Category Archives: Government

Britain, Culture, Government, Immigration, Society

A moral victory for the Anglican Church and the Archbishop of Canterbury

MORAL AUTHORITY

Intro: The message from the pulpit is not just for Christmas

THE GUARDIAN’S editorial on Friday, 23 December, was a necessary narrative on the cruel policies being exercised by the UK Government on refugee rights.

One of the Conservative Party’s reliably belligerent MPs, Jonathan Gullis, took exception to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s excoriation of the government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. Mr Gullis discerned a troubling modern tendency to “use the pulpit to preach from”. After a challenging year, the Anglican hierarchy were afforded some light relief with such comments, laughter elsewhere in society no-doubt. The Archbishop, Justin Welby, responded that he appreciated the feedback and looked forward to advice on more appropriate pulpit activity. Lambeth Palace can be forgiven for indulging in some festive humour at Mr Gullis’s expense, as a sobering 2022 draws to a close.

The editorial team rightly point to respect for the late queen’s devout faith which has meant that the Church of England’s established status has never truly been brought into question. In the post-Elizabethan era, however, serious scrutiny now seems inevitable – especially in the context of wider constitutional and House of Lords reform.

That will become a necessary debate for another day. Right now, the presence of the lords spiritual at Westminster has clear benefits. At a time when the government is attempting to sell performative cruelty towards migrants as a form of humanitarian intervention, the Anglican bishops, led by Mr Welby, deserve considerable praise for insisting on telling it how it is.

Earlier this month, the archbishop’s annual debate in the Lords was used by Mr Welby who attacked the “harmful rhetoric” that is allowing asylum seekers to be dehumanised, referring to the inflammatory language of “invasion”, expressed by the home secretary, Suella Braverman. This followed a scathing Easter Sermon at Canterbury Cathedral by Mr Welby in which he denounced the Home Office’s offshoring plans as unworthy of “a country formed by Christian values”.

It is unsurprising, of course, that some Conservative MPs have taken umbrage at the ecclesiastical onslaught, accusing the Church’s clergy of ethical grandstanding. The archbishop was accused by John Redwood of fomenting political discord while offering no solutions. But in his Lord’s speech, the Archbishop of Canterbury explicitly identified the danger of loftily moralising without confronting the complexities that politicians are required to face. The bishops have rightly highlighted the need to expand safe, legal routes and by accelerating the processing of claims. The need to balance generosity and compassion with efficient control of borders has been acknowledged.

Nevertheless, in a certain sense, Mr Gullis’s reference to preaching from pulpits identified something important. The way the Church of England has spoken about refugees has indeed been profoundly moral, in a way that has dangerously eluded the secular political debate. Over the past year – amid arguments about deterrence, logistics, the cost of accommodation and deportations, and the speed of the asylum application process – the humanity of the individuals arriving on our shores has been almost lost to view. The citing of the illegal, indecent squalor at the Manston asylum centre in Kent – and that it should ever have been tolerated – is an indication of where that can lead.

By reminding us that “recognition of human dignity is the first principle which must underpin our asylum policy”, and of the need to “see the faces of those in need and listen to their voices”, Mr Welby’s Lord’s speech highlighted what must be the starting point of all refugee policy. This is not mere naivety, at odds with the real world. It is to ground our engagement with that world on an ethical footing. The Archbishop of Canterbury has performed a valuable public service in pointing that out to a political class that has lost touch with the basics.

Standard
Britain, Economic, Energy, Environment, Government, Society

The looming crisis of an energy shortage

ENERGY RESERVES

NEVER in history have modern societies relied so heavily on secure supplies of electricity. Half a century ago, when the nation was last subjected to major power cuts, the effect was mainly on heating and lighting.

Now, however, the computer revolution has changed that completely.

People shop online, we work online, and much study is also done online. International trade and financial transactions depend entirely on a functioning computer network.

The same is true of everything from the police to the transport system. And a power shutdown or outage of only a few hours, even if scheduled, could do lasting damage.

In the same period, we have grown accustomed to a more or less regular and reliable power supply.

Thanks partly to investments made decades ago, the country still has a significant amount of reliable nuclear-generated electricity, plus a small, dwindling reserve of coal generation.

But both these sources are shrinking, because we have phased out coal for a greener environment and because we have failed to plan effectively to replace ageing nuclear plants. A great deal of our remaining energy now depends on gas, much of it imported.

The revolutionary switch to renewable energy, made in response to global warming and the climate change crisis, has been for some years the main focus of planning and building.

