If You Love This Planet, Dr. Helen Caldicott

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This week, Dr. Caldicott interviews Jane Swanson, a mother and grandmother who has been an active member of the California antinuclear organization Mothers for Peace (full name San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace) since its formation in 1969. In 2006, the group challenged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in federal court and won. The court determined that the NRC was wrong to not take into account the possibility of a terrorist attack in creating the Environmental Impart Statement for a dry cask storage project that PG&E will install at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear facility. Swanson says, “Our 2006 victory in the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of appeals opened doors for activist groups living near the other 103 nuclear reactors. We hope to achieve a second favorable ruling in 2010.” Diablo Canyon is on more than one major earthquake fault. Read the March 2010 article The Uncertainty Factor: Does a New Fault Line Discovery Put Diablo Canyon Power Plant in Jeopardy? Longer show description to follow.

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Dr. Caldicott chats with John Warner, president and chief technology officer at the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, and president of the Beyond Benign Foundation. Warner has published nearly 200 patents, papers and books and is co-author with Paul Anastas of Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Green Chemistry Institute in Washington DC, and has received many awards, including the 2004 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Mentoring from President Bush. In this interview with Dr. Caldicott, he talks about how chemicals affect the body, and why he is trying to ‘green’ global chemical industries. Longer show description to follow.

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This week, Dr. Caldicott explores the issue of industrial contaminants in the environment with her son William Caldicott, Director of Business Development for ISOTEC,
a company that treats organic contaminants in soils and groundwater. William was also an environmental consul-tant at Geomatrix Consultants, Inc., Oakland, CA. He has
a Masters degree in Environmental Science from Yale University in the U.S. and also was graduated from Southern Cross University in Australia. Near the beginning of the program,
Dr. Caldicott mentions a report released in May 2010 by the President’s Cancer Panel in the U.S., Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now. She says the public is not aware of how ubiquitious toxic chemicals are. When asked what spurred his concern about environmental (more…)

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Dr. Caldicott interviews Daniel Ellsberg this week. In 1959, Ellsberg became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation. He was also a consultant to the Defense Department and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making. On return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, Ellsberg worked on the top secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1971, he gave the Papers to the New York Times, the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on (more…)