If You Love This Planet, Dr. Helen Caldicott

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In part one of this week’s program, Dr. Caldicott plays a still-timely interview she conducted in 2005 with strategic analyst Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame, as part of Pacifica Radio’s The New Nuclear Danger Series hosted by
Dr. Caldicott. Ellsberg is a former consultant to the U.S. Defense Department and the White House where in the late 1950’s and 1960’s he was an expert on nuclear-war planning and crisis decision-making. In 2006, he won the Right Livelihood Award. His outspoken activism in the Vietnam era is the subject of the new documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America, now showing in theaters worldwide and available in DVD. Read the
February 5, 2010 article Ellsberg Documentary Attracts Wide Audience. Ellsberg is the author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers and other books. In their conversation, Dr. Caldicott and Ellsberg comprehensively discuss the dangerous problems of command and control of nuclear weapons, including the first-use policy which the U.S. maintained under then-president George W. Bush and still retains under current president Obama. They express their fears about the George W. Bush administration’s threatened use of nuclear weapons on Iraq in 2003. Dr. Caldicott explains why the world came very close to nuclear war in 1995. Ellsberg calls the continuing hair-trigger alert status of U.S. and Russian weapons “inexcusable.” Consider signing the Physicians for Social Responsibility petition to urge President Obama to de-alert nuclear weapons.

They examine the U.S. missile defense system and how it is perceived by Russia and China, and the pivotal 1986 Reykjavik Summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, which could have resulted in a treaty mandating total nuclear disarmament before the negotiations were derailed by Richard Perle. They delve into the psychology and attitudes of George W. Bush while he was still president, what he represented to the frightened American people post-9/11, and the lack of wisdom in allowing one person to control the fate of the earth with nuclear weapons. Dr. Caldicott and Ellsberg also ponder how to mobilize Americans to understand that the nuclear-war threat has not abated after the ostensible end of the Cold War. As explored in Dr. Caldicott’s recently-aired interview with Dr. Bruce Blair, U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons remain on hair-trigger alert and the U.S. president has only moments to decide whether or not to “press the button” in response to a perceived nuclear attack. Read Ellsberg’s August 26, 2009 article Hiroshima Day: America Has Been Asleep at the Wheel for 64 Years. Dr. Caldicott mentions the media-oriented think tank she created in 2003, the Nuclear Policy Research Institute (NPRI). NPRI is now Beyond Nuclear, whose focus is educating the public to demand the elimination of both nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s recent interview with Linda Gunter of Beyond Nuclear. Ellsberg recounts his experiences on right-wing TV chat shows which consistently lack antiwar voices to contradict the hawks who are allowed to dominate the discourse. He mentions how then-defense-secretary Donald Rumsfeld was selecting nuclear targets in Iraq before the 2003 bombing and invasion.

For more with Ellsberg, watch the 30-minute interview he did in November 2009, Daniel Ellsberg Speaks With Matthew Hoh on Afghanistan. For more background on the topics in this interview, read Dr. Caldicott’s 2004 book The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex, which outlines the U.S. military’s long-range plans regarding nuclear weapons and the power of the Pentagon and nuclear weapons manufacturers. Most of these plans, and all the major nuclear weapons makers and their relentless lobbyists, are still in place under President Obama, who has not blocked the continued expansion of the U.S. military budget. The U.S. military is very reluctant to abolish its nuclear “deterrent.” See the January 4, 2010 Los Angeles Times article Obama’s nuclear-free vision mired in debate: Pentagon officials have pushed back against the president’s goals to shrink the U.S. stockpile and reduce the role of such weapons in foreign policy, sources say. Once nuclear weapons are marked for disarmament, it make take more than a decade before they are removed. Read U.S. warhead disposal in 15-year backlog.

In the second half of this week’s program, we hear an interview Dr. Caldicott just completed with Professor A.R. Ravishankara, director of the Chemical Sciences Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado and an Assistant Professor in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department of the University of Colorado. His work focuses on the chemistry of the Earth’s atmosphere, ozone depletion, climate change and air quality. Prof. Ravishankara has won the American Chemical Society’s Award for Creative Advances in Environmental Science and Technology and the Presidential Rank Award for exceptional contributions to understanding atmospheric chemistry.

Dr. Caldicott and Prof. Ravishankara examine the state of the ozone layer and the chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere as it relates to climate change. As background on Prof. Ravishankara’s most recent findings, read the 2009 articles Laughing gas is biggest threat to ozone layer and New Culprit Seen in Ozone Depletion. Dr. Caldicott asks Prof. Ravishankara to outline the role of banned chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in depleting the ozone layer, and how ozone is formed. He explains the science of CFCs - formerly used in refrigeration, hairspray, foam insulation, and other applications - in ozone destruction. CFCs were banned by the Montreal Protocol in 1989. Prof. Ravishankara also talks about how CFCs are potent global warming gases, and how “banks” of CFCs, produced long ago, could still be emitted from old refrigerators, foam, etc. to destroy the ozone layer if not properly captured and destroyed first.

Dr. Caldicott asks Prof. Ravishankara to differentiate hydrochloroflouro-carbons (HCFCs) gases from CFCs. HCFCs are now used in place of CFCs, but they have their own problems. Read the article CFC Substitutes Fix Ozone Hole, But Speed Up Global Warming and about the study Epidemic of liver disease caused by hydrochlorofluorocarbons used as ozone-sparing substitutes of chlorofluorocarbons. They next turn to nitrous oxide (N2O). He elucidates how industrial use of N2O in agriculture and sewage treatment has greatly increased the natural concentrations of this gas in the lower and upper atmosphere. Prof. Ravishankara outlines how continued use of N2O will sabotage efforts to restore the ozone layer. Prof. Ravishankara talks about how N2O is a significant contributor to climate change (responsible for 6% of greenhouse gas emissions), another reason it should be banned. Read an abstract of Prof. Ravishankara’s nitrous oxide study, Nitrous Oxide (N2O): The Dominant Ozone-Depleting Substance Emitted in the 21st Century and the related article Nitrous oxide fingered as monster ozone slayer.

Dr. Caldicott and Prof. Ravishankara next look at methyl bromide, a pesticide that was banned because of its effect on the ozone layer. Read the 2005 Mother Jones article U.S. farmers ignore international treaty on methyl bromide and the November 13, 2009 Mother Jones article Obama’s Pesticide-Pushing Nominee. Also see An EPA-approved pesticide is worse than the one it’s replacing and California mulls controversial alternative to methyl bromide; some scientists protest, saying chemical is too toxic and the report Examining the evidence on pesticide exposure and birth defects in farmworkers. Dr. Caldicott steers the discussion to nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), used to make flat-screen computer monitors and other commodities. Prof. Ravishankara explains the danger of NF3 in contributing to climate change, but he says that NF3 is not an ozone-depleting chemical. Read The missing greenhouse gas: Growth of the electronics industry will boost emissions of a ‘hidden’ — but extremely potent — greenhouse gas and The Greenhouse Gas That Nobody Knew.

