Blog
02.April 2010 - 22:46
A whore or not – it depends…
Politics is not always logical. You get punished differently for the same things – you see, it depends.
Vihreä Lanka, the yellow press of Finnish politics, asked me a couple of years ago, if the nuclear power businesses or those quarters that economically benefit from nuclear power have financed my campaign. I could not deny that, as I remembered that the energy company Pohjolan Voima, at least, participated in my fund-raising seminar for the 2004 election. And really: I checked up on the matter and found no less “radioactive” money than 500 euro. The company in question produces, besides bio-energy and wind power, nuclear power through TVO (Teollisuuden voima Oyj).
Actually, the same PVO (Pohjolan Voima Oy) has also added to the election funds of the Greens but, for some reason, it was just me who was given the role of a paid woman and lobbyist for nuclear power amongst the Greens.
The reason is very simple. My opinion was the wrong one and the Greens did not believe that it was solely based on my own thinking. They needed a corrupted mind, at least.
The underlying idea is that a politician is a sort of a whore who does not really have their own political love life but who can be bought by money anytime for the services of any political idea. Why?
As a matter of fact, I can’t even imagine a sum for which I would sell my political persuasion.
One very essential part of my political persuasion is that I consider it to be my right to think freely and change my mind whenever I find new convincing arguments. “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir,” asked the economic guru Keynes, defending his rights to arrive at new conclusions.
This is just what happened to me too. I had to adjust my negative stance on nuclear power anew at the beginning of 2000, as I examined the statistics and noticed a couple of new aspects. The shutdown of nuclear power almost systematically increases the share of fossil energy. It is quite a clean and safe production form, which is also committed to take care of its own waste, unlike fossil energies. It does not pollute the air quality, unlike the burning of wood. It is profitable as such, unlike wind power.
I do not regard nuclear power as being a perfect solution for energy policy, as there just is nothing perfect in this world, but it is the lesser of two evils and should be part of our energy palette.
I also support wind energy, at least when it is efficiently used. It is a genius solution to reset emissions to zero, especially if there’s no problem with the regulation power; for example, if wind power is used to generate hydrogen or if an individual turbine generates the amount of electricity that is required for the batteries of a neon sign.
However, I have to admit that, based on my experiences from nuclear power, I find the double standard which is connected to the lobbying quarters of the wind power industry to be strange. This unholy alliance is seldom noted. The corporate executives are allied with politicians and scientists and demand rapid actions against climate warming and for renewables. These kinds of lobbying activities are not entirely without specific interests – especially if the politician in question has a shareholding in the company generating renewable energy. It should not be any wonder that those who gain the most profits are exactly those who mostly demand actions from politicians for renewables.
Al Gore is a good example of such. He is, at the same time, a political actor exercising political power, a climate lobbyist and a chairman in a private company that invests in products bought by a world that is scared of climate change. Gore’s green investment company warns that the US’s economy will face huge risks, if it does not soon start to invest in emerging carbon markets and renewables.
Vestas, which is one of the world-leading turbine manufacturers, is a member of the Copenhagen Climate Change Committee. Vestas demands that governments invest heavily in the wind power market. It sponsors the CNN’s Climate in Peril production. And the programme supports politicians who increase Vesta’s yield with their policy definitions.
We are told that investments in renewables are the right way to react towards climate change, despite the excessive evidentiary material on how, for instance, wind power will not pass any of the basic cost-benefit tests. The profitability of wind power is, for the time being at least, merely artificial and it is based either on public support (ca. 500,000 euro per one megawatt in Finland) or on feed-in tariffs which will be paid by consumers.
It is difficult to see how any country could build a sustainable economy on such a bubble. The question about profitability is a fundamental aspect in the actual economy and it should not be ignored.
Wind power generates hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but otherwise its effects on the economy are seldom discussed. Spain has been mentioned as a global example, as it gave financial support to enterprises generating renewables for creating green careers. However, the Spanish survey (here link to the academic study http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf) shows how every single new workplace in renewable energy costs 2.2 traditional workplaces in Spain. A recent German survey comes to a similar kind of disappointing conclusion. When the electricity price increases, a significant number of industrial operations move away. But, will the world become any cleaner because of these complex actions, is the core question.
Therefore, for the time being the jobs in renewable energy cannibalise other careers. Whether the future will be different, depends really on how and with what kind of time schedule the exploitation of solar energy proceeds. The prospects of solar energy are in a totally different category and solar energy will be the next big mega-trend that is worth trying.
