If You Love This Planet, Dr. Helen Caldicott

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In this episode, Dr. Caldicott interviews Ralph Nader, one of America’s most effective social critics. Named by The Atlantic as one of the 100 most influential figures in American history, and by Time and Life magazines as one of the hundred most influential Americans of the twentieth century, his documented criticism of government and industry has had widespread effect on public awareness and bureaucratic power. Nader is an American attorney, author, lecturer, political activist, and four-time candidate for president of the United States, having run as a Green Party candidate in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008. For over four decades, Nader has exposed problems and organized millions of citizens into more than 100 public interest groups to advocate for solutions. His efforts have helped create a framework of laws, regulatory agencies, and federal standards that have improved the quality of life for two generations of Americans. Visit the Web site of Public Citizen, an organization founded by Nader. Longer show description to follow.

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On If You Love This Planet this week, Dr. Caldicott interviews Diane D’Arrigo about the massive and ongoing problem of nuclear and contaminated waste. D’Arrigo is the Radioactive Waste Project Director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS).

D’Arrigo, who has been with NIRS since 1986, has a degree in chemistry and environmental studies and
has closely followed so-called “low-level” nuclear
waste issues for decades. Relevant to this episode, read the 2007 NIRS press release New Report
Finds Nuclear Weapons Materials Released to Landfills Pathways Open for Reuse and Recycling.
Read the report written D’Arrigo and Mary Olson of NIRS, Out of Control — On Purpose: DOE’s Dispersal of Radioactive Waste into Landfills and Consumer Products. Longer show description to follow.

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This week’s guest, Professor Timothy Mousseau, is Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate Education, and Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina, in Columbia. Since 1999, Prof. Mousseau and his collaborators have explored the ecological and evolutionary consequences of the radioactive contaminants affecting birds, insects and people inhabiting the Chernobyl region of Ukraine.

In this interview with Dr. Caldicott, Prof. Mousseau discusses his research, which suggests that many species of plants and animals suffer from increased mutational loads as a result of exposure to radionuclides stemming from the Chernobyl disaster. Of interest, read the August 13 article Chernobyl: The Gift That Never Stops Giving. Longer show description to follow.

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This week, Dr. Caldicott talks with American journalist, author, and war correspondent Chris Hedges about military culture and the consequences of combat. Hedges,
a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute, specializes in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies, and his most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009). He is also the author of War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, What Every Person Should Know About War, and When Atheism Becomes Religion: America’s New Fundamentalists. In 2002, Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. He also received in 2002 the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University and Princeton University. He currently writes a weekly column for Truthdig.com. Read his latest columns and his earlier work here. Particularly relevant to this program is Hedges’s article, The Pictures of War You are Not Supposed to See. Read the rest of this entry »

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This week, we present a repeat of Dr. Caldicott’s 2009 interview with Colette Livermore, M.D. Dr. Livermore joined Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, a religious organization within the Catholic Church, at the age of 18. After serving for eleven years, Dr. Livermore left the order, and obtained her medical degree from the University of Queensland. She is currently a general practitioner living in Australia. Her memoir, Hope Endures, was published in late 2008, and has been described as a “compelling chronicle of idealistic determination, rigid discipline, and shattering disillusionment.” In this interview with Dr. Caldicott, Dr. Livermore talks about her experiences working with Mother Teresa, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the events that eventually led her to leave the order and take her life in a different direction. Read the rest of this entry »

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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. Carroll is Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University in Boston. In this edifying interview with Dr. Caldicott he discusses war, peace and religion in the world today. At the top of the interview, Carroll tells Dr. Caldicott that she is “one of my great, long-time heroes.” Dr. Caldicott in turn praises Carroll for writing a column that tells the unflinching truth about the realities of our time. They then look at his background and how it influenced his writing. 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. In this program, 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. As background, read a two-page report by Church, Sea-level rise and global climate change. And watch a two-minute talk by Church. Read the rest of this entry »

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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. As background, read two articles by Starr, Eliminate Launch on Warning and High-alert nuclear weapons: the forgotten danger, both relevant to President Obama breaking his promise to take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert. Read the rest of this entry »

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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. As background, read Kraft’s articles It’s the water, stupid! Nuclear power won’t work in global warming world and Beware putting too many energy eggs in the nuclear basket….

