Dr. Helen Caldicott has passionately devoted the last 40 years to educating the global community about the inherent risks and dangers of nuclear energy and weapons and the critical changes needed to restore and help save our embattled Earth. The Australian-born medical doctor (a pediatrician) and former Nobel Peace Prize nominee is the author of five books and the founder of several organizations including Physicians for Social Responsibility, Women's Action for New Directions (WAND) and The Helen Caldicott Foundation/NuclearFreePlanet.org. I recently had the opportunity to talk to the world renowned activist and environmental prophet at Green America's Green Festival in New York City, where she delivered an urgent and electrifying speech. Dr. Caldicott, who has been outspoken about the health and environmental dangers of nuclear power since before the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl meltdowns, prays that we will take heed from the recent Fukushima nuclear disaster, which resulted in the Japanese government shutting down all 54 of Japan's nuclear reactors, and spark a global trend to close nuclear power plants. Her frustration and anger at the lack of meaningful progress on this issue is palpable; as is her inspiring hope and belief in the collective power of individual citizens to raise their voices and create the political will to take action. What's at stake, as she reminds us in this candid interview, is our moral and spiritual imperative to protect our children and our Mother Earth. As she bluntly puts it, " The planet's in the intensive care unit, critically, acutely ill, and now we are all physicians to a dying planet." She urges, "Let the data sink in and then get off your couches to save the planet for your children."
Marianne Schnall: What is the one message you are most hoping to get out there?
Helen Caldicott: There isn't one message, there are three. One is that we are in dire danger from global warming and that unless we pull our socks up and stop burning coal and stop driving our SUV's around doing five miles to the gallon and stop fracking and natural gas, we're doomed. The temperature is on the way to be three degrees centigrade hotter by the middle of the century, which is almost antithetical to human existence, and six degrees by the end of the century - this is the top leading scientific data now that is available. I mean, we're killing the earth! Overtly. And we don't love our children enough, because if we did, we would be taking the necessary steps to stop burning coal and saving energy, you know?
When you think, that the Japanese had 54 reactors and now they've got none, they're all closed down, I think except one, I'm not sure. I think the last one is being closed. They're not dying - well of course, they will be dying soon of cancer and leukemia from the accident, but they're surviving alright without... I mean, what about sweating in the summer, hmm? That's what you've got sweat glands for, to cool your body down. I mean, we're so spoiled. We live at the same temperature like a Jello, the whole year. So you come to New York in the summer, it's hot and you go into a theater - it's like being in a refrigerator! Or in the winter, the buildings are so hot you'd have to take your clothes off. Well, what about putting on a lot of clothes in the winter - I mean, there are so many ways to go. And I do believe Americans desperately want to do the right thing, they're really good people, but they're just really not informed about what is happening. So inform yourselves. Read all my books. Question. Let the data sink in and then get off your couches to save the planet for your children. I mean, why immunize children and why care about what they eat, if, in fact, they don't have a future! It really amazes me. Number two: you close down your two Indian Point reactors, because if one of them blows, man - you're all gone. Three: work with Obama to work with Russia to abolish 97% of the weapons on the planet, between Russia and America. You can do that. The Russians are ready. What's holding it up is your generals, who are really pathological in the Pentagon and one of them said, 'If you get rid of our nuclear weapons, man, that's threatening the family jewels,' and that says it all, in a nutshell, so to speak, and that's a bad pun.
Marianne Schnall: When you look at the human species right now and the evolution of our consciousness, what do you think is at the root of our inability to act on any of this?
HC: You know, we did stop slavery and women got the vote and we've done all sorts of wonderful things, we are capable of growth, but we're still kind of tribal. After 9/11, this country turned into a tribe seeking vengeance. And I was in Eau Claire, Wisconsin the morning it happened, I had just flown in from Australia. It was a very Christian campus. So I got out the Bible and I looked at Luke, not that I'm a Christian. I'm a Pantheist. And Jesus said, love thine enemies, do good to those who hate you - and I hoped that America would not seek vengeance, the most powerful, destructive country on Earth. Well, I caught the Greyhound bus three days later and the country was swathed in flags and outside every mom and pop store it said 'God Bless America' and I thought, oh God. So "W" went into Iraq and killed a million people, half of whom were children, using uranium weapons and there's a very high incidence of severe congenital anomalies now, where those weapons were used in Basra and Fallujah, such that babies are being born with no brains, no arms, single eyes and so severe is it that the doctors have told the women to stop having babies. You were conducting a nuclear war there because some people went into the World Trade towers. Why didn't you stop and think, now why did they go into the World Trade Center? What have you done to alarm people so much that they would be, in their craziness, willing to do that, or fly into your Indian Point reactors? So America needs to grow up. And especially you need to grow up because you are the most militarily powerful country on earth and people really are kind in America and they really, desperately want to do the right thing, but without being educated, through the media, they don't know what it is. And the media, therefore, is determining the fate of the earth. As Marshall McLuhan said, "The media is the message."
