear-capable platforms — such as strategic bombers — in Australia as well as cooperation on hypersonic missiles, cyber operations, [and] quantum computing,” writes Derek Grossman for the Rand Corporation, the “paramilitary academy” of American defense policy. (And, in fact, the U.S. is evidently preparing to deploy the first nuclear-capable B-52s to that country soon.)

On August 25th, in partnership with Australia and the Philippines (where Washington is getting ready to occupy bases ever closer to China), U.S. Marines practiced retaking an “island” supposedly captured by hostile forces. In that exercise,1,760 Australian and Filipino soldiers and 120 U.S. Marines conducted mock beach landings and air assault maneuvers in Rizal, a small town in western Palawan province in the Philippines, which does indeed face the South China Sea.

“A whole lot of damage can be done to Australia before any potential adversary sets foot on our shores and maintaining the rules-based order in Southeast Asia, maintaining the collective security of Southeast Asia, is fundamental to maintaining the national security of our country,” said Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles of the joint military drills. 

Like AUKUS itself, those war games were intended to send a message: China beware. The resources of the South China Sea aren’t for the taking.

But here’s a question to consider: Is all this international saber-rattling only about fossil fuels? Trade routes through the area are also vital to the Chinese economy, while its fisheries account for 15% of the reported global wild fish catch. Yet neither its well-used shipping routes, necessary as they are to the flow of goods globally, nor those fisheries fully explain the ever-heightening controversy over the region. Having exploited that sea’s wild fisheries for decades, China is now becoming a global leader in fish farming, which already accounts for 72% of the country’s domestic fish production, It’s also increasingly true that fossil fuels have a distinct shelf life. But is it possible that another set of natural resources, arguably more crucial to the economic future of the global superpowers, could be adding to the growing territorial furor over who possesses the goods in the South China Sea?

Mining the Deep Blue Sea

You could call it a race to the bottom, with China leading the charge. In December 2022, that country unveiled its Ocean Drilling Ship, a deep sea mining (DSM) vessel the size of a battle cruiser set to be operational by 2024. Instead of weaponry, however, the ship is equipped with advanced excavation equipment capable of drilling at depths of 32,000 feet. On land, the Chinese already hold a virtual monopoly on metals considered vital to “green” energy development, including cobalt, copper, and lithium. Currently, the Chinese control 60% of the world’s supply of such “green” metals and are now eyeing the abundant resources that exist beneath the ocean’s floor as well. By some estimates, that seabed may contain 1,000 times more rare earth elements than those below dry ground.

It’s difficult to believe that devastating the ocean’s depths in search of minerals for electric batteries and other technologies could offer a sustainable way to fend off climate change. In the process, after all, such undersea mining is likely to have a catastrophic impact, including destroying biodiversity. Right now, it’s impossible to gauge just what sort of damage will be inflicted by such operations, since deep-sea mining is exempt from environmental impact assessments. (How convenient for those who will argue about how crucial they will be to producing a greener, more sustainable future.)

The U.N.’s High Seas Treaty, ratified in March 2023, failed to include environmental rules regulating such practices after China blocked any discussion of a possible moratorium on seabed harvesting. As of 2022, China holds five exploration contracts issued by the U.N.’s International Seabed Authority (ISA), allowing the Chinese to conduct tests and sample contents on the ocean floor. While that U.N. body can divvy up such contracts, they have no power to regulate the industry itself, nor the personnel to do so. This has scientists worried that unfettered deep-sea mining could cause irreparable damage, including killing sea creatures and destroying delicate habitats.

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“We’ve only scratched the surface of understanding the deep ocean,” said Dr. Andrew Chin, a scientific adviser to the Australian-based Save Our Seas Foundation.

“Science is just starting to appreciate that the deep sea is not an empty void but is brimming with wonderful and unique life forms. Deep sea ecosystems form an interconnected realm with mid and surface waters through the movement of species, energy flows, and currents. Not only will the nodule mining result in the loss of these species and damage deep sea beds for thousands of years, it will potentially result in negative consequences for the rest of the ocean and the people who depend on its health.”

Others are concerned that the ISA, even if it had the authority to regulate the budding industry, wouldn’t do it all that well. “Not only does the ISA favor the interests of mining companies over the advice of scientists, but its processes for EIA [environmental impact assessment] approvals are questionable,” says Dr. Helen Rosenbaum of the Deep-Sea Mining Campaign.

This brings us back to the South China Sea, which, according to Chinese researchers, holds large reserves of “strategically important” precious metals. China has already been fervently scouting for deposits of the polymetallic nodules that hold a number of metals used in virtually all green technologies.

“Learning the distribution of polymetallic nodules will help us to choose a site for experimenting with collection, which is one of the main goals of the mission,” said Wu Changbin, general commander of the Jiaolong, a submarine that discovered just such polymetallic nodules in the South China Sea.

