If You Love This Planet, Dr. Helen Caldicott

Watch for audio of our December 29 and January 5 shows, coming January 8

December 22, 2008

Toxic Hell at Resurgent Nuclear Bomb Factory

In October 2008, Dr. Caldicott traveled to Oak Ridge, Tennessee as a guest of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA) which educates the public about nuclear weapons through its ongoing campaign Stop The Bombs. Reverend Ralph Hutchison, Director of OREPA, took Dr. Caldicott to the Y12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, which was involved in developing the nuclear weapons that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War. Currently operated by B&W (Babcock and Wilcox) Y12, the plant flaunts its "vital role in the Department of Energy's Nuclear Weapons Complex." According to the USA Today story "Nuclear Weapons Decision Awaits Obama," the incoming administration's assessment of its nuclear weapons strategy next year "will determine whether Oak Ridge focuses on maintaining existing warheads and storing uranium from weapons pulled out of a shrinking arsenal - or whether it becomes a cornerstone in a new production enterprise." The Bush administration over eight years has laid the groundwork for creating another huge U.S. nuclear weapons (plus space weapons) stockpile, as outlined in Dr. Caldicott's 2004 book The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex.

Reverend Hutchison, a Presbyterian minister, has lived on the doorstep of the Oak Ridge facility for many years, and he joins Dr. Caldicott on If You Love This Planet to explain the capabilities - and dangers - of the Y12 plant. This complex was the largest building in the world in the 1950's, and at the height of earlier U.S. nuclear bomb production, used one-fifth of all electricity in the country.

The bulk of this program focuses on the immense and "terrifying" quantities of toxic waste, radioactive and otherwise, that is and was burned, dumped, buried or otherwise emitted in the surrounding area, and on the contemptible plans to recycle nuclear waste around the world. Learn about the most radioactive lake in the U.S., if not the world, and the 75,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste at the plant, many of which are leaking. Even Dr. Caldicott is horrified to learn about the extent of pollution at Oak Ridge, which she says "takes my breath away." Dr. Caldicott and Reverend Hutchison discuss the report detailing the contamination, "A Citizens Guide to Oak Ridge" (1992) which can be purchased for $5.00 through the Foundation for Global Sustainability. Dr. Caldicott refers to it as "one of the more profound documents I have ever read." A short excerpt from a promotional DVD, "This is Y12", produced by the Y12 Complex, is played during the interview.

Strongly recommended and relevant viewing: the Emmy-Award-winning 2007 documentary White Light, Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which can be purchased here.

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December 15, 2008

Forty percent of world's children heavily impacted by pollution

In this interview, Dr. Caldicott speaks with Richard Fuller, President and Founder of Blacksmith Institute, about the most significant areas of the world suffering from all forms of pollution, "the Top 10 of the Toxic 20." One billion people are affected by pollution in the Third World and in some heavily polluted areas, 75% of children are born with birth defects. Based in New York, Blacksmith works in locations throughout the developing world where human health is most affected by pollution, and implements strategies to help local institutions address the problem.

In October 2008, Blacksmith, in collaboration with Green Cross Switzerland, released a report, The World's Worst Pollution Problems. According to www.worstpolluted.org, "The Top Ten list includes commonly discussed pollution problems like urban air pollution as well as more overlooked threats like car battery recycling. The problems included in the report have a significant impact on human health worldwide and result in death, persistent illness, and neurological impairment for millions of people, particularly children. According to the report, many of these deaths and related illnesses could be avoided with affordable and effective interventions."

Fuller and Dr. Caldicott cover air pollution (Fuller mentions that nearly everyone he encountered on the streets of Beijing this summer had a cough), surface and ground water contamination, sewage, industrial toxins, radioactive waste, indoor air pollution, mercury, lead, and contamination from factories making chemical warfare agents, among other concerns. The program also explores what is being done to reduce toxics, such as China's major plan to deal with surface water pollution.