Dr. Caldicott asks about the ozone-depleting gas CFC-114, which though technically banned, can still be used by the U.S. Department of Energy at the uranium enrichment plant at Paducah, Kentucky. Dr. Caldicott talks about the tremendous number of documented leaks from this plant. She notes that 93% of the CFC gases still being emitted come from this plant. Prof. Ravishankara illuminates how CFC-14 not only damages the ozone layer but is also a significant greenhouse gas. Read Uranium Plants Harm Ozone Layer: Kentucky, Ohio Facilities Top List of Polluters. For more on the ozone layer, read Dr. Caldicott’s newly revised book If You Love This Planet which has a lengthy chapter on the ozone layer. See the websites of NOAA’s Stratospheric Ozone page, the United Nations Environment Program’s Ozone Secretariat and The Ozone Hole. Read the
November 11, 2009 article Climate Action Under Ozone Treaty on Hold for Copenhagen Deal. Also check out the December 2009 articles Antarctica may heat up dramatically as ozone hole repairs, warn scientists and Healing the hole in the ozone layer could heat Antarctica. Also see the September 2009 article The size of the hole in the ozone layer and the January 4, 2010 article Why mountains are bad for the ozone layer, a piece originally published in Geophysical Research Letters.

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Photo Credit : ballona.org, wilshirecenter.com

If You Love This Planet is replaying some of our most popular programs through February 2010, as well as offering some new episodes. In March 2010, If You Love This Planet will start a whole new season of programs. Here is Dr. Caldicott’s October 6, 2008 interview with Richard Heinberg, the Director of the Post Carbon Institute, on the topics of peak oil and peak coal. Heinberg’s institute is 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 impending crisis 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, he says, 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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From now through February 2010, we are replaying some of our most popular shows as well as presenting new episodes. In March 2010, If You
Love This Planet will launch a whole new season of programs. Here is
Dr. Caldicott’s January 5, 2009 interview with David T. Suzuki, Ph.D, co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, is an award-winning geneticist, environmentalist and broadcaster. He has hosted the Canadian television show, The Nature of Things, which airs in 50 countries, since 1979. He is well known in Canada and Australia, but not in the United States.

Dr. Suzuki has received consistently high acclaim for his 30 years of award-winning work in broadcasting, explaining the complexities of science in a compelling, easily understood way. In this fascinating interview with
Dr. Caldicott, he talks about the relationship between human beings and planet earth, and urges policy makers and members of society to become more scientifically literate so we can make informed decisions and leave a safer and healthier environment to future generations.

Dr. Suzuki and Dr. Caldicott cover many topics, including the preposterous plans to build four nuclear reactors on an earthquake fault in Canada to extract tar-sand oil as a source of energy for California; the mental barriers which prevent leaders and the public from taking action on global warming (skeptics said Denmark could get only 2% of its energy from wind, but they are now up to 19.7% and on the road to 50%); deforestation and the urgent need to preserve all old-growth forests to reduce global warming; and the many exciting breakthroughs and new technologies that more forward-thinking countries like Germany are introducing to become sustainable. Science, Dr. Suzuki stresses, is the most powerful force affecting our future.

Dr. Suzuki relates how corporate think tanks began to proselytize the public to worship at the altar of consumption in the middle of the 20th Century, which has led to a notion that the world has infinite resources. To survive, humanity must use its unique gift of foresight and planning for the future for saving the planet, not more growth, development and consumption. He recommends listeners watch a speech on environmentalism given by his daughter, Severn Suzuki, in 1992, when she was 12.

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This week and through February 2010, we are replaying some of our most popular shows as well as presenting new episodes. In March 2010, If You Love This Planet will launch a whole new season of programs. Here is Dr. Caldicott’s interview with Australian author and wildlife conservationist Sally Henderson, first aired July 27, 2009. Henderson is an Australian whose passion is conserving endangered African wildlife - particularly elephants. In 1990 she joined the elephant research project in Zimbabwe, which inspired her memoir Silent Footsteps, published by Pan Macmillan in 2007. She has traveled extensively throughout Africa, studying many aspects of conservation and a diverse array of African cultures. Henderson’s new book is Ivory Moon, a memoir set in Namibia (also published by Pan Macmillan). In this deeply moving interview, Henderson shares with Dr. Caldicott her many powerful experiences being around elephants, lions, leopards and other animals in Africa, as she worked to save them and learned to understand them.

Dr. Caldicott asks Henderson how she first became interested in visiting Africa, and Henderson recounts how her rewarding childhood experiences surrounded by Australian animals inspired her lifelong interest in wildlife conservation. Henderson speaks about her many close-up encounters with African elephants, including the terrifying time when an elephant saved her life. She tells Dr. Caldicott about the many ways elephants communicate, sometimes telepathically, and their great intelligence and sensitivity.

Elephants as well as rhinos are now endangered. Henderson talks about the poaching of the rhino population for products used in Asia and elsewhere. Poachers kill many elephants, and Henderson has aided efforts to keep them in protected areas, and to educate Africans to save the elephants, at least until old age. Elephant populations have fallen drastically from their original millions to endangered levels today. Read the April 9 Scientific American article Are Elephant Populations Stable These Days?

Henderson vividly describes her experiences in Namibia, more of a pristine wilderness than other parts of Africa. Dr. Caldicott says that Namibia is a major source of uranium, used to make nuclear weapons, and diamonds. Over the course of the program, Henderson also imparts her electrifying experiences with big African cats on several trips and longer stays. She provides many insights into wild feline behavior, including the surprising difference between the leopard and other cats such as lions.

Dr. Caldicott and Henderson also touch on the quality of life for poor Africans, and the hardships and disease they often face. Henderson lauds the work
Bill and Melissa Gates are doing through their foundation in the area of malaria prevention, on
a continent where the vast majority of people cannot afford anti-malarial medications because of the greed of pharmaceutical companies (who would rather market and profit from drugs for depression and low libido, available
to affluent people). The hunting-and-killing mentality of sport hunters is another topic of this episode. Henderson and Dr. Caldicott agree about the peculiarity of hunters who boast about slaughtering wild animals. They concur that humans are the worst predators on the planet. Erich Fromm’s book The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness inquires into why some men enjoy violence, including hunting animals.

After the formal conversation with Henderson ends, there is a three-minute music break, after which Dr. Caldicott comes back on the air to describe her experience attending a conference that included Robert Mugabe, the murderous president of Zimbabwe. During the dialogue with Henderson,
Dr. Caldicott had mentioned encountering Mugabe in the context of whether or not African leaders care about endangered animals.

For more information about saving African wildlife, visit the websites of Save the Elephants, World Wildlife Fund, The African Wildlife Foundation, Save the Rhino and Wildlife Direct. Also visit the web pages of PETA’s Save Wild Elephants campaign and actress Tippi Hedren’s Shambala Reserve, which saves big cats which were abused as illegal exotic pets.
Read the articles African Safaris - Elephants Must Be Saved From Extinction, Extinction Crisis Emerges for World Mammals: One in Four Species at Serious Risk, Will Central Africa’s Forest Wildlife Be Eaten into Extinction?, Elephants Slaughtered to Feed Soldiers in Zimbabwe, Satellite’s-Eye View of an Africa Despoiled [35-image slide show], and The Saddest Show on Earth, about the terrible plight of elephants in circuses.