Unsurprisingly, the U.S., lagging behind China in acquiring minerals for green technologies, has been keeping close tabs on the competition. In 2017, a Navy P3-Orion spy plane conducted repeated flyovers of a Chinese research vessel near the island of Guam. Scientists on the ship were allegedly mapping the area and planting monitoring devices for future deep-sea exploration.

The story is much the same in the South China Sea, where the U.S. has conducted numerous surveillance operations to follow Chinese activities there. In May, an Air Force RC-135 surveillance plane was intercepted by a Chinese J-16 jet fighter, causing an international uproar. Without providing any justification for why a U.S. spy plane was there in the first place, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken quickly pointed the finger at China’s recklessness. “[The] Chinese pilot took dangerous action in approaching the plane very, very closely,” claimed Blinken. “There have been a series of these actions directed not just at us, but in other countries in recent months.”

While these quarrels no doubt have much to do with control over fossil fuels, oil, and natural gas aren’t the only resources in the region that are vital to the forthcoming exploits of both countries.

Capitalism and the Climate

Across the globe, oil and coal are increasingly becoming things of the past. A report released in June 2023 by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggested that renewables were “set to soar by 107 gigawatts (GW), the largest absolute increase ever, to more than 440 GW in 2023.” The natural resources supplying this global surge in renewables, like copper and lithium, are becoming the popular new version of fossil fuels. Markets are favoring the phase-out of climate-warming energy sources, which is why China and the United States are forging ahead with mining critical minerals for renewables — not because they care about the future of the planet but because green energy is becoming profitable.

China’s foray into the global capitalist system and the ruins left in its wake are easy enough to track. In the late 1970s, China’s leaders liberalized the country’s markets and opened the floodgates on foreign investment, making it —  at an average clip of 9.5% per year — one of the fastest-growing economies ever. The World Bank described China’s financial boom as “the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history.” It’s no surprise, then, that energy consumption exploded along with its economic gains.

Like many of its global competitors, China’s economy still relies heavily on carbon-intensive fossil fuels, especially coal, but an ever-growing portion of its energy portfolio is made up of renewable energy. Steel-making and vehicle manufacturing now account for 66% of China’s energy use, transportation 9%, and residential use 13%. And while coal is still fueling that economic engine in a major way — China uses more coal than the rest of the world combined — the country has also become a (if not the) world leader in renewables, investing an estimated $545 billion in new technologies in 2022 alone.

While China uses more energy than any other country, Americans consume significantly more than two times that of the Chinese on an individual basis (73,677 kilowatts versus 28,072 as of 2023). And while the U.S. uses more energy per person, it also gets less of its energy from renewables.

As of 2022, the U.S. government estimated that only 13.1% of the country’s primary energy was produced through renewable sources.  Even so, the energy transition in the U.S. is happening and, while natural gas has largely replaced coal, renewables are making considerable inroads. In fact, the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Biden in early 2022, earmarked $430 billion in government investment and tax credits for green-energy development.

The World Economic Forum estimates that three billion tons of metals and fine minerals will be needed for the world’s energy transition if we are to reach zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 — and that number will undoubtedly only grow in the decades ahead. Of course, investors love to cash in and the forthcoming explosion in the mining of green metals on land and in the world’s waters will surely be a windfall for Wall Street and its equivalents globally. BloombergNEF (BNEF), which covers global markets, claims that the demand for key metals and minerals for the energy transition will grow at least fivefold over the next 30 years, which represents something like a $10 trillion opportunity. At stake is the mining of critical minerals like lithium and traditional metals like copper, which will be used in power generation, electrical grids, energy storage, and transportation.

“[T]he energy transition could lead to a super-cycle for the metals and mining industry,” says Yuchen Huo, a mining analyst for BNEF. “This cycle will be driven by massive expansions in clean energy technologies, which would spur demand growth for both critical minerals and traditional metals.”

It should be no surprise, then, that countries like China and the United States are likely to battle (perhaps all too literally) over access to the finite natural resources vital to the world’s energy transition. Capitalism depends on it. From Africa to the South China Sea, nations are scouring the globe for new, profitable energy ventures. In the Pacific Ocean, which covers 30% of the Earth’s surface, the hunt for polymetallic nodules is prompting island governments to open their waters to excavation in a significant way. The Cook Islands has typically issued licenses to explore its nearby ocean’s depths. Kiribati, Nauru, and Tonga have funded missions to investigate deposits in the Clarion Clipperton Zone, a 1.7 million square mile area stretching between the island of Kiribati and Mexico.

“This [deep sea] exploration frenzy is occurring in the absence of regulatory regimes or conservation areas to protect the unique and little-known ecosystems of the deep sea,” contends Dr. Rosenbaum of the Deep-Sea Mining Campaign. “The health and environmental impacts of deep-sea mining will be widespread… The sea is a dynamic and interconnected environment. The impacts of even a single mine will not be contained to the deep sea.”

