Coal fired smoke screen

With the Apec Conference in Sydney this week the nuclear bogey has raised it's head again. Our Government has been castigated for suggesting that they would try to influence other countries not to use nuclear power stations and with our history of being nuclear free it is an emotive issue here. We don't need nuclear power because we have ample other sources which of course have their down side but we weigh them up and they come out better against the safety and waste from a reactor.
Now China has set up a smoke screen by having a new coal fired power station coming on stream every four days which makes nuclear look positively green. But just by having a better option doesn't make it green and with their record of anti freeze in tooth paste and lead in childrens' toys will that lead to them using the waste to make radioactive electric drills? Which would have an upside in that instead of being good for only two weeks they would last for three thousand years! You don't think they would? Look at the Americans using radioactive bullets in Iraq, perfect scenario, kill the enemy and use up the waste.
The biofuels mess is another case in point. Using up 50% of American corn for a 2% additive to petrol and still controlled by the oil companies. It has pushed up food prices around the world.
What happens is it creates big issues and dilutes the research into renewable resources. If the debate between coal or nuclear is raging and you suggest trying to use 10% less electricity you are treated like environmentalists were five years ago who suggested global warming was happening.

Mutton birds

Enjoyed the German film 'The Lives of Others' portraying the before and after of the fall of the Berlin Wall in East Germany. Totalatarian governments are right to target the intellectuals because that is where the dissent is born and spreads to the will of the people. The film shows that those against the regime knew they had no chance of a revolution through force and yet little by little (74 years!) they changed the peoples' will and the Soviet Union dissolved away with virtually no blood spilt.
On a personal level it's hard to not feel powerless in the overwhelming world but it's amazing what drip feed can do. Look at the environmental movement. Seen as lunatics when they first started protesting they have now become so mainstream through the constant media attention of climate change that they are directly shifting government policy. You can make a difference!!
I enjoyed my first mutton bird for a long time. These are the young of our common seabird the sooty shearwater (of the petrel family) which fly to Stewart Island on the 13th September (yes like clockwork) and lay one egg in a burrow mostly on the 25th November which is incubated by both parents and hatches on Christmas Day. The Titi (Maori name) need to eat their weight of food each day and become little balls of fat which the Maori people harvest around the middle of March. The plucked birds are preserved by salting heavily and require boiling in several changes of water then crisped under the grill usually out the back in the shed because the smell is.....distinctive. The flavour is at once salty and gamey and I'm going to design a dish around it for the restaurant. Maybe a mutton bird and possum terrine.....