An earlier version of this article was written but unpublished back in 2008 and it has now been revised and published to take account of various changes since then.

The case is made for the provision of free public transport in every major town and city worldwide for a multitude of reasons. It has always been a good idea and should have been done a long time ago, but now with three major issues of our time; resource depletion, including oil, pollution and the climate crisis; they make it imperative that we move to such a system, both to conserve dwindling supplies of cheap energy, to reduce the use of vast mineral resources to make hundreds of millions of cars and to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions because climate change is happening faster than expected.

The Earth's climate has turned out to be more sensitive and complex than anticipated as evidenced by the recent dramatic record breaking summer ice melts in the Arcticc¹ in 2007, 2008, 2012 and basically every year since then. With such a large change in the albedo or reflectivity over a huge area of the Arctic, this signifies the jump into positive feedback of the climate system, although it is not the only positive feedback. Combined with preliminary reports that frozen methane is beginning to be released from the Arctic sea floor and tundra and given that methane is 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas, it is clear we are probably at the point of things running out of control. Emissions need to be cut drastically, starting about 20 years ago.

Moving to free and well-designed public transport allows society to deal with these problems in the least disruptive manner and to do so in the most equitable way and it would increase the shared sense of everyone working together to cope with what are essentially going to be permanent problems. Free public transport is not the full solution but is definitely an important first step. Switching to public transport has the potential to achieve large scale reductions in fuel use and it can be done immediately without further research or perfection of any technology. The current status quo plan to replace all the petrol and diesel fuelled cars with electric ones still leaves us with the problem of massive resource usage, a replacement of oil wars for lithium wars, traffic congestion, deaths from air pollution , high accident rates and actually high energy use. It does not matter if the heavily promoted so called solution of producing millions of electric cars is run on renewable energy because it would require vastly more wind farms, solar farms and whatever else compared to a transport solution based on highly efficient, globally deployed free public transport system which would only require a fraction of energy and resources of a car based one.

Monday the 24th of September at 5pm is the deadline for making submissions to An Bord Pleanála on the South Dublin County Council & Coillte plans for what is known as the Dublin Mountains Project for the Hellfire Club & Masseys Wood nearby. The plan is one dreamed up by the council and will cost € 19 million of taxpayer money i.e. collected property tax etc for what is basically a bit of a white-elephant project that will damage the environment, limit public access and charge a fee for what is now free and is expected to run at a loss for at least first 3 years, but yet the private contractors running it will be "insulated" from losses. In essence the project will put an valuable amenity that is in public hands effectively into private hands and give them a license to milk the public forever on it. If this gets through, it will be replicated all over the country in that arrogant and greed driven way we are all familiar with from the Celtic Tiger days and again today.

Related Links: Public Meeting: Save Hellfire Club and Massey's Wood in Dublin Mts | SaveTheHellfire.com | Friends of Massey's Wood Facebook

Corruption and incompetence rule in certain corridors of Dublin City Council. Coventa the company which somehow won the tender (despite not being a party to the bidding) and Dublin City Council have pushed the cost up to nearly €100 million for the land. Council Manager Owen Keegan said not one cent of the €96 million that has already been spent will be clawed back if the plan doesn't go ahead. Despite also as extra €36 million in extra costs many Councillors state that this whole thing has nothing to do with mad ideas from Bertie Ahern. Even if it does not go ahead it will still cost €600 million, and obviously this is the best interests of every else abroad who likes to sabotage Irish planning and make a few million doing so. Renewable energy is the future but not for the old school chums of yesteryear.

Related Links: update 02/10/2014: Stop The Poolbeg Incinerator - Protest March To Dail - Weds 22nd Oct |
Poolbeg Incineration the Fallacy of Need | Local Residents Will Continue Campaign Against Poolbeg Incinerator Despite EPA Ruling (2008) | Anti-Dublin Incinerator campaign appeal to attend Oral Hearing | City Council appear sure of incinerator despite challenge by campaigners | Government in Cahoots with incinerator industry | Over three thousand objections to proposed Poolbeg incinerator in Dublin | http://www.CovantaWatch.org/ -Tracks pollution and regulatory violations etc by Covanta
Update: Briefing note to council by Owen Keegan to Council pushing the incinerator

It was three years on March 11th since the triple nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima plant in Japan in 2011. This article attempts to try and give an picture of the situation today and to show that the accident is still an active event that will take many decades to cleanup and it is anything but over.

