All that matters is matter itself

An historic day for science and our understanding of nature yesterday couldn’t fail to contrast with a bad day for democracy when after hours of meandering questions, MPs came no closer to understanding the truth about interest-rate rigging by a global bank. 

While it’s true that it took hundreds of scientists almost half a century to establish in practice a theory about the existence of a sub-atomic particle that gives matter mass, holding the universe together, they sought an altogether objective, deeper knowledge.

Members of the treasury select committee who questioned ex-Barclays chief Bob Diamond were, on the other hand, merely concerned with who did what, when, as if that was all that mattered. The inner processes at work, the logic of capitalist banking, understandably, never entered their minds.

Apparently conceived on a rainy weekend in 1964 by Edinburgh academic and atheist Professor Peter Higgs, the almost certain discovery of the boson was announced in the presence of  the 83-year-old at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Geneva.

Higgs has always despised the description “God particle”, which implies that it owes its existence to a supernatural deity. In fact, the virtual verification of the Higgs theory is much more like the "there is no God" particle.

In the wake of Darwin’s theory of evolution, the church was forced to retreat on the idea that a mysterious deity created the earth and all its contents in under a week. Dr Lee Rayfield scientist and the Bishop of Swindon had to take another step back yesterday.

He had to agree that the Higgs boson provided “crucial support that the prevailing scientific theory for the nature of the universe”. But then he claimed that it left “unanswered questions that science alone can never address". The unanswered questions are being answered one by one, however. 

And not by faith but by rigorous scientific investigation which leaves no room for divine intervention. As Richard Lewontin, the noted evolutionary biologist, put it:

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

If this result holds up, then the Cern team will have answered an absolutely central question as to why matter in and of itself has mass. That all matter, which includes humans, is in constant motion and transformation is verified by the discovery. The Higgs boson exists in relationship to other forms of matter, imparting a necessary force and substance.

With just one in two million chance of it being wrong, the breakthrough also demonstrates that what at first sight seems an unknowable, Kantian "thing in itself" becomes the knowable "thing for us" as a result of human interaction, experimentation and analysis.

New doors are opening. Some of the scientists are already saying that this particle has some unpredicted behaviours that may give insights into very poorly understood aspects of cosmology such as dark matter and dark energy

Professor Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, Britain’s academy of sciences noted: "The project at Cern is a testament to what can be achieved in science when countries come together and pool resources and brains. Today moves us a step closer to a fuller understanding of the very stuff of which the universe is made."

A parallel, rigorous scientific approach to our understanding the essence of another form of matter – capitalist society – is not only possible but necessary. While it is breaking down in front us, conscious human intervention is needed to transform society into a thing for us. Historical evolution needs a push in the right direction.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Radiation sickness is not a myth, George

The nuclear industry exudes confidence when setting out its business plans and tying down government subsidies – but when it all goes wrong it’s as if they never studied or understood the dangers of radiation at all.

Workers then give their lives, using chaotic, unscientific, and increasingly desperate measures. Meanwhile populations are terrified, displaced, their homes and possessions abandoned, sometimes for ever, and their livelihoods and education wrecked.

After radiation more than 7.5 million times the legal limit was found in the sea off shore from Fukushima, the leak was finally halted yesterday using, according to reports, “a mixture of sawdust, newspaper, concrete and a type of liquid glass”. A couple of days earlier they tried “cement, an absorbent polymer and rags”.

In a confidential assessment for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, US engineers helping with the crisis in Japan have warned that desperate measures taken were likely to result in further disaster. Seawater pumped to cool waste nuclear rods clogged pipes, so it didn’t reach the rods at all. A build up of hydrogen and oxygen may cause further hydrogen explosions.

This is advanced science? This is safe? This is the energy source that is going to save the planet from global warming?

The same approach dominated the Deepwater Horizon leak in the Gulf of Mexico, where BP and partners were making it up as they went along. Permitting new coal-fired power stations on the basis that “carbon capture and storage” will work eventually, is a further example of this cavalier approach to the health and safety of populations, whilst real science is totally ignored.

Which brings us to that enthusiastic convert to nuclear power, George Monbiot. After declaring that Fukushima actually helped the case for nuclear generation, Monbiot has now turned on campaigners, claiming that there is no scientific evidence that nuclear radiation causes health problems.


Well George, here’s some evidence, published in proceedings
of the Royal Society.

“Scientists working in Ukraine and Israel have found that DNA of children born to members of the Chernobyl clean-up teams has mutated, with a sevenfold increase in the emergence of new DNA strands. This indicates that low doses of radiation can induce multiple changes in the collection of genes that parents pass on to their offspring.”

The report concludes: "The very fact that much lower doses of radiation than previously generally believed can double the number of genomic changes needs serious attention. This is all the more important when a significant proportion of the human population is subjected to increased mutagenic pressure."

The disaster in Fukushima is happening in one of the world’s most densely-populated countries, within 240 kilometres of Greater Tokyo’s 35 million people. We have no idea what the long-term effects of this uncontrolled experiment will be on the human genome.

Campaigners like Monbiot have accepted that with the kind of growth curves demanded by capitalism for its survival (not for our survival), there is a massive energy shortfall and they fear it will be filled by a huge return to coal-fired power, increasing global warming.

They are not wrong there – but their “solution” is absolutely wrong because it’s based on the acceptance of the unacceptable and unsustainable system of production for profit. Monbiot’s is just another version of the There is No Alternative argument.

The solution is to fight for an end to the capitalist growth mania, and remove energy generation from reckless profit-driven corporations. With research and development of alternative energy, we can stop measuring growth by counting profits from sales of commodities. Instead, better health, plenitude, equality and fairness, food for the hungry, land for landless, and a thriving eco-system can be used as the scientific measures of our success.

