Blair's ridiculous short-sightedness

I've recently started getting involved in my local Friends of the Earth group. They asked me to do a leaflet drop protesting against a new waste incinerator in Newhaven on the south coast. Initially when I was told about it I thought it was probably one of those short-sighted tree hugging things that FOE tend to do, the sort of wooly, not in our backyard stuff that put me off them for years. Turns out however that this thing will be taking waste from all over the south-east, transporting it via polluting road links and burning it at this huge incinerator that will create massive amounts of pollutants and reduce the amount of recycling that occurs. My favourite part of all this is that the company that is building and running the thing abviously needs some kind of reassurance that it'll be able to make some money out of the whole thing. Thus the local council will ensure that certain levels of waste will reach them each year. This utter ridiculousness means that instead of having an incentive to reduce waste they will have an incentive to keep it the same levels its currently at.

The reason our beloved Government likes these incinerators is because they reduce the amount of waste going into landfill. A good thing, I hear you say, well yes but only if it means that we are polluting less and recycling more. Which this doesn't do.

It's all part of Blair and the like's short term, short-sighted response to climate change. It goes hand in hand with their idea of building new nuclear power stations. It's stop gap, it'll reduce pollution in the short term but what happens to all that waste, who's gonna prove that these damn power stations are safe and it's not even liek its cheaper that renewable and micro-generation.

I'm not overly au fait with all the science of it but the arguments that FOE make are compelling even to someone with little knowledge like myself.

Check out the protest against the Newhaven incinerator - http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/local_groups_and_campaigns/se.htm - and send off a letter of protest. Also read up on why they oppose nuclear - http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/resource/general_readers.html#nuclear_power

And then have a look at the Goverment's reasoning for it all - http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/review/index.shtml