MS: Do you feel hopeful? Are you optimistic that we're going to be able to...
HC: No, I'm not optimistic about the media, at all.
MS: About the situation generally?
HC: I am. I mean, I've got the cure to global warming, which is a study that I commissioned called Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free. Download it at www.ieer.org. You've got enough renewable energy right now, right now - integrated forms supply all the energy you need, right now - well, by 2030 - but get going and you'll employ millions of people and it will be terribly exciting. And lead the world towards a carbon-free nuclear-free future. We can abolish nuclear weapons. Obama wants to. He said in his speech in Prague, "I need your help" - and no one stepped up to the plate to support him. So he's on his own, fighting those crazy generals in the Pentagon who see the missiles as a surrogate for their erectile disability. That's why I called my book, years ago, Missile Envy. I mean, that's how they talk! They do.
The other thing is you can close down all the reactors if you rise up off your couches and you do what the people in Wisconsin did - take over your Congress. It belongs to you. Occupy it. It is yours. You are the leaders and those Representatives are your representatives. The President is not your leader. You're his leaders. And if you leave a vacuum there by not going in and making sure your representatives do what you want, the corporations step in and fill the vacuum and then you've got a corporate plutocracy and they're all corporate prostitutes, except maybe Bernie Sanders. So, you know, it's kind of your fault that it's happening, kind of your fault. And I think the Occupy movement has great potential. I think what happened in Wisconsin was so exciting. And when I went to Zuccotti Park in November or whenever, it was such a feeling of hope! For the first time in 20 years. You've got to rise up! You've got to take control of your country. You've got to get rid of those blasted corporations, who are evil! They're evil. They're killing the earth! And they know. I once spoke to a man who was building cruise missiles and I said, 'What about your children?' And he looked at me with eyes like dead stones and he said, 'I'm making money.' I said, 'Yeah, but what about your children?' And he repeated it. But when those men are on their death bed, they recant and they tell me what they've done. But it's too late, because they're about to die. Because they know, inside, what the truth is.
MS: Last question. What is your wish for the children of the future?
HC: That we have the courage to save their lives! I'm a pediatrician. I took the Hippocratic Oath. The planet's in the intensive care unit, critically, acutely ill, and now we are all physicians to a dying planet. And if we don't have the commitment and dedication that we have when we've got a patient in the ICU, and we stay up all night with them. We don't even think about ourselves. We're so tired out, we can hardly walk. We feel nauseated with tiredness. But that commitment is appropriate now and it's the only thing that's going to save the earth.
For more information visit:
ifyoulovethisplanet.org
nuclearfreeplanet.org
helencaldicott.com
Marianne Schnall is a widely published writer and interviewer whose writings and interviews have appeared in a variety of media outlets. She is also the co-founder and executive director of the women's website and non-profit organization Feminist.com, as well as the co-founder of the environmental site EcoMall.com. Her new book, based on her interviews with a variety of well-known women, is titled Daring to Be Ourselves: Influential Women Share Insights on Courage, Happiness and Finding Your Own Voice.
Follow Marianne Schnall on Twitter: www.twitter.com/marianneschnall
Joel Reynolds: What's In the Name 'Environmentalist'?
Look at the viscous smears and character assassination the pro nuke tolls have to resort to instead of any substantive attack on here scientific claims.
Just like they attack Busby and Beterlli, or anyone who dares claim the truth of the millions of cancer deaths caused by nuke power waste.
They all point out the central false concept of radiation, that external whole body radiation is equal to internal particulate radioactive exposure.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/11/nuclear-apologists-radiation hot particles good article, includes corruption of WHO.
Chernobyl Deaths Top a Million Based on Real Evidence
http://nuclearfreeplanet.org/
http://www.cerrie.org/people/busby.php Busby still work there, they published his paper in a minority report. So?
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/03/28/deconstructing-nuclear-experts/
Read it.