Politics is not always logical. You get punished differently for the same things – you see, it depends.
Vihreä Lanka, the yellow press of Finnish politics, asked me a couple of years ago, if the nuclear power businesses or those quarters that economically benefit from nuclear power have financed my campaign. I could not deny that, as I remembered that the energy company Pohjolan Voima, at least, participated in my fund-raising seminar for the 2004 election. And really: I checked up on the matter and found no less “radioactive” money than 500 euro. The company in question produces, besides bio-energy and wind power, nuclear power through TVO (Teollisuuden voima Oyj).
Actually, the same PVO (Pohjolan Voima Oy) has also added to the election funds of the Greens but, for some reason, it was just me who was given the role of a paid woman and lobbyist for nuclear power amongst the Greens.
The reason is very simple. My opinion was the wrong one and the Greens did not believe that it was solely based on my own thinking. They needed a corrupted mind, at least.
The underlying idea is that a politician is a sort of a whore who does not really have their own political love life but who can be bought by money anytime for the services of any political idea. Why?
As a matter of fact, I can’t even imagine a sum for which I would sell my political persuasion.
One very essential part of my political persuasion is that I consider it to be my right to think freely and change my mind whenever I find new convincing arguments. “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir,” asked the economic guru Keynes, defending his rights to arrive at new conclusions.
This is just what happened to me too. I had to adjust my negative stance on nuclear power anew at the beginning of 2000, as I examined the statistics and noticed a couple of new aspects. The shutdown of nuclear power almost systematically increases the share of fossil energy. It is quite a clean and safe production form, which is also committed to take care of its own waste, unlike fossil energies. It does not pollute the air quality, unlike the burning of wood. It is profitable as such, unlike wind power.
I do not regard nuclear power as being a perfect solution for energy policy, as there just is nothing perfect in this world, but it is the lesser of two evils and should be part of our energy palette.
I also support wind energy, at least when it is efficiently used. It is a genius solution to reset emissions to zero, especially if there’s no problem with the regulation power; for example, if wind power is used to generate hydrogen or if an individual turbine generates the amount of electricity that is required for the batteries of a neon sign.
However, I have to admit that, based on my experiences from nuclear power, I find the double standard which is connected to the lobbying quarters of the wind power industry to be strange. This unholy alliance is seldom noted. The corporate executives are allied with politicians and scientists and demand rapid actions against climate warming and for renewables. These kinds of lobbying activities are not entirely without specific interests – especially if the politician in question has a shareholding in the company generating renewable energy. It should not be any wonder that those who gain the most profits are exactly those who mostly demand actions from politicians for renewables.
Al Gore is a good example of such. He is, at the same time, a political actor exercising political power, a climate lobbyist and a chairman in a private company that invests in products bought by a world that is scared of climate change. Gore’s green investment company warns that the US’s economy will face huge risks, if it does not soon start to invest in emerging carbon markets and renewables.
Vestas, which is one of the world-leading turbine manufacturers, is a member of the Copenhagen Climate Change Committee. Vestas demands that governments invest heavily in the wind power market. It sponsors the CNN’s Climate in Peril production. And the programme supports politicians who increase Vesta’s yield with their policy definitions.
We are told that investments in renewables are the right way to react towards climate change, despite the excessive evidentiary material on how, for instance, wind power will not pass any of the basic cost-benefit tests. The profitability of wind power is, for the time being at least, merely artificial and it is based either on public support (ca. 500,000 euro per one megawatt in Finland) or on feed-in tariffs which will be paid by consumers.
It is difficult to see how any country could build a sustainable economy on such a bubble. The question about profitability is a fundamental aspect in the actual economy and it should not be ignored.
Wind power generates hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but otherwise its effects on the economy are seldom discussed. Spain has been mentioned as a global example, as it gave financial support to enterprises generating renewables for creating green careers. However, the Spanish survey (here link to the academic study http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf) shows how every single new workplace in renewable energy costs 2.2 traditional workplaces in Spain. A recent German survey comes to a similar kind of disappointing conclusion. When the electricity price increases, a significant number of industrial operations move away. But, will the world become any cleaner because of these complex actions, is the core question.
Therefore, for the time being the jobs in renewable energy cannibalise other careers. Whether the future will be different, depends really on how and with what kind of time schedule the exploitation of solar energy proceeds. The prospects of solar energy are in a totally different category and solar energy will be the next big mega-trend that is worth trying.