According to those who want to mine our way out of the climate crisis, such highly sought-after metals and minerals will remain crucial to weaning the world off dirty fossil fuels. Yet, count on one thing: they will come at a grave cost — not only geopolitically but environmentally, too — and perhaps nowhere will such impacts be felt more devastatingly than in the world’s fragile seas, including the South China Sea where major armed powers are already facing off in an unnerving fashion, with the toll on both those waters and the rest of us still to be discovered.

Copyright 2023 Joshua Frank

Tomdispatch.com

( Clean Energy Wire ) – The G7 group of influential economies have set up an international climate club to support the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement, with a focus on pushing the climate-friendly transition of the industry sector.

The club is open to other countries and aims to raise climate action globally, the G7 stated in the agreed terms of reference. “Focusing in particular on the decarbonisation of industries, we will thereby contribute to unlocking green growth,” the group said in a statement following a video conference of the country’s leaders.

In the climate club, committed countries could become “international drivers for emissions reduction in industry,” said economy minister Robert Habeck. “We want to bring climate-friendly basic materials, such as green steel, to the market quickly, and to improve their opportunities internationally.” Overall, the club would be built on three pillars: climate mitigation by working towards a common understanding of how different measures can be made comparable, industry decarbonisation, and boosting international ambition through partnerships and cooperation.

The G7 asked the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) to host an interim secretariat.

Already at their 2022 summit meeting in the Bavarian Alps earlier this year, G7 leaders agreed to establish the climate club, a move that was seen as a win for chancellor Olaf Scholz, as he had been advocating it for some time. However, experts at the time said a lot remains to be done in defining what the club will actually do.

Initially, the climate club concept put a much greater focus on a common and uniform CO2 price among member countries. However, the idea was largely abandoned because it was seen as unrealistic to implement it, as key countries like the U.S. currently have no plans to implement a nationwide carbon price, let alone agree to international schemes.

All texts created by the Clean Energy Wire are available under a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)”

Clean Energy Wire

American military leaders from all branches of the armed forces strongly dissented from the decision to use the bombs, some before August 1945, some in retrospect, for both military and moral reasons. On Armistice Day 1948, Army General Omar Bradley captured the soulless militarism ruling the US government: “Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”

Who are the “ethical infants,” the “we” who “know more about war than… about peace, more about killing than about living?”

Not the 122 Countries

that voted in 2017 to approve the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, despite heavy pressure by nuclear nations, foremost the United States, not to do so. By August 2022, 66 countries have ratified the Treaty; many more are in the process of doing so. Consider this a marathon for disarmament to outpace the current insane nuclear arms race in which all nine nuclear-armed countries are, in lockstep, upgrading their weapons.

Not the US Conference of Mayors

a hugely influential group, representing 1,400 US cities of more than 30,000 citizens, that in August 2021 unanimously adopted a resolution calling on Washington to embrace the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a step toward finally ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction.

Not the Majority of the American Public

which, according to the 2020 Chicago Council Survey, believe that no country should be allowed to have nuclear weapons. These include majorities of Republicans (54%), Democrats (78%) and Independents (64%).

Not Climate Scientists

who recently committed civil disobedience, desperately warning that we have only a few years to stabilize emissions and then reduce them in order to avoid climate catastrophe. They were ignored by mainstream press and their western governments, which have focused exclusively on Russia’s war against Ukraine. As a consequence of that war, the U.S. has undertaken new drilling for oil on federal lands, while it has been failing miserably to meet its goal of reducing climate change emissions 50% below 2005 emissions by 2030.

Not Veterans for Peace

who, while holding differing opinions about the roots of the ongoing war in Ukraine and the relative culpability of Russia, US and NATO, are unanimous in ending the conflict as soon as possible.

“Many of us continue to suffer physical and spiritual wounds from multiple wars; we can tell hard truths. War is not the answer – it is mass murder and mayhem. War indiscriminately kills and maims innocent men, women and children. War dehumanizes soldiers and scars survivors for life. Nobody wins in war but the profiteers. We must end war or it will end us.”

Not the World Food Program:

whose director David Beaseley rages against an unprecedented food crisis for hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa as a result of Covid, climate crisis, and the lack of grain and cooking oil from Ukraine and Russia. “We are facing hell on Earth…The best thing we can do right now is end the damn war in Russia and Ukraine and get the port open in Odesa.”

Not the Bees

The bees
Do not stop
Collecting pollen
When humans
Murder each other
With guns.
The bees think:
How strange,
How low
On the evolutionary scale
Must those humans be,
That they haven’t yet
Figured out
How to make honey
Or peace.
Bees by Alden Solovy

Not the Trees

which communicate, share nutrients and water, and act to protect each other from pests and other threats by releasing repelling chemicals. Trees connected in forests by underground networks of fungi live far longer lives than isolated trees.

Who, then, are the “ethical infants” who “know more about war than… about peace, more about killing than about living?”

The Masculinized, Militarized Nuclear Nations

among them Russia for its resort to war against Ukraine and US/NATO determined to bring Russia down by feeding the scourge of war with billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Ukraine.