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Starting this week and through February 2010, we will replay some of our most popular shows as well as presenting new episodes. In March 2010, If You Love This Planet will launch a whole new season of programs. Here again is
Dr. Caldicott’s riveting discussion about the dangers of cell phones. Since this program aired October 5, there have been new reports on the health threat posed by cell phones. A joint U.S.-Korean team reviewed 13 past studies and published their results in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in mid-October. This meta-analysis found that 10 or more years of cell phone usage causes a 20-25% increase in tumors. The forthcoming Interphone study by the World Health Organization, some late-October news articles state, may also indicate higher brain cancer risks from using cell phones. Read Long-term use of mobile phones ‘may be linked to cancer’.

If you’ve ever wondered how the body is affected by cell phone radiation, you won’t want to miss this show. Dr. Vini Gautam Khurana is a senior staff specialist neurosurgeon at the Canberra Hospital in Australia, and Associate Professor of Neurosurgery at the Australian National University Medical School. Dr. Khurana has exhaustively studied the medical research on electromagnetic radiation from cell phones. After graduating with medical and research degrees in Australia in 1995, Dr. Khurana moved to the USA for advanced training at the world renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He returned to Australia after ten years of specialist training. Dr. Khurana has received 17 national and international awards, and has written over 35 peer-reviewed articles as well as two books: Brain Surgery, and The Brain Aneurysm. See his webpage about cell phone dangers which includes his report Mobile Phones and Brain Tumors – A Public Health Concern. As background for this show, read the Independent/UK article, Mobile Phones ‘More Dangerous Than Smoking.’

Billions of people now use cell phones worldwide, Dr. Caldicott says near the start of the program. She starts off the interview by asking Dr. Khurana how he became interested in studying the medical effects of cell phone usage and electromagnetic radiation, also known as electromagnetic fields (EMF).
Dr. Khurana explains why the death of doctor and professor Chris O’Brien, a surgeon and close friend of Dr. Khurana’s, provided one impetus for his studies of cell phone hazards.

Dr. Khurana’s study of existing reports on cell phones and cell phone masts, and their electromagnetic radiation was followed by a peer-reviewed publication, Cell phones and brain tumors: a review including the long-term epidemiologic data. Children’s brains are more vulnerable to cell phone emissions. See this diagram from Spain’s Neuro Diagnostic Research Institute of how much cell phone radiation is absorbed in a child’s brain.
Dr. Khurana mentions the work of Professor Leonard Hardell of Sweden, discussed in the article Mobile phone use ‘raises children’s risk of brain cancer fivefold’. Read his research paper Long-term use of cellular phones and brain tumours: increased risk associated with use for greater than 10 years.

Dr. Khurana explains how the cell phone signal powerfully tracks the user with a constant stream of radiation.
Dr. Khurana then illuminates the truth about plug-in microphones, wired earpieces, and other variable equipment that can or cannot reduce the radiation from cell phones. To reduce, but not block, cell phone radiation, Dr. Khurana recommends an earpiece with an air tube that provides more distance from the user’s head as it transmits the audio. A device that uses this technology is the Blue Tube advanced Aircom2. To learn more about the Blue Tube and have the option to buy one, see “Does a Cell Phone’s Radiation Effect Stop When the Call Ends?” which includes a seven-minute video commentary by osteopathic physician Dr. Joseph Mercola.

Dr. Caldicott asks Dr. Khurana how scientists think that cell phone radiation and EMF can induce cancer. He describes the various types of electromagnetic radiation and where cell phones fit into the spectrum. See a diagram of radiation frequencies. At one point, Dr. Caldicott refers to measuring devices which check the fields of electromagnetic radiation. Some meters also measure cell phones. Check out the Trifield gauss meter from AlphaLab, Inc. This appliance has an electric & magnetic setting to measure EMF, and a radio/microwave setting which can also measure cell phone radiation.

Dr. Khurana mentions a new study on human sperm and cell phone radiation, Mobile Phone Radiation Induces Reactive Oxygen Species Production and DNA Damage in Human Spermatozoa In Vitro. Other topics of this program include where cancers from cell phone use might develop in humans, the drastic increase in brain tumor incidence in the last 10 years, and how children are being affected by mobile phones. Dr. Caldicott is quite shocked to hear that Ireland and England have declared cell phones safe for children.
Dr. Khurana talks about the Bioinitiative Report, in which several scientists weigh in on “A Rationale for a Biologically-based Public Exposure Standard for Electromagnetic Fields (ELF and RF)” and the potential for an epidemic of brain tumors and leukemia.

Another recent study found a very high incidence of brain tumors among offspring of women who work with electric sewing machines, Dr. Khurana says. Read an abstract of Maternal occupational exposure to extremely low frequency magnetic fields and the risk of brain cancer in the offspring. Dr. Khurana talks about the hazards of laptop computers, before exploring the paradigm shift about understanding the dangers of electromagnetic radiation which might be occurring, noting that the U.S. Senate and European Parliament have both pledged to study the health effects of cell phones. Dr. Khurana provides more safety recommendations throughout the end of the program.

For more information, watch Dr. Khurana’s appearances on Larry King Live and on 60 Minutes on his website’s Media page. Read Heavy Cell Phone Use Linked To Cancer, Study Suggests which mentions the work of Israeli scientist Dr. Siegal Sadetzki. See Dr. Sadetzki’s study Cellular Phone Use and Risk of Benign and Malignant Parotid Gland Tumors—A Nationwide Case-Control Study. See the article Pittsburgh cancer center warns of risk from cell phone use and the related report Tumors and Cell Phone Use: What the Science Says. And read Cellphone use potentially risky for kids, teens: health agency. See the webpage Cell Phones Linked to Brain Cancer which has several television segments and diagrams showing how cell phone radiation damages the body. Read 14 die of cancer in seven years living next to phone mast with highest radiation levels in UK. For general information on EMF hazards, visit the website of Microwave News.

Wireless internet (Wi-Fi) is considered by some to be another major health risk. Read Germany warns citizens to avoid using Wi-Fi and WiFi Radiation - Is WiFi Technology Bad For Your Health?. Other forms of life may be strongly affected by electromagnetic radiation and cell phone transmissions. Read Electronic smog ‘is disrupting nature on a massive scale’: New study blames mobile phone masts and power lines for collapse of bee colonies and decline in sparrows. Check out the Q-link pendant developed by university scientists and extensively studied which helps protect the body from the harmful effects of electromagnetic radiation. Cell phone manufacture requires the use of the mineral coltan, and mining coltan is creating terrible conflicts in Africa. Read We’re All Raping the Congo, One Cell Phone Call at a Time and Can You Hear Congo Now? Cell Phones, Conflict Minerals, and the Worst Sexual Violence in the World. Read the October 22 article Stop Texting, to Save Lives in Africa. Also see the article The Radiation Poisoning Of America for more about cell phone tower and microwave transmissions.

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The first half of this week’s episode is a critically important discussion with Dr. Bruce Blair, president and founder of the World Security Institute. In conjunction with its affiliate Center for Defense Information, the non-profit Institute promotes independent research and journalism on global affairs. Dr. Blair, a U.S. Minuteman nuclear missile launch officer in the 1970’s, is now President Obama’s nuclear weapons advisor. Dr. Caldicott’s interview with
Dr. Blair was recorded in 2005 as part of a series for Pacifica Radio titled The New Nuclear Danger, based on Dr. Caldicott’s book The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex. Dr. Blair presents shocking and still-current information about the continuing danger of accidental nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, with weapons on hair-trigger alert.
Dr. Blair cofounded the Global Zero campaign to eliminate the world’s 24,000 nuclear weapons.

