Live Animal imports (for biological testing) blockades to UK
Recently it has emerged that Animal Rights Activists (similar to PETA) have succeeded in intimidating airlines charged with importing live animals into the UK from breeding houses abroad (mostly mice) from flying into the UK, and essentially a transport blockade is in place.
The animal cruelty protestors are trying to stop cosmetic products used in the make-up industry from being tested on the animals, which is seen as torture.
What the protestors don't see is that a large amount of the mice do not go to the cosmetics industry, but to the UK scientific community who use the mice for biological testing in many varieties of ways, from behavioural science, to brain research, to most importantly our primary way of testing medicines and disease treatments.
The protestors have essentially cut off the majority of UK's imports for this and have kept it secret until now. There are only 2 flights still operating that transfer mice from the breeding facilities overseas to the UK (the mice cannot be cost-efficiently bred within the UK).
Many scientists have now stepped forward to speak out against this blockade, including a politician, Lord Drayson, who was the former Science Minister. The cut-off of live animal imports will stop us developing new medicines and health treatments and, if left unchecked will leave us behind the rest of Europe in research.
Nuclear Power boycotts
Very recently it was the 1-year Anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear reactor meltdown that happened on east-coast Japan after an ancient design of Nuclear Power Plant was struck by a Tsunami that overwhelmed its' sea-wall defenses.
After the event, foodstuffs farmed in an exclusion area around the plant had to be frozen from being traded, although many of the Farmers around the plant have stay put to look after their animals and crops, which so far have not been seriously endangered.
As an immediate consequence of the meltdown, and steam explosion, Japan shut down 50 other nuclear reactors across the country for safety checks, and Germany shut down 8 of its older reactors permanently. Italy and Switzerland have ceased plans for any future reactors. The US and UK have paused progress, but intend to resume building their powerplants in future after a period.
This is all due to fears over the world's 400 or so Nuclear Fission Reactors, which all have an average age of 27 years, and do not always have reliable backup systems against unpredictable natural disasters.
Because of Climate Change, many countries wish to focus on renewables instead of Nuclear, which has always provided the bulk of our energy needs, but you would need a massive amount of Windfarms/Wave-farms/Solar Power Plants to make up even a fraction of the electricity that Nuclear Plants deliver.
As a result, China, India and France are carrying on with Nuclear as before.
Other countries may need to rely on more dangerous power, such as burning coal (which I gather has killed more in mining and accidents than any other power source).
It is my view that *newer* Nuclear Fission Power Plants are a lot safer (and with more backups in cooling) than the ageing reactors of the 1970s/80s that are still around today, such as Fukushima Daiichi, but we need to allow funding for Nuclear Fusion reactors (notice I have not mentioned this name in my article up to now, it is different from any Nuclear power we have ever used).
Nuclear Fusion is a way of creating the conditions of our Sun down here on Earth at a smaller scale. It only takes a few seconds of a contained Fusion Reactor to generate vast amounts of power for a city's electricity. So far it is in the experimental stages, with prototype power plants such as K*Star, the Z-Machine, and ITER giving us early research into the technology.
The theory has been around for many years, since the 50s even, but the application is slow-going and we've only just gotten close to implementing it safely.
As for renewables, there is no way they are going to reach the quantities needed to provide for the world.
A dumb internet hype train called KONY 2012
A charity group called Invisible Children attempted to harness the Internet recently to target Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) which covers several countries, Kony attempting to convince groups of people that he is their ruler as appointed by God.
Invisible Children aimed an emotive campaign at the world's social networking network, including a video over popular social sites like Vimeo, Youtube and Twitter, to persuade audiences of the social media generation of 18-24 year olds to be engaged by the colourful and distracting message of the Warlord's ruthless activities.
These activities included abduction of 66,000 or more Children to become soldiers and sex-slaves since 1986.
I think that the audiences of this video in some places got taken in by it and spread the message virally as intended by the Producers, but others were wise to the fact that although it was for a good cause, they were being media-manipulated. The campaign itself was made to play on people's emotions and rally masses of minds without using the correct information, for example the location of Kony and overblowing the size of his force, which is said to be quite small, but also the ability of the 3 countries, Central Africa/Uganda/South Sudan to co-operate in arresting him, when the countries themselves do not get along. Not only this but their armies have been accused of similar attacks on people, which the United States has been condemned for sending in military advisors to support in the search for Kony.
The video oversimplifies conditions in the region, and the difficulties of tackling the task. It also has been called 'irresponsible' for not painting a picture of the present day, but the Uganda of 6-7 years ago, shown as if they were now.
It also distracts a large fraction of the young social media-savvy generation who have less interest in the News from knowledge of more devastating conflicts going on presently such as the massacres in Syria.
-Des
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