ukliberty -- well, a political culture now dominated by narrow re-election calculations around 5 year parliaments can't really be expected to make very long term decisions well. look at the political failure over climate change. there must be a solution - a democratic solution - to the time-scale problem over which we make decisions.

Rochenko - the failure of consultation so far is a good reason to find what the institutional arrangements are that can deliver a legitimate decision here. some kind of fully deliberative process is needed.

Tony

I find it interesting that some questions are "too large, delicate and long term for ordinary representative institutions to deliver legitimacy".

Wouldn't "something like a Royal Commission", as outlined by Stuart Weir, be less 'democratic' than our ordinary representative institutions?

There is no legitimacy in the idea of a Royal Commission, particularly when the issue has now been twice mishandled by the Government.

When Greenpeace challenged the 2006 consultation on nuclear power, the High Court ruled that it was 'inadequate, misleading, very seriously flawed and procedurally unfair'.

Given that the very same objections can be made (and indeed have been made) about the 2007 exercise, then once the inevitable legal challenge to this consultation proves successful later this year, the only democratic response would be a full public enquiry.

Either that or it's petition the Attorney General to start proceedings to find the Government in criminal contempt of court...

Anthony, of course you're right that a nuclear option cannot be credible if it is pursued as the _only_ option.

I think the scale of the energy/environment problem has to be kept always in mind. We need, even if we transform our own lifestyles, a world which increases average energy consumption per head while reducing total energy-related emissions. (Much) more energy, fewer emissions if you want to marry the benefits of mechanisation and the environmental priority.

Why make non-nuclear renewables our only card in this game?

A deliberative assessment, not a "Royal" Commission where the selection of the members decides the outcome, would be a great thing to have on energy policy overall, as Stuart suggests, and not just nuclear. I can see that there may be a case for an ecology of sources. But what strikes me, and I think Polly Toynbee was very good on this in today's Guardian (and she has been saying it for 10 years on energy!) is that the imaginative time and effort needs to go into decentralising all the ways in which the issue can be addressed rather than centralising it into one Cabinet decision that is foregone and not deliberative at all, as Polly well describes. For example:

1. Large government prizes for best ways of lowering cost of renewables and capital risk sharing.

2. Emphasis on how renewables, eg photovoltaic can be manufactured. If the conversion efficiency of cells is very low, how about very cheap manufacture, as I think has been developed in California.

3. Serious investment in saving energy, insulation, shared heating, tower block efficiency.

I'd have much more confidence in the integrity of assessing the nuclear option from a government clearly doing everything else that it could. There is a huge bias here in favour of the vast capital projects, eg wind power at sea, take a look at the great comment by the diving superintendent, Christian, in his comment on Stuart's post.

Anthony

a political culture now dominated by narrow re-election calculations around 5 year parliaments can’t really be expected to make very long term decisions well.

How do you propose this Royal Commission-alike be selected, what should the time-frame be for it to make a decision?

Noting of course that we're going to lose 30% of our electricity generating capability within 20 years if we do nothing.

(Not attacking, genuinely interested in your proposal)