At the start of the interview, Dr. Caldicott asks Dr. Blair about his experience as a Minuteman launch officer in the 1970s. Dr. Blair describes the strength of the weapons he was responsible for, their vast killing capacity, his emotional state during that time, false alarms he heard about, and the time his missile silo came close to launching its weapons. Dr. Blair provides an overview of the present hair-trigger alert status of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, and what it means for world security. He outlines the steps followed by government officials when a possible attack is perceived, in a chain of command leading to the president, who has a short window of time to decide whether to launch the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Dr. Caldicott is quite surprised how little time is allotted for such a momentous decision. She notes how few people know about the present situation with the U.S. and Russia each targeting each other with 2,000 nuclear weapons, ready to be fired by accident or design. Detonating as few as 500 nuclear weapons could cause nuclear winter and the end of all life on earth, as discussed in Dr. Caldicott’s interview with Professor Alan Robock.

Dr. Caldicott asks Dr. Blair what is different between the 1970’s and now in the readiness of the U.S. and Russia to fight nuclear war. His startling answer indicates the high danger that remains, and points to the deterioration of the Russian early warning and command and control systems. Dr. Blair next describes the little-known dangers of terrorists hacking into the nuclear control systems in several different ways. Dr. Caldicott is flabbergasted at what she learns about these hazards. Dr. Blair mentions a secret Pentagon study that found an electronic “back door” to the Trident submarine launch controls. Read Dr. Blair’s 2003 column, Hair-Trigger Missiles Risk Catastrophic Terrorism.

Dr. Caldicott asks if the U.S. maintains a policy for a preemptive nuclear war against Russia, and in his response Dr. Blair describes the frightening brinksmanship and spying that continues between the two superpowers. They ponder why there is no real oversight of the U.S. nuclear establishment, who continue to hold the world hostage to nuclear Armageddon. Near the end of the interview, Dr. Blair assesses the “misguided path of increasing danger” that the U.S. pursues with a military that thinks of more and more ways to use U.S. weapons.

For more information on the issues presented in this program, watch Blair’s May 12, 2009 speech “Obama, Canada and the global movement to abolish nuclear weapons.”. Read Dr. Blair’s article De-alerting Strategic Forces, and Blair et al.’s article for Scientific American Who’s Got the Button? Taking Nuclear Weapons off Hair-Trigger Alert.
Read Dr. Caldicott’s book The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex and the report Reframing Nuclear De-Alert: Decreasing the Operational Readiness of U.S. and Russian Nuclear Arsenals. Read the blog entry De-Alert Dammit!!! about how Obama is postponing or relinquishing his commitment to de-alert nuclear weapons, also discussed in the article Obama Asks UN De-Alerting Resolution to Wait. Visit Zero Nuke’s page Steps toward Abolition:
De-alerting and sign Physicians for Social Responsibility’s petition to urge Obama to de-alert weapons. Also read Resetting the Nuclear Disarmament Agenda, Mikhail Gorbachev’s October 5, 2009 speech at the United Nations.

In the second half of the program, Dr. Caldicott speaks with Loretta Napoleoni. During a trip to Spain in 2009 to brief Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero on the medical and environmental risks of nuclear power,
Dr. Caldicott conducted an interview with Napoleoni, the bestselling author of Terror Incorporated and Insurgent Iraq. Napoleoni was a Fulbright Scholar at Johns Hopkins University and a Rotary scholar at the London School of Economics. She is an expert on the financing of terrorism and advises several governments on counter-terrorism. Her work appears regularly in many journals and publications, including several European newspapers. She lectures regularly.

Dr. Caldicott has Napoleoni provide an overview of her 2009 lecture in Madrid about the economic problems of the world. Napoleoni discusses unemployment in Spain, President Zapatero’s progressive commitment to green power, and the opportunity for Spain to lead Europe in transitioning to a renewable energy economy. Napoleoni says that with a sensible plan of economic conversion, many workers in Spain can be trained to work in the green sector. Spain’s laudable goal is to obtain 43% of its energy from renewables by 2012. Napoleoni addresses the huge expansion in solar energy in Spain, Portugal and Greece, and the expanding role of wind power in Europe.

Dr. Caldicott and Napoleoni next look at nuclear power in Europe, including the skyrocketing costs of constructing new plants and maintaining old ones, radioactive waste, the near-meltdown at a Sweden reactor three years ago, how Italy receives 40-50% of its power from French nuclear plants, and Dr. Winfrid Eisenberg’s study finding that children living near German nuclear reactors have higher incidences of cancer and leukemia. They examine the problem of nuclear weapons proliferation that results whenever countries buy the technology for nuclear power. Napoleoni provides some shocking information about North Korean/U.S. negotiations regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions. She points to the need for a new paradigm for international policy involving total denuclearization, and how the U.S. should lead such a foreign policy revolution. They also explore the role of women, U.S. weapons sales to terrorist groups, and Australian uranium mining. Dr. Caldicott and Napoleoni agree on the absolute need to stand for the “utopian” goal of world disarmament if the earth is to survive.

For more information on some of the topics discussed with Napoleoni, read the Wikipedia article Renewable energy in Spain, watch the two-minute Reuters news clip Portugal, home of the biggest solar plant in the world and see the report The Nuclear Renaissance: Nuclear weapons proliferation and terrorism. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s interview with Dave Sweeney about Australian uranium mining, and her interview with
Dr. Winfrid Eisenberg about cancer near nuclear reactors. Read the article Nuclear Scare: How Close Did Sweden Come to Disaster?

After a musical break, Dr. Caldicott reads from the chapter entitled “The Manufacture of Consent” in her new book If You Love This Planet. She covers the influence of transnational corporations and the history of corporate propaganda. Dr. Caldicott’s research for this chapter is based on the work of Australian sociologist Alex Carey. Hear a two-part radio program, Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda, based on Carey’s writings.

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Dr. Mark Diesendorf is the Deputy Director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales in Australia. He teaches and consults in the fields of renewable energy and transport, by which government, business and other organisations can achieve ecologically sustainable and socially just development. In this episode, Dr. Diesendorf discusses with Dr. Caldicott the disastrous
economics of the nuclear industry and its campaign for subsidies. Dr. Caldicott first asks Dr. Diesendorf to talk about nuclear power and CO2 emissions. He explains in detail how fossil fuel is used at all steps of the nuclear fuel cycle, except for operation of the plant, debunking the propaganda that nuclear power is a solution to global warming. They talk about studies of energy use by the uranium industry, deaths induced by exposure to uranium in mine workers, and the importance of remediation of uranium tailings, in other words, putting them back in the ground.