The Weapons Industry

Public Citizen released a new report estimating that military contractors’ contributions to US Congressional members in 2022 “could see a nearly

450,000% return on their investment.”

****

The upgrading of nuclear weapons by nine countries and morbid fantasy of a military solution to the Russian-Ukraine conflict risk life on Earth. Only determined diplomacy, only ethical giants can save us from that.

Bio

Pat Hynes, a former Professor of Environmental Health at Boston University, is a board member of the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice and a member of Women’s International League for Peace and Justice. Her recently published book is Hope, But Demand Justice.

The Indo-Pacific region, which includes 24 nations and stretches from Australia to Japan and from India to the U.S. west coast, is home to both the largest concentration of humanity and the greatest source of global emissions. In 2020, the region produced 16.75 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the consumption of oil, gas and coal — more than all other regions worldwide combined.

Success in the global effort to keep global warming below 2 C and stop catastrophic climate change depends on the region to move away from coal and other fossil fuels. Yet at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, China and India proposed countries agree to “phase down” coal instead of “phase out.”

Insufficient financing and the need to increase total energy availability — especially as more sectors become electrified — remain among the structural challenges to energy transitions around the world. China, however, is currently in a better position than the West to assist the Indo-Pacific due to geography, trade dynamics and its own clean tech sector. This could reorient economic networks and shift the balance of power in the region.

As a researcher in the field of green-industrial strategy, I am worried that the democratic world is increasingly losing ground to China in this emerging geo-economic arena. Unless the West provides an alternate network to help the region meet its energy transition needs, it risks ceding the economic alignment of the Indo-Pacific region to China’s government.

Decarbonization

A recent Bloomberg report demonstrated that many Indo-Pacific states can’t meet their 2050 energy transition needs from domestic onshore solar and wind generation. Energy imports have long been a feature of regional politics, but the economics of the energy transition change existing dynamics, favouring fixed-grid integration over more flexible liquid energy imports.

It costs less, in many cases, to build large grids that deliver energy as electrons compared to the added costs of using an energy carrier like hydrogen, which might need to be imported, to meet clean energy needs. Already the Indo-Pacific is moving in the direction of being “wired up,” as demonstrated by the proposed 3,800-kilometre-long “sun cable” to connect Australian solar resources with energy markets in Singapore.

The most efficient course of decarbonization for many East Asian states is to expand their grid connections to their neighbour’s, but this is marred by geo-security risks. Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam, for example, might be less willing to stand up to Beijing if most of their electricity ran through China. And does Japan really want to meet its renewable energy needs by routing power through Russian grid connections?

In addition, much of the industrial capacity for key green technologies and resources required for Indo-Pacific countries to tap their own renewable resources is based in China. A whopping 70 per cent of global lithium cell manufacturing capacity is found in China, and Chinese firms are responsible for the production of 71 per cent of photovoltaic panels (through a supply chain riddled with the usage of Uyghur slave labour).

Meanwhile, a recent White House report put Chinese firm ownership of global cobalt and lithium processing infrastructure at 72 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively.

Export polluting industries

China’s dominance in the production of clean energy technologies is also bolstered by the success of the nation’s trade networks. China is already the largest source of trade for most countries in the region, and through its Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing is increasingly providing financing for regional infrastructure.

The nature of Chinese infrastructure investments through the initiative has, so far, been damaging to global efforts to combat climate change. China had been the largest financier globally of coal plants, following a development pattern established by wealthier countries (western and non-western), of exporting polluting industries to poorer nations.

However, President Xi Jinping, in keeping with his endorsed vision of ecological civilization, has made improving the sustainability of China’s trade networks a priority. China’s established trade networks within the region provide a foundation for an increasingly Sino-centric economic orbit, and will likely be flipped to distribute clean energy infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific.

Energy transitions

It’s important the West develop its own green foreign investment strategy to provide Indo-Pacific states a choice of infrastructure as they transition their economies. Giving Indo-Pacific countries, especially energy-poor South and East Asian states, the option to purchase low-carbon technology and resources from a variety of sources will alleviate pressure to concede to Chinese foreign-policy.

Over the long term, the West must focus on developing supply chains in solar and and lithium-ion batteries to balance out Chinese capacity in these markets. However, there are a range of energy transition technologies that western states hold a competitive advantage in, and that could be the focus of a development strategy for the region — starting right now. Investments should, for instance, immediately focus on lowering the costs of exporting green hydrogen by maritime routes.

Australia and Canada both have favourable renewable energy resources to produce green hydrogen, with Canada a leader in the development of hydrogen fuel cells.

Many Indo-Pacific countries have opportunities to generate power from sources beyond wind and solar, with Indonesia and the Philippines already market leaders for geothermal. When it comes to wind, U.S. and European wind turbine manufacturers share about 60 per cent of the market.

In June, G7 leaders announced the Build Back Better World (B3W) partnership, which aims to use their financing potential to help low- and middle-income countries meet an estimated US$40 trillion in infrastructure needs.

