INTRODUCTION FROM THE EDITOR
Welcome to issue thirteen of Environment Industry Magazine. Personally I am surprised to be here writing this - you would not believe how hard it is running a publishing company and a small baby. However, both are incredibly rewarding, nothing compares to a smile from my little girl to make it all worthwhile but managing, in this financial climate, to still be able to put together one of the best environmental magazines in the country is an amazing achievement and I am very proud of all my team and thankful to all the contributors to the magazine, long may it continue.
I was going to complain about how tough this year has been so far but the terrible events in Japan this month really puts my petty problems into perspective and our thoughts are with the people of Japan at this time. It is hard to comprehend the scale of the devastation caused by the earthquake and ensuing tsunami which struck Japan on Friday 11th March. It is sobering to see how one of the richest nations in the world was so badly affected, especially one which was probably more prepared for earthquakes than anyone else. What was most striking about this event was the unprecedented video footage and press coverage, I don’t believe we have ever had such microscopic visual scrutiny of any natural disaster before. It seems the modern day reaction in the developed world to an impending threat to your life is to stop and film it with your smart phone.
To see the immense destructive power of the earthquake and tsunami in such detail shows how insignificant our human endeavours are. However, out of this destruction a real positive can be gleaned, in the survival of the nuclear reactors at Fukushima, particularly considering we are talking about 40 year old technology which only started to fail when the power was lost to the reactors. Steve Grant’s column this issue echoes my opinions on this matter. The arguments against nuclear power which have sprung up during the crisis in Japan are ridiculous. It is evident that renewables cannot fulfil all of our energy requirements and to be dependent on other countries for fossil fuels would be fool hardy especially considering the turmoil in the Middle East at the moment and the unpredictable nature of the countries that we rely upon to supply our natural gas. Although nuclear is the best of a bunch of bad options it must be a part of our future energy mix. The risks associated with modern nuclear are minimal, not considering nuclear power based on events in Fukushima is like stopping driving based on the crash test results of a Morris Marina, things have moved on.
In reality without massive investment in our universities and research facilities we cannot expect to find solutions to our energy problems. It is obvious based on the advances in technology in the last 20 years that we have the innovation to develop new and viable energy sources but we don’t have the encouragement or the investment and maybe even the foresight to expand our narrow band of energy options. In the meantime it is naive to eliminate modern nuclear from our energy choices.
This issue of the magazine we are introducing two new industry sections. Firstly, by demand from our readers we have a conservation section which means that conservation and invasive species editorials will no longer reside in the Miscellany section and also means we will need more editorial contributions to fill it every issue. We have also launched vehicles and transport in this issue as the cover focus and we intend to run it in every issue from now on. We have set the bar high on this one and have some incredible editorials to get us started, Julia King author of the King Review – the government white paper on sustainable transport is looking at how we have progressed since her review was published in 2008, Norman Baker MP is discussing the government white paper on sustainable local transport and Catherine Hutt head of green transport at SMMT is discussing the future of green
transport......and that is just the transport section.
Finally, we would like to encourage our readers to have more input in the magazine and would like to invite suggestions of what you would like to see in the magazine as well as ideas for editorials and comments and questions about the environment and Environment Industry Magazine and we are offering a free subscription to anyone who takes the time to get in touch.
I look forward to hearing from you
Alex Stacey Managing Editor
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