Dr. Diesendorf and Dr. Caldicott next look at the enormous and increasing costs of maintaining old nuclear reactors and building new ones. See the Union of Concerned Scientists’ article Nuclear Economics 101: The Industry Gets a Failing Grade. Read the article Designs for New UK Nuclear Reactors are Unsafe, Claims Watchdog: Major setback for energy plans as report finds flaws in US and French models. Diesendorf stresses how wrong it is to supply nuclear-power technology to countries around the world, laying the basis for more and more nuclear-weapons states who threaten each other. He talks about how even a limited nuclear war, such as one between India and Pakistan, would have devastating effects on the world’s agriculture and might even induce a nuclear winter. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s 2008 interview with nuclear-winter expert Professor Alan Robock. In discussing the costs of nuclear power, Diesendorf notes that it will cost over $100 billion just to decommission England’s nuclear reactors. He points to detailed studies on the economics of building new nuclear power plants in the U.S., including a 2009 study by Craig Severance. Read two articles on the Severence study, The Staggering Cost of New Nuclear Power and Warning to Taxpayers, Investors: Nukes May Become Troubled Assets. Check out the Severance study, Business Risks and Costs of New Nuclear Power. Read Accident Casts Fresh Doubt on Nuclear Safety about the November 21 incident at the Three Mile Island plant in the U.S. which forced the evacuation of 150 workers and exposed 20 people to radiation, and about plans for a new reactor in Maryland.

Dr. Caldicott asks Dr. Diesendorf about the unresolved and possibly worthless concept of carbon capture and storage. He explains how we now have other, proven technologies to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions which should be used instead of carbon capture. He says his book, Climate Action: A Campaign Manual for Greenhouse Solutions, covers these possibilities. Dr. Caldicott says that Professor James Hansen of NASA stresses that the world must immediately stop burning coal, the most concentrated form of CO2 emissions. Listen to
Dr. Caldicott’s 2008 interview with Professor Hansen. Dr. Diesendorf and Dr. Caldicott agree that eliminating coal emissions is absolutely critical to stabilizing the world climate. Yet, Dr. Caldicott says, the Australian prime minister and federal government are subsidizing coal production. She is not optimistic about the forthcoming Copenhagen conference, where she expects most politicians to make weak proposals, essentially doing the bidding of polluting industries.

Dr. Diesendorf refers to Dr. Arjun Makhijani’s book, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, which can be downloaded for free. Dr. Makhijani, an engineer, found that renewable and safe energy can meet all the world’s energy needs without the need for carbon- or nuclear-based power. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s 2008 interviews with Dr. Makhijani here and here. See the new report by Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi, Evaluating the Feasibility of a Large-Scale Wind, Water, and Sun Energy Infrastructure. Dr. Diesendorf elaborates on the immense growth in wind and solar power, and the new developments in geothermal energy. While the nuclear energy falsely promotes itself as safe, green and a solution to global warming, the coal industry is also engaging in major deception. Read Greenwash: Why ‘Clean Coal’ is the Ultimate Climate Change Oxymoron. President Obama has received over $250,000 from the nuclear energy industry throughout his career, and he and his Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu endorse nuclear power. President Obama also supports coal. Read RFK Jr. Blasts Obama as ‘Indentured Servant’ to Coal Industry.

Dr. Caldicott closes by encouraging readers to buy Dr. Diesendorf’s book Climate Action to inform themselves about solutions to the energy challenges the world faces. To check out articles by Dr. Mark Diesendorf, read Can nuclear energy reduce CO2 emissions and Muzzling the greenhouse debate and How to reduce CO2 emissions by 50% and Sustainable energy has a powerful future and and The base-load fallacy. Also see his 2007 book Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy. For more on the hazards of nuclear power and why it is not a solution to global warming, read Dr. Caldicott’s books Nuclear Power is Not the Answer and Nuclear Madness. Also check out this website’s Reports page which has several reports under “Nuclear Power” on the dangers of nuclear energy and the nuclear industry’s propaganda around climate change (scroll down the page almost halfway).

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On the program this week, Linda Gunter from Beyond Nuclear joins
Dr. Caldicott for an in-depth discussion about the culture, politics and grave dangers of nuclear power. Today’s exploration focuses on nuclear energy in France and the rest of Europe, but also looks at the situation in the U.S. Gunter specializes in media and development, the nuclear fuel chain, human rights and the myths surrounding the French nuclear power program. In
2001, she and her husband Paul Gunter co-authored the landmark report, Licensed to Kill: How the nuclear power industry destroys endangered marine wildlife and ocean habitat to save money, exposing the high toll taken on animal life due to the routine operation of coastal nuclear reactors.

Dr. Caldicott first asks Gunter to comment on the oft-repeated notion that since France receives 80% of its electricity from nuclear power, it must be a safe form of energy. In responding, Gunter discusses the huge amount of nuclear waste generated by the French plants, the country’s lack of energy independence, the problems with the hundreds of uranium mines that supply Frances, and how one company, Areva, owns 90% of the 57 French plants. In all of the U.S., there are a total of 104 nuclear reactors, so the concentration of nuclear plants in France, and the expanded potential for catastrophe, is quite pronounced. Gunter recounts her trip to abandoned uranium mine sites in France last year, and the shocking conditions she encountered. She explains how biased all science around nuclear power is in France because of the collaboration between government and Areva. She mentions an independent French laboratory that has helped prove the hazards of nuclear tailings from French plants “recycled” for parking lots in France. This same laboratory will be doing an objective study of the health effects of nuclear power in France, endorsed by Beyond Nuclear. Gunter notes how the Left in Europe, surprisingly, is pro-nuclear power and quite uninformed about the true dangers of radiation.

Gunter and Dr. Caldicott next discuss the state of European media and the nuclear power issue. Gunter refers to a book, How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth, by Hervé Kempf, environmental editor of Le Monde. Read an excerpt here. Gunter then describes the various locations around the world where the French nuclear high-level waste is secretly dumped, before talking about the nuclear-weapons-proliferation risk of nuclear reactors, which contain the building blocks of a nuclear weapon. Read the 2005 article France’s Nuclear Waste Heads to Russia. See the Beyond Nuclear page about French nuclear power which has several links. Also read Beyond Nuclear’s new pamphlet, Nuclear Power in France: setting the record straight. Read the November 19 article Nuclear Power’s Megafraud, about the lies propounded by the president of Westinghouse Electric to build support for building new U.S. reactors. Westinghouse also plays a role in the French nuclear power industry.

Gunter elucidates the high incidence of disease near certain waste reprocess-ing sites on the French coast. Gunter mentions a study by Dr. Jean-Francois Viel of leukemia clusters among youth, which the French government denied. See Childhood leukemia incidence in the vicinity of La Hague nuclear-waste reprocessing facility (France) (free preview; pay to read the full study). She explains the aggressive and underhanded tactics used if anyone challenges the nuclear conglomerate in France. Gunter talks about how the radioactive waste at La Hague affects the oceans and food chains. See the Wikipedia entry on La Hague. Read the November 20 article Report Says Nuclear Plants Are Poisoning Our Water about the startling increasing in radioactive elements in Canadian water. And see the new Sierra Club report, Tritium on Tap: Keep Radioactive Tritium Out of Our Drinking Water.

Gunter refers to the KiKK study on cancer and leukemia incidence among children living near German nuclear plants. This investigation was led by
Dr. Winfrid Eisenberg, Dr. Caldicott’s guest on October 19. Gunter and Dr. Caldicott next consider the fallout from Chernobyl which has affected most of Europe, and the French government’s bald-faced lie that the fallout stopped at the French border. As Dr. Caldicott notes, one accident at Chernobyl contaminated a whole continent. Gunter and Dr. Caldicott probe the level of ignorance of nuclear dangers in Europe and the U.S., and what it will take to reach the public with accurate information. Dr. Caldicott notes that if there was one nuclear reactor accident in the US, it could contaminate the whole of America, particularly with certain wind conditions. She also says that if the second World War were fought in Europe today, it would make the entire continent completely uninhabitable because of the large number of nuclear reactors, each of which would melt down when bombed. And Dr. Caldicott states that a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would melt down all of the world’s 440 nuclear power reactors, which, aside from the decisive destruction from a nuclear winter, would make the entire planet unfit for life.