Remembering What Happened

It is three years since the accident on March 11th 2011 at the Fukushima power station complex. There has been surprisingly little coverage of it in the mainstream media compared to the Chernobyl accident in 1986 at the time. As most people know, the accident was a result of an earthquake which caused the tsunami which flooded the Fukushima site and knocked out the backup diesel generators used for cooling the plants and that is how the story goes. The first report many people heard was that they were using sea-water to cool the reactors. This in itself was frightening because sea-water and cooling of nuclear reactors should not be in the same sentence, ever and it can only mean one thing -the situation is desperate, everything has failed and since sea-water would destroy the reactor vessel and fuel rods it means its the very last resort at trying to stop a meltdown.

Related Links: The explosive truth behind Fukushima's meltdown | Fukushima Investigation: “Within one day complete meltdown and melt through occurred” — “There is no way that gov’t did not know this” (VIDEO) | Worse than Chernobyl: The inner threat of Fukushima crisis | Fukushima Diary | FukushimaOnTheGlobe.com | SafeCast.org -radiation maps | Hatrick Penry - Plume Gate | Fukushima Emergency what can we do? | Fukushima meltdown appears to have sickened American infants | Unexpected Mortality Increase in United States Follows Arrival of the Radioactive Plume From Fukushima. Is There A Correlation? | Canada and U.S. cut back radiation reporting | The Truth About Radiation and the Fukushima Meltdowns | Cryptome Photos Series of Fukushima | There is no way to stop Fukushima radioactive water leaking into the Pacific | ENE News on Japan Nuclear Accident | Toxic Tokyo Cesium Air Danger - Japan Burn Radioactive Debris - Arnie Gundersen Interview. Oct 2011 | Plume models from ASR Ltd of radiactive cloud from Fukushima | Global Atmospheric dispersion of radionuclides from the Fukushima-Daichii nuclear power plant | National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission |
Health and Related | Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Catastrophe in Japan following 11 March 2011 Magnitude 9.0 Earthquake - the Largest in Japan's History | Chernobyl: Understanding Some of the True Costs of Nuclear Technology | Fukushima Residents Seek Answers Amid Mixed Signals From Media, TEPCO and Government. Report from the Radiation Exclusion Zone | The US Navy knew: Fukushima's 'hard rain' on USS Ronald Reagan | 90Sr and 89Sr in seawater off Japan as a consequence of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident | Fukushima kids have skyrocketing number of thyroid abnormalities - report | The Implications of The Massive Contamination of Japan With Radioactive Cesium | NRC FOI Documents | Fish with radiation over 2,500 times safe levels found near Fukushima plant | Jan 2013 Hot Particles and Measurement of Radioactivity -Arnie Gundersen | Radiation risks from Fukushima 'no longer negligible' | Plume models from CEREA, France | Beyond Fukishima: A World in Denial About Nuclear Risks by Danny Schechter

The Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is sponsoring an invite only fracking workshop in London this Friday 15th Nov 2013 as part of its long term plan to introduce fracking in Ireland. It has already commissioned research to help 'determine best practice guidelines to regulate the shale gas industry in Ireland' (all their own words). There is no hint here fracking will NOT be allowed whatever the findings. This same body though is immune from prosecution under Irish law (See Box 1 below) making a mockery of it's regulatory role.

Related Links: Indymedia Fracking page | We are Awake, Informed and We are Saying No to Fracking | Global Frackdown2 Day - Sat Oct 19th 2013 -Events in Carrick-on-Shannon, Drumshambo, Cahir and Clonmel | Farmers tell G8 leaders: We support Farming not Fracking | Fracking In Fermanagh. What could it mean? | Fracking debris considered too radioactive even for waste site | Statement from some of No Fracking Ireland on EPA 'consultation' process which ended today. | Twelve Canadians – Fracking: Experiments in Sacrifice Zones - Fear & Loathing in Canadian Frackland | ShaleBubble.org -Explains the Ponzi dynamics of the Fracking industry
Anti-Fracking Groups: ttp://nofrackingireland.wordpress.com/ -Campaign against Fracking (Shale Gas) in Lough Allen Basin | http:://www.what-the-frack.org | http://www.FrackingFreeIreland.org -Fracking Free Ireland | https://sites.google.com/site/frackingireland/ -Fracking Ireland | http://www.frackaware.com/wordpress/ -Fermanagh Fracking Awareness Network (FFAN) | http://GoodEnergiesAlliance.com http://www.LoveLeitrim.org | http://NotForShale.com/ -Fracking covering Northern Ireland | http://NoToFracking.com/ -No To Fracking