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December 8, 2008

Dr. Caldicott on the medical implications of nuclear power and climate change, and the risk of nuclear war

Photo: Jess Worth, New Internationalist, June 2008

In October 2008, Dr. Caldicott gave a lecture to medical colleagues (grand rounds) in Calgary. The lecture was part of her annual speaking tour in North America. During the speech, Dr. Caldicott describes in detail the medical and environmental risks associated with the complex process of the nuclear fuel cycle, and climate change. Without a knowledge of the facts presented in her lecture, she says, the heavily funded nuclear industry will proceed apace, and the world will see epidemics of malignancies by the hundreds of thousands in children and adults. And global warming left unchecked will present enormous challenges to public health, creating billions of ecological refugees and an increase in tropical diseases. Global warming may be greatly exacerbated by permafrost melting and an ocean phenomenon called the albedo flip, which she explains in the presentation. Neither of these threats were noted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their reports on global warming. Nuclear power, Dr. Caldicott declares, is not the solution to global warming, and in fact contributes to both global warming and ozone depletion. Dr. Caldicott refers the attending doctors to a map of Europe showing the enormous reach of radiation from the Chernobyl disaster.

Photo: Vanity Fair

As a prescription for survival, Dr. Caldicott says the U.S. and the world must follow the explicit guidelines in Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy [also see our August 4 episode]. Medical professionals, and the general public, must now practice the ultimate form or preventive medicine in speaking out against nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and demanding action on global warming.

Dr. Caldicott concludes her presentation by talking about the continuing risk of nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, and the Dead Hand device that would launch all of Russia's missiles (toward the U.S. and elsewhere) if the Russian leadership were killed. Read the Wired story, Soviet Doomsday Device Still Armed and Ready. Both the U.S. and Russia have embarked on building a large new generation of nuclear weapons, and the U.S. is arming space to dominate the planet. She outlines the enormous killing capacity of just one nuclear-armed Trident submarine. See the Scientists for Global Responsibility article, Could one Trident submarine cause nuclear winter? and the CBS News/60 Minutes story, The Deadliest Weapon Ever: Navy Creates Weapon Against Terror.

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December 2, 2008

America's fraudulent missile defense program continues to threaten world security

Photo: Lockheed Martin

Photo: Space4Peace.org

The U.S. Missile Defense system, enthusiastically promoted by the outgoing Bush administration, has long been met with criticism and doubt within the scientific community. In this episode, Dr. Caldicott talks with Dr. Ted Postol, Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Postol, winner of the 2001 Norbert Weiner award from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, has defiantly uncovered numerous false claims about missile defense made by his employer, which he claims is "representing a weapons system they know will not work as something that will work."

He describes how the idea of a missile defense system fits in with U.S. strategic nuclear policy and how such a system is dangerously flawed. Dr. Postol and Dr. Caldicott talk about how Russia and China perceive America's new missile-defense installations in Poland and Czechoslovakia, moves which Dr. Postol calls "worse than irrational." Dr. Postol says that any nuclear weapons accident occurring at a time of heightened tension between the U.S. and Russia would be more catastrophic than anything the human race has ever experienced. He mentions the 1995 false alarm that brought the world close to nuclear annihilation when a sounding rocket set off the early-warning system of Russia. Read Going Postol in the Boston Globe Magazine about Dr. Postol's issues with MIT.

The hour concludes with Dr. Caldicott's summary of missile defense or "Star Wars," which she calls "crazy, provocative, and dangerous," from the time Ronald Reagan introduced the idea in 1984 - at a time of nearly unanimous public support for global nuclear disarmament - to the present. She outlines how this "useless program" has mostly benefited universities, to the tune of $100 billion. There are signs that missile defense development will continue under the Obama administration, especially if the pro-Star Wars Robert Gates is retained as Defense Secretary. She describes the new $38 billion missile defense office complex to be opened in 2010 near Washington, D.C. Read the Time magazine article Why Obama Will Continue Star Wars.