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/docs/federal/402-r-99-001.pdf
EPA radionuclide exposure coefficients
all radiation is different and routes of exposure matter.
http://rense.com/general93/decon.htm Busby
Rosalie Bertell, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalie_Bertell
http://www.ccnr.org/bertell_bio.html No Immediate Danger agrees
"George Monbiot debates Helen Caldicott, who says he is lying"
http://atomicinsights.com/2011/03/george-monbiot-debates-helen-caldicott-who-says-he-is-lying.html
"Helen Caldicott and the fine art of making up nonsense."
http://enochthered.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/helen-caldicott-and-the-fine-art-of-making-up-nonsense/
"Nuclear and Radiation Safety Issues: Helen Caldicott's Views Refuted."
http://www.ntanet.net/raabe.html
"George Monbiot: Interrogation of Helen Caldicott’s Responses"
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/interrogation-of-helen-caldicotts-responses/
Do ingested hot particle irradiation of the local cells more likely to cause cancers than the same particle whole body does form the outside.
yes or no?
I
I doubt her sincerity in fighting global warming. One of her tactics to oppose nuclear fission in Australia was to illicit the support of coal miner unions, telling them that nuclear power would kill the coal industry and that people should instead support clean coal technologies.
http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/images/coalminers.jpg
That's high hypocrisy.
hot particles more likely to cause cancer ingested than outside the body. yes or no?
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/evidence-meltdown/
Here's a sample:
'I began to see the extent of the problem after a debate last week with Helen Caldicott(1). Dr Caldicott is the world’s foremost anti-nuclear campaigner. She has received 21 honorary degrees and scores of awards, and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize(2). Like other greens, I was in awe of her. In the debate she made some striking statements about the dangers of radiation. So I did what anyone faced with questionable scientific claims should do: I asked for the sources. Caldicott’s response has profoundly shaken me.
First she sent me nine documents: newspaper articles, press releases and an advertisement. None were scientific publications; none contained sources for the claims she had made. But one of the press releases referred to a report by the US National Academy of Sciences, which she urged me to read. I have now done so – all 423 pages(3). It supports none of the statements I questioned: in fact it strongly contradicts her claims about the health effects of radiation.'
spent fuel{ is LFTR fuel} is not going to accomplish much as THe LWR reactor
has a cleanburn of 0.06% leaving 0.96% as nuclear waste requiring 10,000 years
of very expensive Yucca Mountain type storage. THe Liquid Fluoride THorium
Reactor{LFTR} has a cleanburn 0.95% with a miniscule of waste {tablespoon per 1GW
per year} requiring 300 years of storage.
Dr James Hansen endorsed LFTR in a letter in 2008.
“The Obama campaign, properly in my opinion, opposed the Yucca Mountain nuclear
repository. Indeed, there is a far more effective way to use the $25 billion collected from
utilities over the past 40 years to deal with waste disposal. This fund should be used to
develop fast reactors that consume nuclear waste, and thorium reactors to prevent the
creation of new long-lived nuclear waste. By law the federal government must take
responsibility for existing spent nuclear fuel, so inaction is not an option. Accelerated
development of fast and thorium reactors will allow the US to fulfill its obligations to dispose
of the nuclear waste, and open up a source of carbon-free energy that can last centuries,
even Millennia.”
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20081121_Obama.pdf
LFTR are bait and switch, 20 years or more away if ever.
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/952238/dont_believe_the_spin_on_thorium_being_a_greener_nuclear_option.html
http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/thorium2009factsheet.pdf Not the answer, and waste still need million year storage.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/23/thorium-nuclear-uranium
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/952238/dont_believe_the_spin_on_thorium_being_a_greener_nuclear_option.html
http://daryanenergyblog.wordpress.com/ca/part-8-msr-lftr/8-4-the-isotope-separation-plant/
great critique of LFTR an nuke power in general
rooftop pv solar is already cheaper than nukes, in 20 years it will be cheaper than paint.
Carbon resides in the Atmosphere over one hundred years.
Solar and Wind does not extract the abundant (CO2 free) electrical power
from nuclear waste as LFTR does.
We do not need the uninformed and hysterical driving public debate, particularly not on highly technical issues.
This question runs roughly like this:
If you are an environmentalist, then you must have a position on greenhouse gases.
If you have a position on greenhouse gases, then you must consider non-greenhouse power sources.
If you consider non-greenhouse power sources, then you must explain why it makes any kind of sense to get rid of the world's largest non-greenhouse-gas emitting power source (nuclear power), which is also the only technology to displace significant fossil generation, just as the threat of greenhouse gas emissions becomes clear.
The left is the people, the 99%,
]the right is the 1%, the rich.
It's obvious who you serve.
Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire made two comments. First, the wind farms and solar array farms that MidAmerican has ownership interests in make no fiancial sense, absent the government subsidy of 2.2 cents per kwhr of generated electricity. The problem is that the subsidy works as a credit against federal taxes. Many utilities don't have the tax bill that Berkshire does, so they won't build as many renewable energy sources.
