A report by [India’s] Intelligence Bureau has called Greenpeace “a threat to national economic security”, citing activities ranging from protests against nuclear and coal plants and funding of “sympathetic” research, to allegedly helping out an Aam Aadmi Party candidate in the recent Lok Sabha elections. The allegations are part of the IB’s report, dated June 3, submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office. The report claims the negative impact of the NGOs’ role on GDP growth to be “2-3 per cent per annum”. --Priyadarshi Siddhanta & Amitav Ranjan,
The Indian Express, 11 June 2014
The report, signed by IB Joint Director S A Rizvi, accuses Greenpeace of contravening laws to “change the dynamics of India’s energy mix”. The bureau says Greenpeace’s ‘superior network’ of numerous pan-India organisations has helped conduct anti-nuclear agitations and mounted “massive efforts to take down India’s coal fired power plants and coal mining activity”. --Priyadarshi Siddhanta & Amitav Ranjan,
The Indian Express, 11 June 2014
As India reels under severe power woes during the peak summer, here's some more bad news. The entire nation may find itself plunged in darkness in less than a week. According to the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) sources, out of the 100 power plants that the CEA monitors, 38 are left with only 7 days of coal and 20 plants are left with only 0 to 4 days of Coal. The CEA sources say that there is only 67 per cent supply of coal from the Mahanadi Coal Field. The reason for the shortfall is a politically-motivated agitation resulting into massive law and order problem in the region. The areas affected include Tamil Nadu, AndhraPradesh, Maharashtra and some NTPC plants. --
India Today, 12 June 2014
India’s new government said it would speed up work on three railway lines key to transporting 100 million tonnes of coal per year from remote mines, a priority for Prime Minister Narendra Modi who wants to supply continuous power to all. Coal India Ltd, the world’s No. 1 coal miner that controls about 80 percent of India’s output, says better connections could push its annual production up by as much as 300 million tonnes from 462 million now. Modi, whose landslide election victory came largely on his promise to rejuvenate India’s economy after years of slowdown, wants to provide round-the-clock power supply to the population of about 1.2 billion. Millions still go without power. --Krishna n Das,
Reuters, 13 June 2014
Climate Depot reports another sad case of climate McCarthyism, this time from the USA:Dr. Caleb Rossiter was “terminated” via email as an “Associate Fellow” from the progressive group Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), following his May 4th, 2014 Wall Street Journal OpEd titled “Sacrificing Africa for Climate Change,” in which he called man-made global warming an “unproved science. There are many issues swirling round here - the good intentions of the "progressives" and the evil that flows from it, their startling ability to turn a blind eye to the suffering of Africans, their inability to deal with dissent, their closed minds. What a depressing scene with which to start the day. --Andrew Montford,
Bishop Hill, 13 June 2014
Last year Greenpeace campaigners in the UK paraded a giant polar bear puppet the size of a double-decker bus through the streets of Westminster to protest against planned drilling in the Arctic. This year the polar bears made it into the Houses of Parliament, as a Canadian professor told a meeting there Wednesday night that the animals are not as endangered as many think. Dr Susan Crockford, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, told a meeting of the Global Warming Policy Foundation think tank that there were “good reasons not to worry about polar bears.” --Alex Froley,
Platts, 12 June 2014