It is too early to speculate on the success of the B3W, but its visible actions have been limited to scoping tours in Latin America and West Africa, with another planned for South East Asia.

However, the B3W could look to the recent financing deal between the U.S., Germany, France and the United Kingdom to aid South Africa’s transition from coal power for inspiration. The first B3W funded projects are slated to be announced in early 2022.

Decision-makers in China know that in the short term they are uncertain to come out on top in a hard power competition with the U.S., and have identified economic dominance as another front of strategic competition. Subsequently, if the West doesn’t want to further cede the economic orientation of the Indo-Pacific towards China, it must increase its efforts to provide the region’s states with a strategic choice in how they meet their energy transition infrastructure needs.

Jonas Goldman, Reserach Associate, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

——–

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Bloomberg: “Why China’s Electric Car Lead Has Been a Long Time Coming”

Five Years Later

Considered the most complex industrial cleanup, not even robots were able to enter the main radioactive fuel-debris areas by 2016. The regional farming and the fishing industries suffered collapse and financial ruin. Permissible levels of radiation for children were raised in a callous move to keep schools open. Debates over canceling the 2020 Tokyo Olympics ensued because of the geographic spread of radioactive pollution­–an issue all but forgotten as more recent debates rose over canceling the subsequent 2021 Olympics because of Covid-19 and Japan’s low vaccination rate.

Three hundred tons per day of groundwater containing large amounts of radioactive material, including cesium, strontium, iodine, and other substances, poured into the Pacific Ocean from 2010 until the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant’s owner, decreased it to one-tenth that volume by 2015. On site over 1,000 mammoth storage tanks hold wastewater treated by a filter process TEPCO devised to remove more than 60 radioactive chemicals to so-called safe internationally regulated levels. Only the treatment has left 70% of the filtered wastewater still contaminated above regulatory levels. Nor can it remove tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen.

In September 2015, ocean surges from Typhoon Etau overwhelmed the site’s drainage pumps; hundreds of tons of radioactive water leaked from the reactors site and ultimately into the ocean. What, then, of more severe typhoons, undersea earthquakes, and the reality of sea level rise for the oceanside plant? How will an onsite drainage system survive natural disasters worsened by climate change if they failed in 2015?

Now

On April 13, 2021, the Japanese government announced that TEPCO has the government’s permission to release 1.38 million US tons of its filtered radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, beginning in 2023. The company states that its storage capacity will run out in two years, a claim that critics dispute. Critics also deem the treatment filtration system that TEPCO invented, the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), subpar and not capable of thorough removal of radioactive waste.

Ultimately, the discharge will rely on dilution with ocean water as the solution to radioactive pollution–in denial of the food chain phenomenon in which plankton absorb the released radioactive elements in sea water, fish eat the plankton, bigger fish eat smaller fish, and humans and marine animals eat both big and small fish.

One week after Japan’s announcement on April 13 of this year, fish caught off Fukushima waters were found to contain high levels of radioactive cesium many times above permissible levels. Referring to the announcement, Takeshi Komatsu, an oyster farmer in Miyagi prefecture, north of Tokyo responded despondently about the permission for TEPCO to discharge radioactive wastewater in two years: “The (Japanese) government’s decision is outrageous, I feel more helpless than angry when I think that all the efforts I’ve made to rebuild my life over the past decade have come to nothing,” as reported by the China Daily Global.

Nearby countries that share the seas and ocean with Japan are irate and extremely critical of Japan’s decision, with some planning international legal action. Professor Choi SK Kunsan of South Korea National University warned, “Through the sea’s currents, it can affect fishes near the Korean Peninsula, East Asia, and even the entire world…” Japan retorts that they plan to re-filter and dilute the water before releasing it, until the contaminated water is “safe to drink.” If that is the case, “Then please drink it,” countered Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhoa Lijian at a news briefing. “The ocean is not Japan’s trash can.”

An observer of this verbal chess match pointed out, with some irony, that Japan has about 100,000 dams for flood control, water supply, crop irrigation and hydroelectric power with more than enough capacity to dilute TEPCO’s oversupply of radioactive wastewater to drinking water acceptability by Japan’s standard. Re-filter the contaminated wastewater using ALPS and dilute it in the mammoth dams until it is “safe enough” to drink, he proposes. Then use it for the country’s drinking water supply and crop irrigation. Problem solved. No angry neighbors.

With the back and forth about “permissible” levels of exposure in drinking water, the ocean and so on, let us keep this fact in mind. Decades of research have shown that there is no safe level of radiation, according to the National Academy of Sciences. Any exposure to radiation increases an individual’s risk of developing cancer.