Penny Cole
Environment editor



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Population scare a 'convenient lie'

With effective international governmental action to tackle climate change well and truly off the agenda, perhaps it is no accident that attempts are under way to make global population levels a central issue once again.

The thinking, as always, is that there are too many people on the planet for “sustainable development” as well as concerns about the “impacts” of growing populations on resources. At least that is how the Royal Society, Britain’s self-appointed national academy of science, wants us to see the issue.

It has announced an inquiry into population levels that has a real ring of the late 18th century about it. The cleric-turned-economist Thomas Malthus then predicted that humanity would grow faster than the food supply. This “principle”, claimed Malthus, was "one of the causes that have hitherto impeded the progress of mankind towards happiness".

Modern supporters of variations of Malthus’s notions are on the panel. They include Jonathan Porritt, former government chief environmental adviser and head of the Sustainable Development Commission, and naturalist and film-maker David Attenborough, who is a leading light in the disturbing Optimum Population Trust (OPT).

The OPT’s Roger Martin believes that people have to live “within the limits of the place we inhabit” while its website claims that population growth is “rapidly destabilising our climate and destroying the natural world on which we depend for future life”. Britain’s “optimum” population is put at 30 million – under half its present size.

The whole argument is muddle-headed and is based on accepting how capitalist society functions (or, in many instances, does not) as an eternal, natural law. Even a glance at the figures since Malthus disproves his assertion. In 1800, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, there were about a 1 billion people, which rose to 1.7 billion by 1900.

By 2000, it had quadrupled to 6 billion during a century of advances in public health, technology, food production and cheaper energy sources. In other words, the world’s population grew because there was a potential and capacity for it to survive. Absolute numbers continue to grow and projections are for a total of 8.3 billion by 2030. But the percentage rate of increase is falling. In many countries, a declining birth-rate points to an eventual fall in absolute numbers.

The biologist and writer Colin Tudge fiercely disputes the Malthusian argument, insisting that the failure to feed the present population is a result of feeding half of all staple crops to livestock, and then wasting about a third of what we do produce. “We already produce enough for nine billion, if only we used it properly. And we don't need to be vegetarian. Cattle and sheep do best on grass and browse, and there is plenty of those,” he insists.

As Tudge suggests, the real issues are about how food is produced, distributed and sold as well as how natural resources are used. The Royal Society, as an establishment institution, won’t question the framework of capitalist society. Instead, it wants us to accept that we cannot reach beyond the present, or conceive of another way of organising society. A truly anti-scientific approach if there ever was one.

Global society has indeed reached a “limit” - one that actually prevents us from establishing a conscious, sustainable self-relationship with nature. The limit is to be found in a capitalist society’s social relations that commodify everything and alienates producers from the fruits of their labour and the world around them.

For the last word, I can do no better than cite Tudge again: “For governments and corporations, Malthusian gloom is not an inconvenient truth but an all-too convenient lie. We are still told from on high that even to keep pace with human numbers we need to double food supply in the next few decades – so we need more big-time industrial farming with hi-tech inputs. There is no reason for this – except that it's profitable, and would maintain the political status quo. The future is indeed promising; but if we want to gather its fruits, then we need to find a very different way of running our affairs.”

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Warning: 'geological disposal' spells danger

At the Local Government Conference in Harrogate this week, amongst the stalls promoting management consultants, security companies and quangos, was a stand run by Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS).

They were there hoping to find cash-strapped local authorities so desperate that they will open talks about hosting a “geological disposal facility”, and there were various factsheets to encourage them.

Factsheet 1 explains that a “geological disposal facility” extends over an area of several square kilometres, but admits no country has successfully built one, though some are making “good progress”. It claims that Royal Society, Britain’s academy of science, supports the idea.

But what the Royal Society actually told the government in a report published as far back as 2002, is that “the problem of disposing of existing waste is serious and urgent” and they warned the government not to wait to tackle it until after a decision has been made about whether to build new nuclear plants.

The report accuses successive governments and industry of failing to recognise the need for public consent about “policies relating to toxic and long-lived wastes” and for public confidence in the institutions that manage them. Not exactly a ringing vote of confidence!

There is also the major issue, usually ignored, about the economics of nuclear power. A Greenpeace report highlights the massive cost overruns that are likely to arise as the new generation of nuclear power stations is built, and that these costs are likely to be passed on to the taxpayer.

Factsheet 3 is the sugar-coating. “Construction and operation of a geological storage facility will be a multi-billion pound project that will provide skilled employment for hundreds of people for over a century ….spin-off industry benefits, benefits to local education or academic resources, positive impacts on local service industries… better local healthcare to meet the increased needs of the community,” it declares.

Factsheet 4 sets out an “approach based on voluntarism and partnership”. An “Expression of Interest” has to come from the local authority – though the initial suggestion can come from a landowner, company or even a parish council. There will be extensive “community engagement” and “the community” can pull out right up until the point when construction is due to begin.

But it is not at all clear what mechanism the community could use to enforce that. What is certain is that it will not be through a legal challenge using the planning laws, because the facilities will be subject to the Planning Act 2008 which rules traditional inquiries out for major infrastructure projects.

The stall was not exactly swarming with enthusiastic councillors. But as the recession bites, and landowners and corporations look for new ways to make money, who knows what might happen?

All of this underlines the urgency of taking energy generation out of the capitalist market, and creating instead, local energy companies. These democratic bodies can plan to meet their community’s energy needs, with an appropriate mix of power sources, more cheaply and more safely than profit-driven nuclear and fossil-fuel giants.

Penny Cole
Environment editor