Leading British Environmentalist Backs Nuclear Energy

Monday, May 24, 2004

The threat of global warming is so dire that only the expansion of nuclear energy as the world's main energy source can save the earth from catastrophe, warns James Lovelock, one of the United Kingdom's top scientists, in today's London Independent - http://news.independent.co.uk/

Lovelock, 84, was among the first scientists to sound the alarm about climate change, helping to brief former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on the effects of greenhouse gas emissions in 1989. He is the author of the Gaia hypothesis, the theory that the Earth functions as an organism that maintains conditions necessary for its survival. In the Independent, Lovelock points to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and last summer's heat wave in Europe as evidence that climate change is occurring more quickly — and with more severe consequences — than predicted (Michael McCarthy, London Independent, May 24).

"Cosmetic attempts" such as the Kyoto Protocol <http://unfccc.int/resource/convkp.html> are no longer adequate to address global warming, he says, and there is not enough time to switch to renewable energy sources such as wind, tide and water power.

"If we had 50 years or more we might make these our main sources," Lovelock writes. "But we do not have 50 years; the Earth is already so disabled by the insidious poison of greenhouse gases that even if we stop all fossil fuels burning immediately, the consequences of what we have already done will last for 1,000 years."

Nuclear energy is the only immediately available energy source that does not release carbon dioxide that causes global warming, he says (James Lovelock, London Independent <http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=524230>, May 24).

The environmental movement, which considers Lovelock one of its greatest champions, has long rejected nuclear power as dangerous, and several environmental groups reacted with hostility yesterday to Lovelock's position.

"Lovelock is right to demand a drastic response to climate change," said Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace <http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/> UK. "But he's wrong to think nuclear power is any part of the answer. Nuclear creates enormous problems: waste we don't know what to do with; radioactive emissions; unavoidable risk of accident and terrorist attack."

Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth <http://www.foe.org/>, said, "Climate change and radioactive waste both pose deadly long-term threats, and we have a moral duty to minimize the effects of both, not to choose between them" (McCarthy, London Independent).

Lovelock called fears about nuclear power "unjustified," however, saying "nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources."

"I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy," he said. "We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilization is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear — the one safe, available energy source — now or suffer the pain to be inflicted by our outraged planet" (Lovelock, London Independent).
Copyright, National Journal Group. Year 2004