Dr. Caldicott and Gunter look at the psychology around possessing nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and whether the problem is gender-based or not. Gunter is asked about the particular problems associated with boiling-water nuclear power plants, of which there are 32 in the U.S. These reactors are particularly vulnerable to terrorist attack, and Gunter explains why. In discussing the amount of radioactive waste in the boiling-water plants’ fuel pools, Dr. Caldicott refers to her book, Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer, in which she refers to a study led by Professor Frank von Hippel of Princeton University. Prof. von Hipple described the enormous risk of a meltdown in boiling water reactors, which would create a disaster far more catastrophic than Chernobyl, and how these plants are especially vulnerable to terrorists. Read the article, High-density storage of nuclear waste heightens terrorism risks. Read Prof. von Hippel’s report written with Robert Alvarez et al., Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States. All coastal nuclear power plants and some situated on major rivers will be quite vulnerable to a projected sea-level rise of up to 30 feet from global warming, not to mention an increase in extreme weather occurrences. Read Nuclear Power Can’t Be a Solution to Global Warming Precisely because of Global Warming. See a photo of California’s San Onofre plant which would easily be flooded by a 30-foot sea-level rise, risking a meltdown that would imperil San Diego and Los Angeles.

Gunter discusses why the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty cannot really safeguard against nuclear weapons proliferation as long as they promote nuclear power technology. Gunter says that the nuclear nations, led by the US, must disarm their nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Russia have 95% of the world’s arsenal, with 26,000 bombs. She and Dr. Caldicott talk about the continuing hair-trigger alert status of U.S. and Russian weapons (which also applies to India and Pakistan). Dr. Caldicott points to President Obama’s statement that he really needs public support to achieve his stated commitment to nuclear disarmament. She says that a new movement for nuclear disarmament, particularly in the U.S., must be generated now. Gunter reminds listeners that they can find a great deal of supplementary information relevant to today’s program on the Beyond Nuclear website. After the interview with Gunter, Dr. Caldicott reads from her newly revised and updated book, If You Love This Planet (W.W. Norton, September 2009) about radioactive waste, a major pollutant around the globe.

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This week Dr. Calidcott talks about the aging Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor with Crea Lintilhac of the Lintilhac Foundation in Vermont. In 2005, the Lintilhac Foundation celebrated 30 years of charitable giving in the areas of renewable energy, clean water and social justice. Lintilhac holds a Master’s Degree in Teaching in Geology from the University of Vermont, and she received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Middlebury College in 1998. She also serves as an officer and trustee of several environmental advocacy boards in Vermont.

Dr. Caldicott starts off by asking Lintilhac about the age of Vermont Yankee, recent problems at the plant, and where the state legislature stands. In her response, Lintilhac talks about how the plant is operating beyond capacity, and is in many ways “falling apart” as represented by fires at the site and the 2007 cooling tower collapse. Nuclear waste is another topic of this show, and Lintilhac and Dr. Caldicott explore the dangers of storing radioactive waste at Vermont Yankee and at the other 103 U.S. nuclear plants.
Dr. Caldicott remarks about her visit to the plant vicinity, when she saw the grade school across the street built by the nuclear utility that owns Vermont Yankee. Children, she notes, are far more sensitive to nuclear radiation, and nuclear plants constantly release toxic radiation in various forms. See links further down regarding the study led by Dr. Winfrid Eisenberg which found higher childhood cancer incidence near German nuclear plants.

Lintilhac underlines the serious danger of an accident or terrorist attack at the plant, which would have implications for not only Vermont but all of Massachusetts (whose border the plant sits on) and several neighboring states. She talks about how a major accident would destroy the Vermont economy. Next, Dr. Caldicott has Lintilhac talk about the role of spent fuel pools in a nuclear reactor. Lintilhac refers to a book by Barbara Moran, The Day We Lost the H-Bomb: Cold War, Hot Nukes, and the Worst Nuclear Weapons Disaster in History. She says Moran’s book illustrates why governments and the nuclear industry should not consider any technology, especially nuclear weapons and nuclear power, “fail safe.” Read how Hillary Clinton is expanding the role of nuclear power globally in India Ramps up Nuclear Power With Help From the United States. Dr. Caldicott asks what the Vermont legislature would do if there was a meltdown at Vermont Yankee, and the cooling pool busted, and winds carried the radiation away from the plant.

This episode also addresses how global warming and accompanying sea level rise is expected to flood many of the world’s coastal nuclear power plants (which rely on ocean water to cool their contents). See the Greenpeace report The impacts of climate change on nuclear power station sites. They both agree that nuclear power is contraindicated to help reduce global warming. See the article Confronting a False Myth of Nuclear Power: Nuclear Power Expansion is Not a Remedy for Climate Change. Also read Nuclear Power Can’t Be a Solution to Global Warming Precisely because of Global Warming.

Lintilhac explains why it will be impossible to safeguard nuclear waste for several thousand years while it continues to be radioactive and quite dangerous. Dr. Caldicott talks about the cynical work that anthropologists are now doing for the Department of Energy. At one point, Lintilhac mentions a German doctor who came to Vermont to advocate closing Vermont Yankee. This was Winfrid Eisenberg, M.D., Dr. Caldicott’s guest on the
October 19 program. Read about the findings of Dr. Eisenberg’s study. Lintilhac points to successes in retraining workers from the automobile or other industries to work in renewable energy, and says that nuclear plant workers should also be transferred into sustainable energy technologies. She says that the Vermont government will soon vote on whether to extend the license for Vermont Yankee or not. Read Uncertainty grows on Vermont Yankee future. Dr. Caldicott closes by lauding Lintilhac as an example of a U.S. citizen who is using the democratic process to make change.

For more information on the tremendous hazards of nuclear energy, read Dr. Caldicott’s books Nuclear Power is
Not the Answer and Nuclear Madness. See her article The medical and economic costs of nuclear power. Listen to the two-hour program Voices From Three-Mile Island: An Oral History of America’s Near Catastrophic Nuclear Accident / 30th Anniversary Release: A Two-Hour Oral History Documentary (nationally broadcast on public radio). See the websites of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service and Beyond Nuclear. For more information on the struggle to close Vermont Yankee, visit the websites of Safe Power Vermont, Nuclear Free Vermont and the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance. And be sure to read the inspiring report Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy.

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On If You Love this Planet this week, Dr. Caldicott delves into the environmental and human effects of pesticides with Karl Tupper, Staff Scientist with the Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), and Coordinator of their Environmental Monitoring Program. People living or working near industrial agriculture – particularly in rural areas – will be very interested in hearing this episode. Read the October 23 news article Pesticide Endosulfan Ruled “Highly Toxic” which quotes Tupper.