The two major supporters for Japan’s decision to contaminate the Pacific Ocean with its oversupply of radioactive wastewater are the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United States. The IAEA’s mission is “to promote the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies,” in other words, to sustain the illusion–despite Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima and concern about Iran–that nuclear power can be safe and secure and its waste never at risk of being processed for nuclear weapons. The United States, the largest owner of nuclear power plants, promotes nuclear power as “safe and clean energy,” a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

—-

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

BBC: “Fukushima: The nuclear disaster that shook the world – BBC News”

Many top generals and admirals, more informed about Japan’s readiness to surrender than the American public, spoke forthrightly against their government’s use of the atomic bombs on both military and moral grounds, during and after the war. In a 1950 memo, Admiral William Leahy, White House chief of staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war, wrote, “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” Moreover, “in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. “

Nor did all Pacific war veterans approve the atomic obliteration of the two civilian Japanese cities. In a 2001 interview, Ed Everts, a be-medalled major of the Army Air Corps who survived a crash at sea during the battle at Iwo Jima, stated that dropping of the atomic bombs was “a war crime” for which “our leaders should have been put on trial as were the German and Japanese leaders.”

Two atomic bombs devised by our country in 1945 have proliferated to thousands today in nine countries, some more than 3,000 times as powerful as those dropped on Japan, many on trigger alert and able to be launched without time and clarity for humans to make a rational decision. Much vulnerability is baked into the nuclear weapons system: potential computer malfunction, imperfect information for decision-making, accident, cyber-attack, human error, and human imperfections like fatigue or drug abuse.

Intentionally killing civilians in war is a war crime but threatening and risking the existence of all life on this planet with nuclear weapons—ecocide—is the ultimate crime. Justifying these weapons of mass destruction as a deterrent to nuclear war—as the US and other nuclear weapons-owning governments do—is truly delusional. Despite the rhetoric of deterrence, we learned a few years ago that our government’s leaders have a set of fortified sites constructed to save themselves in the event of nuclear catastrophe, lest the deterrence factor fails, while the rest of us fend for ourselves. (See Raven Rock: The Story of the Government’s Secret Plan to Save itself While the Rest of US Die).

In its new cold war against China, the U.S. is locked in the domination fantasy that we must stay “top cop” in the world with no near competitors. This recent “great power” hostility is being used to justify our upgrading of nuclear weapons to more lethal, versatile and faster-delivery weapons of mass destruction.

While millions lost jobs and businesses suffered in 2020—victims of the Covid-induced economic crisis, the 2020 fiscal year was “good for the industry” according to a recent Defense News article. Their revenues worldwide were up about 5% from 2019, with US military industrial firms garnering the lion’s share. Upgrading nuclear weapons never slowed, assured by out-of-the-limelight government subsidies to the weapons’ industries during the Covid crisis.

Since 1946 the US has threated the use of nuclear weapons in conflict at least 12 times, according to security expert Joseph Gerson. But our time is running out. The “Doomsday Clock,” a visual representation of how susceptible the world is to a climate or nuclear catastrophe, registered ‘100 seconds to midnight’ in both 2020 and 2021—the closest it has ever been to the symbolic extermination of humanity since it was conceived in 1947.

Our government should take a lesson from forests. In the past 25 years, scientists have discovered that trees in a forest communicate with each other, share nutrients and water, and act to protect neighboring trees from pests and other threats by releasing repelling chemicals. Given forests create microclimates, individual tree health depends on the forest community. Those trees connected in forests by underground life-supporting networks, christened the wood wide web, live far longer lives than isolated trees.

The takeaway lesson for hostile, competing nations: carefully craft rules of cooperation that trump hostility and the habit of weapons and war as a first resort. Like trees in their community of forests, humanity will live longer for sure.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Hiroshima Bombing Remembered By An American Survivor | TODAY

Japan seeks to emit only about half (46%) as much CO2 in 2030 as it did in 2013. Previously, it had only committed to get down to about three-fourths of its 2013 levels in a decade.

Last fall, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pledged for the first time to get Japan to zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

This week, Reuters says, the Bank of Japan announced that it would invest some of its $70 billion in reserves in green bonds around the world to support the transition to renewables.

With a nominal gross domestic product $5.7 trillion, Japan is the world’s third-largest economy and the second-largest economy after the U.S. in the developed world. It has dragged its feet on the energy transition, largely turning to fossil fuels to replace the nuclear energy lost after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster caused by a tsunami.

Reuters reports that the new targets doubling CO2 reductions by 2030 were “responding to pressure from the United States as world leaders met for a climate summit hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden.”

With the turn of the Xi Jinping government in China to an aggressive nationalist chauvinism very unlike the “harmonious development” doctrine from the 1980s through 2012, Japan has become alarmed and has clung to the U.S. security umbrella more zealously. Likewise, Japan feels threatened by North Korean belligerence. Japan’s leadership therefore feels it is wise to please the U.S. where it can do so without compromising national interests or principle. Many countries around the world have a similar attitude to the U.S., and Joe Biden, unlike his predecessor, knows how to work that global room. Not only will Biden’s green energy projects, which will likely be in the second Democratic reconciliation bill, be good for the U.S., but they will have an echo throughout the parts of the world that take their cue from Washington.

Japan is committing itself to getting as much as 38% of its electricity from renewables by 2030, up from only 18% today. This is huge, because it seems likely that once the Japanese go that big into renewables, they will make technological and price breakthroughs that will allow them to surpass the goal they set.