First, Kraft reports on the nuclear energy industry’s intensive efforts since 2001 to allow construction of a new generation of power plants in the U.S., and their moves to overturn moratoriums in place in many states against constructing more reactors unless the problem of nuclear waste is resolved. Kraft makes a good analogy of hypothetical skyscrapers built without restroom facilities to illustrate the dangerous absurdity of enabling the industry to generate more radioactive waste at more nuclear power facilities. Read the rest of this entry »

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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. Read the rest of this entry »

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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?

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Dr Caldicott interviews Janette D. Sherman, M.D., a specialist in internal medicine and toxicology. Dr. Sherman has published more than 70 articles in the scientific literature and also writes for the popular press to provide information to the concerned public. Dr. Sherman is the author of Life’s Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer, and Chemical Exposure and Disease. She has recently completed the translation and editing of the book Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and Nature, published by the New York Academy of Sciences in December 2009, which indicates that nearly one million people were killed by the Chernobyl disaster. Dr. Sherman has been an advisor to the National Cancer Institute on breast cancer and to the EPA on pesticides. She is a resource person and speaker for universities and health advocacy groups concerning cancer, birth defects, pesticides, toxic dumpsites, and nuclear radiation. As background for this interview, read the article Chernobyl Radiation Killed Nearly One Million People: New Book. And read the review by Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D. of the Chernobyl book.

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This week, Dr. Caldicott talks with Greg Mello, a founder and Executive Director of the Los Alamos Study Group, which provides leadership on nuclear disarmament and related issues in New Mexico. Since 1992, Mello has led the Study Group in its work on U.S. nuclear weapons policy, as well as Congressional edu-cation, community organizing, and litigation. Mello’s research and analysis have been published in a variety of places, including the Washington Post and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

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Dr. Caldicott talks with Denis Hayes, president and CEO of the international group Earth Day Network and president and CEO of The Bullitt Foundation. Hayes is the author of numerous books and articles, but he’s probably still best known for having been National Coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970 when he was 25. During the Carter Administration, Hayes directed the federal National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He’s been a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a senior fellow at the Worldwatch Institute, an adjunct professor of engineering at Stanford University, and a Silicon Valley lawyer. Internationally, he is recognized for expanding Earth Day to more than 180 nations. In this conversation with
Dr. Caldicott, he reflects on the changes in the environmental movement in the last 40 years and what can be done now to demand real action on issues like global warming. In the last third of this program, we hear more of Dr. Caldicott’s March 29 speech in Vermont about the health hazards of nuclear radiation.

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This week, Dr. Caldicott interviews her daughter, physician Penny Caldicott. Dr. Penny Caldicott established an integrative medical center on the east coast of Australia seven years ago, and in this interview she discusses the center’s approach to look at the body as a whole to determine the cause of symptoms, or disease state. The practice, called Invitation to Health, includes a naturopath, Chinese medicine specialist, osteopath, clinical psychologists, therapists, and a mental health nurse, among other practitioners.

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This week, Dr. Caldicott speaks with Michael Klare, a Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at five different colleges in the U.S: Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Prof. Klare has written widely on U.S. foreign policy, the arms trade, and international resource politics. He is the author or co-author of nine books, including: Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (2001), Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (2004), and Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (2008). Blood and Oil is also a documentary film, available on DVD. This episode also features an excerpt from a March 2010 speech by Dr. Caldicott at St. Michaels College in Vermont, in which she addresses the outrageous fallacy that nuclear power is safe and a viable solution to global warming.

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In this episode, Dr. Caldicott, pediatrican, author, anti-nuclear educator and host of If You Love This Planet, delivers a speech to medical colleagues at Oakland Children’s Hospital, California, in 2006. She covers the health effects of nuclear radiation from power plants and nuclear bombs, and urges doctors and nurses to become involved in addressing the multitude of environmental threats facing the earth.

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This week, If You Love This Planet replays an important interview with energy expert Dr. Arjun Makhijani, first aired August 4, 2008. Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D, is President and Senior Engineer of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. In this interview with Dr. Caldicott, Dr. Makhijani discusses his 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 show also includes a clip of Dr. Caldicott’s lecture at a 2007 conference.