Near the start of the show, Tupper talks about pesticide drift, in which agricultural chemicals drift from fields where they are sprayed into neighboring communities where they can cause harmful health effects. He describes the air sampling program launched by PANNA (see photo of sampling device above). Dr. Caldicott remarks upon the enormous number of pesticides used in food production, and how toxic they are. She asks Tupper to define persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Tupper explains the consequences of the widespread use of POPs around the world, and which pesticides are banned in the U.S. but still in use in other countries. He recounts efforts to ban endosulfan. Tupper mentions the website, whatsonmyfood.org, where visitors can research the pesticide content of different foods. Learn about the work of the Organic Consumers Association on behalf of foods grown without toxic chemicals. Read a 1989 article about the nutritional superiority of organically grown foods. And see the website of Chemical Body Burden, which reports on the chemicals, including pesticides, contaminating our bodies.

Dr. Caldicott shifts the conversation to the herbicide atrazine, used widely by U.S. corn growers but banned by the European Union. Tupper talks about the adverse effects of atrazine on people and on the environment, and how atrazine has been found in most U.S. tap water. Read the August New York Times article Debating How Much Weed Killer Is Safe in Your Water Glass. And visit the NRDC page on atrazine which includes a link to their 33-page report, Poisoning the Well. Also read the Center for Biological Diversity’s August 27 press release New Research: Herbicide Atrazine Linked to Cancer, Birth Defects, Endocrine Disruption, and Endangered Species Impacts.

Tupper refers to the work of U.C. Berkeley research scientist Tyrone Hayes in studying atrazine’s castrating effects on male amphibians. Read The Story of Syngenta & Tyrone Hayes at UC Berkeley: The Price of Research and Male Frogs Losing Their Macho. Visit atrazinelovers.com, Hayes’s website. Also read the class-action complaint document filed in Holiday Shores v. Syngenta. This lawsuit was brought by a water district in Illinois against Syngenta, the Swiss company that makes atrazine. Dr. Caldicott remarks about the frightening power of chemical companies. See the November 13 Mother Jones magazine article Obama’s Pesticide-Pushing Nominee: The president taps an exec from the pesticide lobby—which slammed Michelle Obama’s organic garden—for a top agriculture post.

The episode next looks at the Stockholm Convention, a treaty to outlaw POPs including endosulfan. Tupper explains the significance of the treaty, and which countries are supporting and resisting the ban. Dr. Caldicott next asks Tupper about the current efforts by pesticide companies to discredit the writings of Rachel Carson, considered the grandmother of the movement to ban harmful chemicals. Read Rachel Carson, Mass Murderer? The creation of an anti-environmental myth and Rachel Carson’s birthday bashing: The right has revved up its claim that the environmental pioneer who criticized DDT was responsible for the spread of malaria that killed millions. The facts say otherwise.

After concluding the interview with Tupper, Dr. Caldicott reads from the toxic pollution chapter of her book If You Love This Planet, a revised and updated edition of which was published in September by WW Norton. She covers pesticides and agriculture, relevant to today’s program, and also reads about plastic and bottled water.

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Bruce Gagnon is the Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and has worked on space issues for 27 years. He was the organizer of the Cancel Cassini Campaign (the Cassini Campaign was a project that launched 72 pounds of plutonium into space in 1997) which drew enormous support and media coverage around the world. In this compelling interview, Gagnon discusses with Dr. Caldicott the current situation surrounding space weaponisation and missile defense.

Near the start of this episode, Gagnon and Dr. Caldicott look at the Cassini mission, and a worst-case scenario of the satellite scattering plutonium over the Earth. Dr. Caldicott explains the terrible toxicity of Plutonium-238. The program then focuses on the United States’s weaponization of space and missile defense. Gagnon mentions which U.S. corporations are profiting from weaponizing space (using billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars), and the arrogant agenda of the U.S. to dominate and fight wars from space. He talks about the problem of space debris, U.S. plans for cyberwarfare, and which weapons are being installed in space. He describes the war-games scenarios the U.S. military now engages in, and the major role of military satellites.
Dr. Caldicott brings up the topic of drones, the pilotless planes the U.S. now uses to kill people by remote control. Read the Oct. 19 article Report: Drone Strikes Increased Dramatically Under Obama. Gagnon says that people can watch videos about drones on the Space4Peace website (go here).

The Pentagon, Gagnon says, boasts that space weaponization / missile defense is the largest industrial project in the history of planet Earth, as described in Gagnon’s 2009 article The Space Arms Race and the NASA Scam. Gagnon notes that all NASA projects are now dual use - military and civilian. Dr. Caldicott asks Gagnon for his assessment of President Obama’s actions in the arena of missile defense and nuclear disarmament, and Gagnon says Obama has been disappointing on missile defense. They discuss Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s September opinion piece in The New York Times, A Better Missile Defense for a Safer Europe. Gagnon refers to recent remarks by the Czech government about missile defense, as explained in Former Czech Foreign Minister Talks About Missile Defense, Belarus, And Russia.

Dr. Caldicott underscores how U.S. missile defense installations are really targeted at Russia, and related to never-abandoned U.S. plans to fight nuclear war with the former Soviet Union. Gagnon discusses the focus of U.S. military strategy on controlling natural resources and pipelines. He mentions April remarks by Mikhail Gorbachev, alluding to the U.S., about how the development of military space technology, and the aggressive encirclement of another country with weapons, will prevent nuclear disarmament from occurring. Read Gorbachev’s October 5 address to the United Nations, Resetting the Nuclear Disarmament Agenda.

The U.S. is developing military space technologies, Dr. Caldicott emphasizes, to completely dominate the planet. She asks Gagnon about the psychology of the people developing space weapons, and he gives his interpretations for their behavior. Gagnon stresses that the public should not be intimidated by weapons scientists, and should become very vocal about demanding an end to weapons programs and conversion of tax dollars for both human needs and solving the environmental crisis. After the conclusion of the interview with Gagnon, Dr. Caldicott reads from the chapter on the ozone layer in her latest book, the fully revised edition of If You Love This Planet, published in September by WW Norton Company. If You Love This Planet, the book, covers all major environmental issues in depth and is a perfect complement to this radio program.

For more background on the U.S. military’s plans for space, see Vision for 2020, a document published by the U.S. Space Command and the blueprint for U.S. domination of the Earth from space. The document calls for “dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment” and it focuses on the concept of “full spectrum dominance,” which is now the aim of the U.S. military. Compare the above to the Outer Space Treaty [Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space], on a United Nations web page.

Also see the U.S. military’s Air Force Space Command: Strategic Master Plan, FY06 and Beyond. This document declares that for the U.S., “maintaining space superiority is an essential prerequisite for success in modern warfare…Simply, we must be able to quickly subjugate any space capability any adversary can field while maintaining our own.” Read The Next 50 Years of U.S. Space Leadership, a 2007 speech by Lockheed Martin CEO Robert J. Stevens in which he states that “[t]here is no substitute or alternative to military dominance in space.” Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest weapons maker. Its enormous influence over U.S. politicians is covered in detail in Dr. Caldicott’s 2004 book The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex. For much more on the destructive potential of the U.S. weaponization of space, space war and missile defense, be sure to read Dr. Caldicott and Craig Eisendrath’s 2007 book, War in Heaven. This thorough book, which relies partly on Bruce Gagnon’s groundbreaking research, is “[a] revelatory look at the U.S. government’s plan to put weapons in outer space, by two bestselling experts.”