This is excellent when it works, but it is completely dependent on the caprice of weather, or on the simple realities of climate.

Solar power, predictably, is of little use here in winter. Wind power can vanish without warning or can be made unusable because the wind is actually too strong for safe generation. Proud announcements that the country has generated 50 per cent of its power through wind on any given day should be greeted with caution. On a windless day, that figure could be tiny.

Some of these problems are alleviated, but not solved, by connectors from our neighbours.

These can rescue us at awkward moments, but France, for instance, has run into major maintenance problems with its elderly nuclear generators, and winter weather simply increases pressure on scarce resources, everywhere. Up to a point, sudden shortages may be dealt with by paying large consumers to switch off, or by bringing in banks of costly and far-from-green diesel generators.

But the risk of actual power cuts, especially in weather such as we have recently been experiencing, is worryingly high.

We really are not very far away from imposed power cuts in our homes and offices, which – as well as leaving the old and vulnerable in the cold and the dark – will do serious damage to the economy.

So, it is perplexing to find that the Government has been relying on predictions by the Met Office in making its plans and calculations. Not only is the Met Office honest about the difficulty of long-distance forecasting, but winters in the UK can be very severe indeed.

Who knows what we would do if Britain once again faced a relentless long-term freeze such as that of 1962-63, itself the coldest since that of 1895?

Events such as the “Troll of Trondheim” often come with little warning. So do interruptions in supply, hugely important now we are no longer self-sufficient in gas.

The one thing that the Government can do is to be prepared for all eventualities. It has been many months since the poor state of our reserve capacity was revealed.  Let us hope that Ministers and officials have not wasted a single second in getting ready.

Standard
Climate Change, Government, Science, Technology, United States

Nuclear fusion: A breakthrough that will lead to clean energy?

NUCLEAR FUSION

A REVOLUTIONARY scientific breakthrough is thought to have brought humanity a step closer towards limitless clean energy from nuclear fusion.

Since the 1950s, scientists and researchers have been working tirelessly towards the “holy grail” of creating more energy from nuclear fusion than they put in.

Now US government scientists in California have reportedly done it, by aiming the world’s largest laser at a nuclear target the size of a peppercorn.

The result, from a nuclear reaction reaching three million degrees Celsius, is apparently 2.5 megajoules of energy, from 2.1 megajoules of laser energy.

Nuclear fusion is preferable to nuclear fission, which is currently used to power the planet alongside fossil fuels and renewable power.

That is because nuclear fission splits heavy atoms like uranium or plutonium, to create energy, producing potentially dangerous radioactive waste that must be stored.

Nuclear fusion creates energy by bringing atoms together, instead of splitting them, and has no waste products, making it clean energy.

Unlike coal, the supply is limitless, usually requiring just two materials called deuterium and tritium, which are slightly different versions of hydrogen and found in sea water and mineral springs.

A small cup of this fuel could one day be used to power a house for hundreds of years.

The breakthrough at the federal Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California was achieved using a laser pulse amplified a quadrillion (a million billion) times and split into 192 different pulses.

These enter a hohlraum – a gold container – and hit a tiny capsule of deuterium and tritium, creating shockwaves which produce vast amounts of  energy, in a process called inertial confinement fusion.

Significant engineering challenges remain, including how to cut the cost of nuclear fusion, harness the energy produced, run it through a turbine and get it into the National Grid.

Most experts believe this won’t be possible until 2045, but some say it could be done in a decade and is likely to be achieved using a different type of nuclear fusion called magnetic fusion.

But whether it is using magnets or lasers, the experts agree it is the main hope for escaping the climate crisis.

Sir Robin Grimes, professor of material physics at Imperial College London, said: “This is a key step towards commercial fusion – the technology which will ensure our survival on Earth, providing enough energy, with a low impact on the environment, to hugely reduce our contribution to climate change.”

Jeremy Chittenden, professor of plasma physics at Imperial, said: “If what has been reported is true and more energy has been released than was used to produce the plasma, that is a true breakthrough moment.”

Nuclear fusion, if it can be scaled up and made to run more continuously, could in future be almost zero-carbon.

However, some experts point out that the amount of energy used for the entire system containing the laser means, technically, scientists are unlikely to have yet produced more energy from nuclear fusion than was put into it.

The US energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, made the announcement of a “major scientific breakthrough”.

– Diagrammatic representation of how nuclear fusion works. Source: BBC

Standard