Resonance FM

The 300-350 Show

Phil England’s environmental politics show looks at the politics of coal power. Perhaps, surprisingly, the United States has been rather effective at establishing a moratorium on coal power whilst the U.K is a little slower.

Despite former NASA scientist James Hansen’s plea to Gordon Brown last December to take a leadership role in initiating a global moratorium against unabated coal, the UK government’s Department for Business currently looks likely to grant permission to a new series of coal-fired power stations that are “Carbon Capture Ready”. What does this mean and is it good enough? We speak to Dr Keith Allott, Head of WWF-UK’s Climate Change Campaign who commissioned a report recently exploring these questions.

Meanwhile in the US, the tide is turning against coal at the grassroots, state and federal levels - 59 applications for coal-fired power plants were cancelled, abandoned or put on hold. Phil England speaks to Mike Ewall of the Energy Justice Network who has played a key role in supporting and connecting up the grassroots campaigners who have been doggedly winning on a case by case basis.

Finally, there’s a taster from a landmark speech made by Al Gore last week where he advocates a bold approach to the complete switch to renewable energy, evoking the Apollo space programme as an antecedent for such a challenge.

The 300 - 350 Show broadcasts every Thursday at 7:30pm and is repeated every Tuesday at 1pm