Japan still hopes to get more of the 50 nuclear power plants shut down in 2011 back on line (only 6 are now operating), so that as much as 22% of its electricity will come from that source in ten years. In turn, the Suga government hopes to cut coal from 26% of the electricity mix to 19%, and to cut natural gas from 56% to 41%.

Not only will Japan make steps to wean itself off coal, the dirtiest fuel, but it will try to close 100 of the 114 worst-polluting coal plants in the country. There are 140 coal plants in Japan. So not only will coal provide less than a fifth of the country’s energy in a decade but those remaining plants will be more efficient and will produce somewhat fewer CO2 emissions. Moreover, after the coal plants now in the pipeline are finished, Japan has no further plans for coal plants.

Japan should try to get off coal entirely by 2030– replacing it all by natural gas and renewables would be preferable to continuing to operate coal plants and would greatly reduce emissions. Governments are, however, often afraid of a backlash from both workers and companies in the coal sector if they move too fast against this industry, and Japanese politicians do have to run for office.

Still, it is the G20 countries (the richest twenty in the world) that produce most of the greenhouse emissions, and for Japan to accelerate its energy transition in this way is consequential. I have a lot of faith in Japanese technology, and I’m hoping that if they turn their minds to it, they will be able to make real breakthroughs in renewables.

To the extent that Biden is exerting this pressure on US allies, he is playing a pivotal role in our global turn to renewables.

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Bonus Video:

Seeking Sustainability in Japan with JJWalsh

The most overt indication of this trend became visible in the tweeting of State Minister for Defense Yasuhide Nakayama. He entered the fray on May 12 with a Japanese-language tweet which declared,

What would you do? One day, more than 300 rockets were suddenly shot by terrorists within 24 hours, robbing the lives of their beloved family members and their homes. Israel has the right to protect itself from terrorists. Who was the first to shoot rockets at the general public? Our heart is with Israel.

He followed up this message with several retweets from the official account of the Israel Defense Forces.

Nakayama’s tweets attracted considerable attention in Japan because he is not just any ruling party lawmaker, but currently the No. 2 official in the Ministry of Defense, a former State Minister for Foreign Affairs, and a senior figure within the nation’s foreign and defense policymaking tribe.

Confronted by Japanese reporters the same evening, Nakayama refused to back down, adding, “I have never written that Palestinians are terrorists. Hamas, which the Public Security Intelligence Agency and the United States have designated as terrorists, is firing missiles.”

The official position of the Japanese government, issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the day before Nakayama’s tweets, tried to strike a more even-handed tone.

While the Japanese government disapproved of “the firing of rockets from Gaza and the clashes in East Jerusalem,” it also described the eviction of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem as an example of “settlement activities by the government of Israel,” which are “in violation of international law, and thus totally unacceptable.”

Michael Penn, Japan and the War on Terror. Click to Buy.

However, in response to Nakayama’s contention that Israel was simply defending itself from “terrorists” and that “our heart is with Israel” (presumably intended to indicate that Japan’s heart is with Israel), the government of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga made no effort to clarify its stance.

When asked by reporters, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato (whose position, in US terms, is sort of a combination of presidential chief of staff and White House spokesman) dismissed the matter, saying that Nakayama had used his “personal” Twitter account and that he didn’t know “his intentions” in sending out the controversial tweet.

That was where the government left it—not even a slap on the wrist.

The next major development came on May 14, when the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan invited diplomats from Palestine and Israel to back-to-back press conferences to discuss the flareup of violence.

When asked about Nakayama’s comments, Palestinian Ambassador to Japan Waleed Siam didn’t hold back, stating, “It sent a clear message; a lack of respect for the loss of innocent lives of Palestinian civilians that are being killed by the so-called ‘self-defense.’ He clearly supports this killing, apparently. His statement is a racist and discriminatory policy against the Palestinian people, and supports the Israeli apartheid regime and the ethnic cleansing that is ongoing.”

In his press conference, Israeli Charge d’Affaires Israel Strulov, praised Nakayama’s tweet, declaring that “these were the voices that we were hoping to hear, not only from him… We appreciate his voice and his support, and definitely this is encouraging us within this complicated situation.”

Most recently, when Nakayama was questioned on Tuesday by opposition lawmakers at a meeting of House of Councilors Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, he refused to withdraw his tweet and statements, parroting the line of the government spokesman that it simply represented his personal view, and that his position as the No. 2 official in the Ministry of Defense implicated Japanese official policy in no way whatsoever.

But deeper than the specific events of the Nakayama controversy of the past week or so, it is the case that many conservatives within the Japanese government tend to sympathize with Israel more than the Palestinians. It is a trend that has strengthened in recent decades.

Perhaps its most critical spring for this sentiment is the US-Japan Alliance, which is by far the most important pillar of Japan’s foreign policy.