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October 27, 2008

Dr. Caldicott speaks about the most important election in history and the three major threats facing humanity

Helen Caldicott, M.D. on her fall 2008 lecture tour. Photo: Jasmin Williams

Dr. Caldicott spoke October 12 at First Congregational Church in Long Beach, California. In this lecture, she discusses the urgent nature of the November presidential election, which she says will determine the fate of the earth. She outlines the three major threats facing humanity - global warming, nuclear war, and nuclear power - and provides a plan for solving each of these problems. During the lecture, Dr. Caldicott refers to a map given to lecture attendees showing the extent of radioactive contamination in Europe from the Chernobyl nuclear accident. A similar map can be found here. She also mentions her book, Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer, and says the report Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Policy is an essential roadmap for addressing global warming.

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October 13, 2008

Global plan to "recycle" nuclear waste can't work and will poison the environment and human health

The contamination caused by nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons production has created some of the most toxic places on earth. Ever-more-dangerous radioactive waste and epidemics of cancer may be in store if the Bush administration's agenda for worldwide nuclear-waste "recycling" is implemented in the years to come. What exactly is the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), introduced by George W. Bush in 2006? What is involved in the reprocessing of nuclear materials, and what are the far-reaching medical and public health ramifications of this process? These are some of the questions Dr. Caldicott puts to Robert Alvarez in this revealing interview.

Alvarez is Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. and a national award winning writer. Between 1993 and 1999, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and Environmental Policy and was the Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. Alvarez has recently authored an in-depth analytical report on the GNEP. Read Alvarez's articles Magical Thinking About Nuclear Waste and Nuclear Recycling Fails the Test. Also see Reframing reprocessing: Miracle of recycling, or nightmare of proliferation?

Alvarez and Dr. Caldicott also examine how the Bush administration has reignited the Cold War with Russia, how U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories are pressing to resume lucrative bomb production with the mentality of a cargo cult, and why nuclear disarmament could still be achieved with sufficient political will.

After a music break, the show concludes with a clip from a presentation by Tom Rosenstiel, Director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, at a Washington, DC symposium organized by the Nuclear Policy Research Institute in 2004. Rosenstiel explains how the information revolution is leaving the public less informed about critical issues.

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October 6, 2008

The crisis and opportunity of peak oil and peak coal

Photo Credit : ballona.org, wilshirecenter.com

Richard Heinberg is the Director of the Post Carbon Institute, a non-profit organization in California that conducts research, educates the public, and organizes leaders to help communities around the world understand and respond to the challenges of fossil fuel depletion and climate change. In this engrossing discussion with Dr. Caldicott, Heinberg explains the situation of Peak Oil, and reminds us just how reliant our society is on the finite resources of oil, coal and gas. We are reaching a state where the depletion of these fossil fuels will force us to undergo a major transition to low-energy and re-localized societies with food grown and products made close to home. Heinberg describes how transportation will need to change - currently oil is responsible for 95% of transportation technologies in the United States.

The impending decline in coal, at a time when coal burning is rapidly increasing, is also discussed, and will be the subject of Heinberg's next book. New research suggests that world coal supplies will be gone in 20 years or less, with China's coal supply depleted much sooner. Heinberg also draws our attention to the industrialization of food: only 2% of the population in the USA grow food for the rest of the country, and most food has traveled 1,500 miles from farm to plate.

Heinberg is the author of Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century Of Declines, Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World and other books. He is featured in the documentary films The End of Suburbia and The 11th Hour. Read his articles The View From Oil's Peak and What Will We Eat as the Oil Runs Out. This program is a startling conversation about the energy crisis with one of the clearest thinking environmental commentators today.

The show concludes with a clip of a speech by Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist James Sterngold, who contends there is insufficient media coverage of nuclear threats. Read Sterngold's 2008 article in Mother Jones about nuclear weapons here.

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September 29, 2008

The psychology of nuclear weapons designers, and U.S. nuclear hypocrisy

Photo Credit: Department of Energy (courtesy Natural Resources Defense Council)

In this fascinating conversation, respected anthropologist, author and lecturer Professor Hugh Gusterson from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology delves into the psychology of nuclear weapons scientists and designers. Drawing on his extensive field research at U.S. weapons laboratories Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos, Prof. Gusterson discusses with Dr. Caldicott the moral and emotional approach of the weapons designers; the terminology used among the scientists which is not only thick with metaphors of birth and fertility, but also denies death (weapons victims would be "carbonized," not incinerated); and the present recruitment by the Department of Energy of anthropologists to be involved in counterinsurgency. His books include Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War, People of the Bomb: Portraits of America's Nuclear Complex and Why America's Top Pundits are Wrong.

