This story may seem almost innocuous to many Americans. After all, it's just one environmental activist in far off Australia out of thousands worldwide supporting the development of nuclear power. But, it's a big deal down under and a boon for the Australian nuclear industry.
Mr. Flannery is a leading voice of environmental thinking in the South Pacific and around the world. His advocacy of nuclear power is a major coup for that industry and for Australia, which controls 24% of the world's exploitable uranium reserves. That is three times the reserves controlled by the USA!
I believe if Australia could sell it's citizens on a significant national commitment to developing nuclear power, they could probably be energy independent and a major seller nuclear fuel to the world within a decade.
The US government dislikes this idea, but it may have no power to prevent it.
There may be awful risks entailed in the nuclear power industry, as witness the continuing devastation and loss of life surrounding Chernoble. However, if I was an Australian, and considering what's at stake for the future of my country's economy, I wonder what I'd think? After all, the US government hasn't initiated any crash programs to de-commisson existing American reactors, or even to protect them from terrorists more effectively. If they are that safe for America, why shouldn't Australians pursue their natural advantage in Uranium ore?
PR Week reports on BP's communications response ("[http://www.prweek.com/us/news/article/577597/BP-ramps-comms-AK-crisis-threatens-image/ BP ramps up comms after AK crisis threatens image]," (sub req'd), August 11, 2006):
BP has more than doubled the number of external communications people working in its Anchorage, AK, crisis-response unit in light of its announcement August 7 that it would cease more than half its production in Prudhoe Bay - the largest oil field in the US - because of severe pipe corrosion and a "small" oil spill. ...
BP America president Bob Malone and Steve Marshall, president of BP Exploration Alaska, have done interviews on a number of national networks, including CNN, NBC, and PBS.
BP also took a pool of about 25 television and print journalists to the scene of the spill and pipelines this week. [BP press officer Neil] Chapman said contacting employees via e-mail and an internal intranet site is also a part of the communications process. ...
[W]hile [[Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide|Ogilvy]] is assisting BP during this situation, the company has elected to do the majority of work on its own.
The current state of typical media-political speech in the U.S. is frightening. There is little debate. Politics and ideas to which citizens are attached are closer to religious belief and faith than to positions arrived at through careful consideration in or of debate. What is worse, much of what passes for political speech (and media coverage thereof) bears close kinship to wartime propaganda, where sensationalistic claims, difficult to immediately debunk, are launched as ways to try to control public attention in order to push through or maintain political agendas. This is far more Orwellian than Jeffersonian. A recent analysis of all the factors converging in the present to promote this state of affairs calls the latter The Rumor Bomb: http://pearlsbee4swine.blogspot.com/2006/02/rumor-bomb-convergence-theory-of.html
And generally see pearlsbee4swine.blogspot.com
This story may seem almost innocuous to many Americans. After all, it's just one environmental activist in far off Australia out of thousands worldwide supporting the development of nuclear power. But, it's a big deal down under and a boon for the Australian nuclear industry.
Mr. Flannery is a leading voice of environmental thinking in the South Pacific and around the world. His advocacy of nuclear power is a major coup for that industry and for Australia, which controls 24% of the world's exploitable uranium reserves. That is three times the reserves controlled by the USA!
I believe if Australia could sell it's citizens on a significant national commitment to developing nuclear power, they could probably be energy independent and a major seller nuclear fuel to the world within a decade.
The US government dislikes this idea, but it may have no power to prevent it.
There may be awful risks entailed in the nuclear power industry, as witness the continuing devastation and loss of life surrounding Chernoble. However, if I was an Australian, and considering what's at stake for the future of my country's economy, I wonder what I'd think? After all, the US government hasn't initiated any crash programs to de-commisson existing American reactors, or even to protect them from terrorists more effectively. If they are that safe for America, why shouldn't Australians pursue their natural advantage in Uranium ore?
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/printable_information_papers/inf75print.htm
Dick Jones, Director
Progressive Internet Action
212-787-0700 http://pia.net
PR Week reports on BP's communications response ("[http://www.prweek.com/us/news/article/577597/BP-ramps-comms-AK-crisis-threatens-image/ BP ramps up comms after AK crisis threatens image]," (sub req'd), August 11, 2006):
Looks like a marriage made in "conspicuous consumption" heaven.
By the way, do you think a Hummer driver or a Big-Mac-Attack diner consumes the most oil?
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