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