Prof. Gusterson and Dr. Caldicott also cover the hypocrisy and veiled racism of the U.S. government and attendant media in demonizing other countries which want to build atomic bombs, while the U.S. retains an enormous arsenal of bombs and continues to make more. They also consider why traditionally right-wing voices such as Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, and four former British foreign or defense secretaries, now want to abolish nuclear weapons. Prof. Gusterson cites many encouraging successes on the road toward global nuclear disarmament, to discredit the idea that "the nuclear genie can never be put back in the bottle".

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September 22, 2008

Urgent prescription to reduce global warming: stopping coal emissions and extraction immediately

As Dr. Caldicott says during this show, the risk of unabated global warming is now "beyond serious." The burning of coal, which is rapidly increasing in China and elsewhere, is the single largest factor set to increase emissions and the Greenhouse Effect. How are melting ice caps and mountaintop coal removal related? This program's two segments provide the answer.

The world's leading - and most politically outspoken - climate researcher, Dr. James Hansen from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies is a meteorologist, physicist, and university professor who has led the charge for over 20 years to take global warming seriously. Dr. Hansen and Dr. Caldicott discuss the critical environmental problems facing the planet due to the effects of global warming, and how the most catastrophic warming effects can be averted by stopping all coal emissions now.

Next, Dr. Caldicott speaks with John Johnson, an activist based in Knoxville, Tennessee, whose organization Katuah Earth First! fights the increasingly widespread mountaintop coal removal practices which have devastated over 1 million acres in southern Appalachia, where entire landscapes are obliterated and local culture is destroyed, leaving only barren moonscapes. Johnson has written that mountaintop removal is ". . .an extreme form of coal mining that involves blasting the tops off of ancient mountains, burying freshwater streams with rubble and flattening the world's most biologically diverse temperate forest." For more information, see the websites of Mountain Justice and I Love Mountains (on this site, enter your zip code under "What's Your Connection to Mountaintop Removal?" to see if your local power is derived from leveling mountains).

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September 15, 2008

What is religion's role in saving the earth?

Australian Catholic author and historian Paul Collins resigned from the active priestly ministry of the Catholic Church in 2002 following a doctrinal dispute with the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith about his book, Papal Power. In this interview, Collins talks with Dr. Caldicott about his "environmental conversion," and his experience living and working in Michigan. Collins, who has a Masters degree in theology from Harvard University, is also the author of God's Earth: Religion as if Matter Really Mattered (1995), and he writes regularly for The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Collins ponders the link between capitalism and environmental degradation, describes the Catholic Church's attitude toward environmental issues, and explains how the church came to be so opposed to contraception.

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September 9, 2008

Lily Tomlin on the "distressing" state of America and the sport of war

One of America's most loved writers, comediennes and actresses, Lily Tomlin talks with her long-time friend Dr. Caldicott about the current political climate in the U.S. and her sense of desperation about the direction the U.S. administration is taking. Tomlin reminisces about her experiences in the peace movement after meeting Dr. Caldicott, and describes her childhood and early creative influences in Detroit, Michigan. Tomlin is one of the featured commentators / bloggers on The Women on the Web, "A New Way for Women to Talk Culture, Politics & Gossip."

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September 1, 2008

Nuclear weapons and nuclear power in Britain

Sellafield nuclear plant in England

Long time peace activist and Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the United Kingdom, Dr. Kate Hudson talks to Dr. Caldicott about the nuclear energy industry in England, weapons proliferation, and her new book CND - Now More than Ever: The Story of a Peace Movement. This episode also features an excerpt from a speech given by Joseph Cirincione, then Senior Director, Non-Proliferation Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Table 1: US Nuclear Weapons in Europe 2008

Derived from more extensive table. Click table or here to download the full table. [June 26 update: weapons removed from UK]

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August 25, 2008

Fighting a corporate-owned planet

Anti-globalization champion Naomi Klein talks about her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. A respected author and columnist, Klein has written three published works including her previous best-seller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. In this conversation with Dr. Caldicott, we discover what drives Klein's interest in the corporate and international marketplace, and take a closer look at the "disaster capitalism" taking place around the world.

