If You Love This Planet, Dr. Helen Caldicott

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James Carroll, columnist for the Boston Globe and former priest, is the author of Practicing Catholic, which Hans Kung calls “brilliantly written, passionate, and vivid.” Carroll is also the author of ten novels and five previous works of non-fiction, including the National Book Award-winning autobiography An American Requiem, and the New York Times bestselling Constantine’s Sword, also a documentary film. Read the rest of this entry »

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Oceanographer and the world’s leading expert on sea-level rise Dr. John Church talks with
Dr. Caldicott about the urgent situation we are facing this century. Scientists predict ocean levels will rise by 1 meter (over 3 feet) by 2100, displacing up to 140 million people around the world. Dr. Church is a project leader at the Wealth from Oceans National Research Flagship and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACE CRC) of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia. Dr. Church explains how more frequent storms will create coastal flooding. He predicts that environmental refugees will be a major issue for the 21st Century. He also discusses the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, and how they are slowly melting as a direct result of human made climate change.

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In this episode of If You Love This Planet, Steven Starr talks about the continuing risk of accidental global nuclear war, how even a small number of nuclear explosions would cause irreparable harm to the climate, and the “20th Century mindset” behind the current debate about nuclear weapons. Starr is an Associate Member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a Senior Scientist with Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri. Starr’s writings have been published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and many reputable Web sites about nuclear weapons proliferation and environmental responsibility. Visit Starr’s Web site Nuclear Darkness, Global Climate Change and Nuclear Famine: The Deadly Consequences of Nuclear War.

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David Kraft is the director and co-founder of Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS), a safe-energy anti-nuclear group based in Chicago. Currently, Kraft and NEIS are opposing what they call the Nuclear Relapse (a.k.a. “nuclear renaissance”) and supporting the Carbon Free-Nuclear Free energy policy approach for the U.S. Read the report Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy.

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This week, we feature a repeat of Dr. Caldicott’s October 20, 2008 interview with Helen Thomas, the respected journalist who served for 57 years as a correspondent and later, as White House bureau chief for United Press International. In 2000, Helen Thomas became a columnist at the Hearst News Service, until her retirement in June 2010 in the wake of her comments about the Israeli/Palestinian situation. Read Ralph Nader’s June 16 article A Deep Regard for People’s Right to Know: The Scourging of Helen Thomas. Thomas wrote four books including Watchdogs of Democracy?: The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public. In 2007, she laid the blame on President Bush for launching the Iraq War as his “war of choice” and lamented that the “gutless-wonder Congress doesn’t have the courage to do what it needs to do” to end the war. The last quarter of the show is an excerpt of Dr. Caldicott’s October 2008 presentation to Canadian medical professionals about nuclear power and the effects of global warming. She recommends reading the downloadable report Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free, A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy (2007).

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This week, Dr. Caldicott interviews Australian Natalie Wasley, coordinator of the Beyond Nuclear Initiative based at the Arid Lands Environment Center in the Northern Territory of Australia. Wasley has travelled extensively over the last 10 years, meeting with communities in Australia and overseas who have been impacted by every stage of the nuclear chain, from uranium exploration and mining through to nuclear weapons. The current focus of the Beyond Nuclear Initiative project is working with Aboriginal Traditional Owners who are opposed to the Australian federal government plan to force a radioactive waste dump on their traditional country.

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Dr. Caldicott chats with Dr. Reese Halter, a conservation biologist at California Lutheran University in Los Angeles. Known as Dr. Reese, he is also an author, syndicated science writer, and TV nature documentary host. In the late 1980s, Dr. Reese founded Global Forest Science, an international forest research foundation comprised of over 165 scientists engaged in forest science research and conservation. His most recent book is The Incomparable Honeybee and the Economics of Pollination. In addition,
Dr. Reese wrote Wild Weather: The Truth Behind Global Warming and two children’s books. As background for this episode, read
Dr. Reese’s February 18 article Honeybees are modern-day canaries in the coal mines and his July 13 article Plight of dwindling honeybees.

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In this episode of If You Love This Planet, Dr. Caldicott talks to Donna Mulhearn, an Australian former journalist and political advisor who journeyed to Baghdad in March 2003 as part of the “human shield” movement prior to the start of the 2003 Iraqi War. She returned later to Australia as an humanitarian aid worker to set up a shelter for homeless children and families. Mulhearn is now an independent writer and speaker on non-violence, spirituality and politics. Her memoir of her experiences in Iraq, Ordinary Courage: My Journey to Baghdad as a Human Shield, was published by Murdoch Books in 2010. As background, read Mulhearn’s 2003 piece, Human Shield: Reflections on Iraq.

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Dr. Caldicott chats with Phil Radford, the Executive Director of Greenpeace USA, about environmental activism and many other issues. For six years, Radford was Greenpeace USA’s Grassroots Director. During that time, he created a $9 million Grassroots Program which greatly expanded Greenpeace USA’s on-line, grass-roots and student organizing and training, as well as street and door-to-door canvassing. Recent corporate targets of Greenpeace campaigns include Kimberly-Clark, a major tree cutter, and ExxonMobil, a major polluter and global-warming denier. Greenpeace is largely sustained by hundreds of thousands of small monthly donations. Radford earned a Bachelor degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1998, and holds a certificate in Non-profit Management from Georgetown University.

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Dr. Caldicott speaks with Jacqueline Cabasso, Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation (WSLF), a non-profit organization that provides information about nuclear weapons and analyses of nuclear policies. Cabasso is a leading voice for nuclear weapons abolition, speaking at events across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. She is also the North American coordinator of Mayors for Peace, and serves on the global council of Abolition 2000 and the steering committee of United for Peace & Justice. She has written and co-authored numerous articles for publications including the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the journal Social Justice. In this conversation, Cabasso reports on the May 3-28 proceedings of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York, and the work government leaders and activists are doing to eliminate nuclear weapons in the U.S. and throughout the globe. As this interview was recorded in mid-May before the Conference was completed, Cabasso could not summarize the final results of the conference. For a review of Conference outcomes, read the June 2 article, The 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the June 3 commentary in English from the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, EDITORIAL: NPT review conference and the May 29 article U.N. Nuke Meet Ends with Good Intentions and Empty Promises. Also read the June 9 article What’s Next for the Nuclear Disarmament Movement?