So long as their allies in Washington lean in support of Israel, so will the Japanese conservatives who have tied their own political identity to the alliance cause. Reflexively and without careful examination, they will take Israeli views more seriously than Palestinian views.

In this sense, Nakayama’s declaration that “our heart is with Israel” is apt, if the “our” is understood to mean conservative Japanese government officials.

Nakayama’s explanation to reporters that “the Public Security Intelligence Agency and the United States have designated [Hamas] as terrorists” is also indicative. Japanese conservatives long ago embraced the “War on Terrorism” as part of their own world view.

Thus, if the US government designates a certain group as a “terrorist organization,” then Japanese conservatives will quickly accept that judgment as being normative, again not really interested in making their own independent evaluations of the facts or even of Japanese national interest.

Emotionally, Japanese conservatives regard the Palestinians as that worst of things—people who are disrupting the social and international order, and thus a threat that it is only right for Israel to suppress.

And thus Japan, so long as it continues to be governed by the conservatives who have dominated it for decades, will lean toward Israel, even when they take a formally neutral position.

Michael Penn is President of the Shingetsu News Agency and author of the book “Japan and the War on Terror.”

The bad news for Americans is that most of this increase took place in Asia, especially China. In this strategic set of technologies, China is eating America’s lunch.

Given that China beat the pandemic even before the vaccine with masks and social distancing, while the odious Trump left counties on their own and refused to mobilize the federal government, it is no surprise that the Chinese economy saw a growth spurt last fall and grew for the year. In the first quarter of 2021, China’s economy grew an eye-popping 18.3 percent! Along with its rapid march to renewables, China is becoming more and more formidable. Unlike the Biden administration, I don’t see this as a threat, but as a healthy challenge. If we want to compete, we have to swing into action.

In 2020, the global net increase in renewables was 261 gigawatts (GW). That is the nameplate capacity of some 300 nuclear power plants! There are actually only 440 nuclear power plants in the whole world, with a generation capacity of 390 gigwatts.

So let’s just underline this point. The world put in 2/3s as much renewable energy in one year as is produced by all the existing nuclear plants!

Those who argue we absolutely must construct more nuclear plants to beat the climate emergency are clearly just wrong. Renewables can do it all, and they can be installed much more inexpensively and way faster than nuclear plants. Nuclear is a distraction and a diversion of resources at a time when we are racing to get the earth down to producing no net carbon dioxide.

Asia was responsible for the lion’s share of the new renewables capacity, at 61 percent.

In other words, the United States was lying down on the job. President Biden wants to turn this lackluster performance around and put the US back into the vanguard of this crucial emerging technology.

Almost all (91 percent) of the new renewables capacity consisted in wind and solar farms.

h/t International Renewable Energy Agency

Asia has 1,286 gigawatts of renewables, and they put in 167.6 GWs just in 2020! North America, despite being industrially and technologically advanced, only has 422 gigawatts. For shame, America. Even Europe has 609 gigawatts.

Since I cover the Middle East a lot at this site, it is worth noting that this region only has a minor renewables capacity, of about 24 gigawatts, only 1 percent of the global production. It only put in 1.2 gigawatts last year. This result is because the region has so much natural gas. But note that renewables are nevertheless cheaper and more reliable in their pricing. In the region, only Morocco has made real strides toward renewables, though there are some big projects planned in Egypt.

The rate of new wind energy installation almost doubled in 2020 year on year, with an increase of of 111 gigawatts in 2020 against only 58 new gigawatts in 2019.

China was the world leader here, putting in 72.4 gigawatts of new wind all by itself. The US only put in 14.2 gigawatts of wind.

This kind of statistic has made President Biden worried about American competitiveness in the new world that is taking shape. China is leaving us in the dust.

Offshore wind reached 5% of total wind capacity in 2020. It is still a small part of the sector but it is growing rapidly and has enormous potential.

In what is perhaps a sign of the future, solar energy, which was a poor cousin to wind a few years ago, has now caught up with it and its responsible for just about as much electricity production.

Asia was the leader here too, putting in 78 gigawatts of new solar in 2020 (up from 55 GW in 2019). China alone put in nearly 50 gigawatts of new solar. Vietnam put in 11.6 GW of new solar. Japan, despite being an advanced industrial country, only put in 5 GW of new solar.

India only put in 4 GW of solar in 2020, despite its big ambitions, about the same as South Korea.

The United States was down around the Vietnam level, with only 14.9 gigawatts of new solar.

I’ve been in places like Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Arizona in the summer, and I cannot understand why every single house doesn’t have solar panels. In some Republican-ruled such states, the legislature has even put in fees to discourage solar and promote dirty fossil fuels, which are wrecking the planet with global heating.

As a result, China is making the breakthroughs in solar panel technology and is a major exporter of panels. The US? Desperately breaking up underground rocks and polluting the environment chasing the last wisps of natural gas under there so as to add to the climate emergency.

I grew up in the age of the moon shot and I am not used to America being so backward.

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Bonus Video:

CGTN America: “China’s efforts in fighting climate change”