This episode also features an excerpt from the film Helen's War: Portrait of a Dissident, produced by Dr. Caldicott's niece Anna Broinowski. In the excerpt, you will hear clips of interviews with Martin Sheen, Lily Tomlin, Senator Ted Kennedy and the late Christopher Reeve.

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August 18, 2008

Nuclear waste in our midst: a catastrophe waiting to happen

Kevin Kamps is a radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear. Here he discusses the environmental and medical risks associated with low-, medium- and high-level nuclear waste, and other issues surrounding transportation and storage. Nuclear waste, whether in reactors, transported in terrorist-target "Mobile Chernobyl" trucks, trains and barges, or sent to the proposed Yucca Mountain dumpsite, could cause a radioactive disaster. Kamps is the country's leading expert on all aspects of nuclear waste, the Achilles heel of the nuclear industry. This is a terrific interview, listen to it and you will learn much that you never knew before.

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August 11, 2008

Renewable energy, nuclear power, and the 2008 election

Harvey Wasserman is a respected author and political activist whose book Solartopia is a vision of what the world will look like when we switch to renewable energy sources. A pioneer since 1973 of the global grassroots movement against atomic reactors, Wasserman is now Senior Editor of the Free Press. In this interview, he discusses our current dire global situation, and also talks about his new book, How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election and is Rigging 2008. Wasserman is one of the United States' most experienced anti-nuclear campaigners and one of the leading thinkers toward to a truly green energy future. He refers to four documents you can find here: Are You a Solartopian? by Harvey Wasserman, Franklin Roosevelt's proposed Economic Bill of Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the United States Bill of Rights. This is a fascinating conversation so tune in!

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August 4, 2008

A clean-energy future without nukes, oil or coal?

Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D is President of The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. In this program, Dr. Makhijani discusses his new book, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free, A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy (2007), which demonstrates that the U.S. and the rest of the world could successfully meet all of its energy needs with renewable energy by 2050. This groundbreaking research should be the boilerplate for all plans to fight global warming. Dr. Makhijani wrote the first study on U.S. energy conservation potential (1971), edited the book Nuclear Wastelands and is the principal author of Mending the Ozone Hole (MIT Press). The Roadmap can be ordered in book form or downloaded free here. This show also includes a clip of a lecture by Dr Caldicott at a 2007 conference.

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July 28, 2008

What would nuclear winter mean today?

Professor Alan Robock of the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University is a meteorologist who has studied the effects of nuclear winter since the 1980s. Most recently, he has examined the climatic effects of regional nuclear conflicts and the effects of global warming. In this program, he talks about how a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, which each have 10,000 nuclear weapons, could trigger nuclear winter, while detonating even one-third of their collective arsenals would cause catastrophic climate change. A nuclear war between India and Pakistan would wreak major havoc with global temperatures and agriculture. The show ends with a brief excerpt of a lecture Dr Caldicott gave at an early childhood conference in 2007.

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July 21, 2008

Hazards of U.S. nuclear power plants, part 2

Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project at Beyond Nuclear and former director of the Reactor Watchdog Project at Nuclear Information and Resource Service, illuminates the operation, disrepair and vulnerability of U.S. nuclear power plants. This episode also includes an excerpt from the 1983 Oscar-winning documentary, If You Love This Planet, which features Dr. Caldicott giving a lecture about the risks and consequences of nuclear war.

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July 14, 2008

Hazards of U.S. nuclear power plants, part 1

David Lochbaum, Director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, about the public health dangers of the 104 aging nuclear power plants in the United States. Hear about near-melt-downs, how terrorists could easily crash planes into the planes or sabotage them from the inside, and how the Nuclear Regulatory Commission fails to ensure community safety. Also includes a short excerpt of a lecture by Dr. Caldicott about the Nuclear Age from If You Love This Planet (1983 Academy Award-winning documentary) with narration from U.S. nuclear propaganda films.

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