Second, you can't rely on solar and wind as primary sources of electrical generation. Even in Arizona, there will be cloudy days. And for every day that the wind blows in excess of 15 or 20 mph on the Great Plains, there will be days of light winds or even no wind.
Even hydro-electric plants have issues, if a drought causes reduce water flow through a dam or over waterfalls.
So, we're sort of stuck with burining fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas or using nuclear energy, because they will power turbines 24/7/365.
Energy Efficiency
Energy Conservation
Combined Heat Power/Cogeneration
Wave
Tidal
Pyrolysis Biomass
Geothermal
Fuel Cell
Thermal Gradient
Landfill Gas
Storage
All of these energy or efficiency sources can be used in conjunction with wind and solar to make the grid reliable and address the intermittency of solar and wind. Linking multiple wind and solar farms together also helps address intermittency. The fact remains that production and end use efficiencies need to addressed before a building or home employs any of these energy sources.
Limiting the discussion to wind and solar is a nonstarter doomed to failure as is limiting it to fossil fuels and nuclear as a way to phony up the intermittency of wind and solar.
Any gains through conservation will be overwhelmed in 30 years when the worldwide demand increases by 40%.
"Limiting the discussion to wind and solar is a nonstarter doomed to failure as is limiting it to fossil fuels and nuclear as a way to phony up the intermittency of wind and solar. "
If anyone is being phony it is you. Insisting that there is enough biomass, landfill gas or any other organic fuel available to backup solar and wind 70% of the time is dishonest or just ignorant.
The choice has always been fossil vs. nuclear and it will continue to be in the foreseeable future.
The number of nuclear plants required to provide a large percentage of our electricity would result in meltdowns that would make our planet uninhabitable. You should understand that nuclear and renewables that are intermittent don't pair well because nuclear plants can't be simply turned on and off as the renewable electricity supply fluctuates. So nuclear prevents us from being able to supply a large percentage of our electricity with renewables.
Coal , gas and oil are not only dangerous to our environment, they will run out.
So the reality is we are stuck with renewables, and that is a good thing
Your second paragraph is complete nonsense! You said, "The number of nuclear plants required to provide a large percentage of our electricity would result in meltdowns that would make our planet uninhabitable."
104 nuclear power plants have provided 20% of this country's electricity for 40 years. NO MELTDOWNS! In fact, not one person in this country was ever injured by a commercial nuke plant.
"You should understand that nuclear and renewables that are intermittent don't pair well because nuclear plants can't be simply turned on and off as the renewable electricity supply fluctuates. So nuclear prevents us from being able to supply a large percentage of our electricity with renewables"
LMAO!! Complete nonsense! Nuclear power does not prevent us from being able to supply a large percentage of our electricity with renewables any more than coal power does! The problem is renewables are too expensive and too intermittent. NOTHING "pairs well" with renewables!
Better try a new sock; this one isn't working so well!
In the same way that using a firehose prevents us from filling a pint glass out in the middle of a field with water from above. This is simply a silly argument.
For some specific actions that could help save hundreds of millions of lives, see Stop Three Ticking Time Bombs at www.aesopinstitute.org
Ironically, one life you save may be your own!
Listened to David Attenborough last night. Evident that there is a notable retreat of ice everywhere on Earth. It's more than worrisome, it's frightening!
She campaigns against one of the few technologies that can truly help the climate crisis. She has sought the support of coal producers in Australia by warning them that the nuclear industry will destroy the coal industry...talk about a conflict of interest!
She is one of the most dishonest anti-nuke alarmists I've seen. She actually fabricates "facts" and exaggerates others. When called on her fabrications, she cites her own books as supporting "evidence". The mainstream scientific community began to ignore her self indulgent rants long ago.
Carl Sagan's greatest coup was his 1986 briefing of the Soviet Central Committee on nuclear winter. Several who were present have said tha the effect of Sagan's talk on Soviet military thinking was profound.
Cosmonaut and General Alexei Leonov reported that, after Sagan left the room, a dozen men on the Soviet General Staff looked at each other and agreed that the nuclear arms race was over. It would have to end; the threat of massive retaliation wasn't credible anymore. After the fall of the Soviet Union, physicist Roald Sagdeev and Alexei Leonov went so far as to credit Carl Sagan with ending the COLD WAR.
You are the liars. Note you have no specific things to say about what she says, just a general ad hminm attack.
That's because it's obvious you know nuke power kills, is expensive, and proliferates bombs, so facts won't help your case.
We have a solar maximum every 11 years.
I don't remember the end of the world last time. Did I miss something?