Meanwhile, back in France, yesterday saw a truly heated medieval battle in the rural foggy Northwestern countryside outside of Valognes, in Normandy. Hundreds of protestors fought the CRS, tore up rail lines and risked physical harm to spotlight attention on the last shipment of treated nuclear waste going back to Germany. The waste had been processed at the AREVA facility. AREVA is the French Governments Nuclear Energy Corporation which is currently building plants in the United States.
The shipment of treated nuclear waste going back to Germany was poignant because this marks the end of Germany's practice of shipping their nuclear waste to France to be treated. This was highly controversial because the 700 kilometer each way rail trip was a very potentially dangerous land journey that could have resulted in a major disaster if there had ever been a rail accident.
You might ask, that if the practice is being ended, then why the protests? The protests have been ongoing for years. The protests were a major disruption in France and Germany by the militant Green Party Activists as well as GreenPeace. The fact that this was the final shipment by Germany is a major victory for the Green Movement in Europe. This probably hasn't made much of a ripple in the USA.
Crazy European Ecologists on CNN, if it gets reported at all, but but it is the real cause and effect of the efforts of the Greens in Germany and their successful battle to raise awareness that is the real news here.
Germany has officially phased out nuclear energy. Fukushima was the nail in the coffin, but the futuristic and pragmatic move to reconcentrate and refocus Germany's energy production needs had already started years ago. If you take time to understand and look at what Germany is doing actively to shift it’s energy dependence away from nuclear and fossil fuels, you will see the most progressive and aggressive program on the planet. They are now leading the world in Green Energy created jobs. The system they are creating has grown exponentially in its feasiblity targets. Basically, they are creating a grid that takes electric power from a number of different renewable sources. The grid is a storage system, but the storage of electric power now is not very efficient. So, there is another grid which is a gas storage system. The excess electrical power is being used to generate bio gas from a number of different sources.
The efficiency of storing the energy as bio gas jumps dramatically to 70%. This gas goes into the nations energy grid and is being used now to generate more power and for industry.
Here is a graphs which shows the exponential shrinking of the predicted time frame for the German project starting with it's theoretical beginning to it's present state of actual existence. Originally when they first conceived the plan, they believed that it would not be possible until 2075. In only a few years, they have closed the gap to a projected 2022 realization date.
This is the future. America is being left in the dust. France is beginning to realize that they are losing out on what will be the energy growth of Europe. Germany is now the worlds leader in Green Energy related job creation. China and California, if considered as a separate Pacific Rim economic unit are in the running. Texas has big wind power industry in the panhandle, but the supplier of the technology is Denmark!
But why was Germany impelled to make this radical leap forward? Because of the tireless energy of the Green Movement in protesting and militantly educating the public. They raised the awareness and created the conditions for the big leap forward that Germany is taking.
OWS, in its diverse activities has embraced the German Green energy. Learn about the positive activism now being created by the OWS Occupy Rooftops Movement here!
One little step at a time, we will drag the rest of the world, kicking and screaming, into a semblance of a sane future.
1 comment:
One thing I didn't go into here and is a very important part of what is happening is the basic differences between Germany and France.
The political situation in France is now a volatile mixture of political squabbling, corruption and intrique. The Greens and the Socialist could be the big losers here or conversely, the big winners.
One big plus is that the President has been further em mired in a series of unfolding political and financial scandals. In the next few weeks, no matter how his UMP party tries to imitate American Republican divide and smear tactics, his polling is in an irreversible tailspin.
Then, there is the extreme right, but in this case, they will only draw votes away from the Presidents UMP Party...making a Socialist Victory in the next presidential race all the more likely.
As it is now, the Socialist control the Senate, but not the Assembly, this may really change in 2012.
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