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Winfrid Eisenberg, M.D. is a pediatrician and member of the German branch of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). IPPNW, the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize winner, was partly formed by Physicians for Social Responsibility, a U.S. group Dr. Caldicott led in the 1980’s. Dr. Eisenberg discusses with Dr. Caldicott the results of a 2003 German study, “Leukemia in young children living in the vicinity of German nuclear power plants” whose acronym is “KiKK.” The KiKK study looked at the increase in childhood cancer amongst people living in the vicinity of nuclear power plants. You can read about the study in English here and here.

Dr. Eisenberg recounts how he became involved in IPPNW in the early 1980’s when Europeans were very concerned about nuclear war between the U.S. and the then-Soviet Union. He says that today, European concern about nuclear war continues as the U.S. makes bunker-buster bombs, and retains 20 U.S. nuclear missiles in Germany. Dr. Caldicott says that IPPNW should do much more to re-ignite interest in nuclear disarmament.

Dr. Eisenberg says that the German branch of IPPNW has been raising awareness of the dangers of nuclear energy since their beginning in 1982, even before the Chernobyl accident raised the level of radioactivity throughout Europe. He describes where he was during the Chernobyl accident and its immediate aftermath. Dr. Caldicott emphasizes that 40% of Europe is still highly contaminated, as indicated by this map, and eating the food can be risky. Dr. Caldicott asks whether Dr. Eisenberg has seen more childhood cancer and leukemia cases after Chernobyl, and he says there is definitely an increase in leukemia and certain tumors. He then explains in depth why children are more sensitive to radiation. Read a short letter to the editor by Dr. Eisenberg about children’s sensitivity to radiation.

The program next focuses on the origins, methodology and findings of the KiKK study. The results of the study are quite compelling, and Dr. Eisenberg lays out the statistics. Dr. Caldicott praises the study, and says that it is imperative to do more studies of similar scope in the United States. Read about a recent U.S. study, Child Leukemia Rates Increase Near U.S. Nuclear Power Plants. Dr. Eisenberg states that Professor Rudi Nussbaum has analyzed studies around the world about childhood cancers and leukemia. Prof. Nussbaum has advocated for a study similar to KiKK to be conducted in the U.S. Read his analysis of global cancer studies, Childhood Leukemia and Cancers Near German Nuclear Reactors: Significance, Context, and Ramifications of Recent Studies (note: one can register without charge on the linked website to be able to read the full report for free, not just the abstract). Dr. Eisenberg refers to another “meta-analysis” of various countries’ studies by Dr. Peter Baker of the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Baker also found an increased risk of cancer near nuclear power plants, though Dr. Eisenberg says that KiKK study found a higher incidence. Read the articles Childhood leukemia rates ‘higher near nuclear plants’ and Elevated Leukemia Rates Near Nuclear Facilities.

Dr. Caldicott expresses her concern about future increases in genetic diseases caused by nuclear waste and radiation. Dr. Eisenberg concurs with her that from a medical perspective, all nuclear power plants worldwide should be shut down. They talk about the die-out or decrease in wild animal populations in the wake of Chernobyl, before turning to tritium, one of the isotopes released by nuclear power plants, and whose danger is greatly underestimated (partly because the nuclear industry tells the public tritium is perfectly safe).
Dr. Eisenberg refers to the work of Dr. Ian Fairlie in documenting the hazards of tritium exposure to human health. Read his report for Greenpeace, Tritium Hazard Report: Pollution and Radiation Risk from Canadian Nuclear Facilities. Dr. Caldicott notes that her book Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer addresses tritium. The article The medical and economic costs of nuclear power by Dr Helen Caldicott also mentions the toxicity of tritium.

Dr. Eisenberg refers the September 5 demonstrations in Berlin against nuclear power, which included farmers who live near nuclear power plants. The farmers drove tractors for days to come to the protest. See photos here. He says that pediatricians in Germany are mostly concerned about nuclear power, and quite involved in the German chapter of IPPNW. Dr. Caldicott urges listeners to take the issues in today’s program to heart and to help close all of the world’s nuclear reactors. Be sure to listen to this episode in its entirety!

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Award-winning journalist and author Andrew Nikiforuk joins
Dr. Caldicott to discuss the subject of his new book: The Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of the Continent, published by D&M Publishers and winner of the 2009 Rachel Carson Environmental Book Award. He is also the author of a novel called Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig’s War Against Big Oil. For the last two decades, Nikiforuk has written about energy, economics and the West for a variety of Canadian publications, and received seven National Magazine Awards from the Association of Canadian Journalists. The development and exploitation of the tar sands in Canada is currently the world’s largest energy project.

At the start of the show, Nikiforuk defines bitumen, the substance extracted in the Canadian tar sands operations which can be used in place of light oil. He explains the enormous size of the tar sands mining region in Alberta, the environmental impact of the tar sands mining, and how much energy is expended. Dr. Caldicott and Nikiforuk also look at plans to build nuclear power plants to power the mining operations in Alberta, and the carbon footprint of nuclear power. Dr. Caldicott refers to a study by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen on nuclear energy and climate change.

In describing the amount of greenhouse emissions related to the tar sands mining, Nikiforuk says that bitumen is now the world’s most carbon-intensive hydrocarbon, and its incredibly toxic and destructive mining in Canada is representative of what will happen if the world continues to produce “dirtier and dirtier fossil fuels as we run out of light oil.” Nikiforuk addresses the arguments used by the Canadian government and industry to justify the tar sands. Next, the conversation turns to carbon capture and storage, and why this much-discussed technology is totally unfeasible and contraindicated to reduce global warming. Nikiforuk presents the staggering statistics of how wasteful and ineffective carbon storage would be, and the enormity of the infrastructure needed to conduct even minimal carbon capture. Nikiforuk says that carbon capture is already triggering earthquakes in Alberta. Read a report covering carbon capture problems, Burying Carbon Dioxide In Underground Saline Aquifers: Political Folly or Climate Change Fix?

Dr. Caldicott talks about Canada’s vast potential to be a world leader in sustainable energy, and Nikiforuk explains some of the present roadblocks to that scenario. But he says that pressure from Americans and Europeans may be the critical factor needed to stop the tar sands. He mentions New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s contention that the U.S. must totally stop using oil. Watch Friedman’s documentary, Addicted to Oil, on YouTube (in 5 parts). Near the end of the program, Nikiforuk explains the difference between “dirty oil” and “bloody oil.” Dr. Caldicott says that continuing to mine the tar sands with all incumbent local and global pollution and destruction is essentially killing the Earth to make money.

For more information on the tar sands, visit the websites of Oil Sands Watch and Tar Sands Watch.
See the Greenpeace page, Stop the Tar Sands. Look at the report Clearing the Air on Oil Sands Myths. Read the articles Oil Sands: The Costs of Alberta’s “Black Gold” and Behold! Canada’s most disgusting export: Nothing like Alberta’s revolting oilsands to destroy your optimism. Also see Burning to Get Bigger: US Oil Refineries Are Expanding so They Can Process Petroleum from Canadian Tar Sands. Check out Oilsands emit more than entire countries: report and the National Geographic feature, The Canadian Oil Boom. Also read Alberta’s oilsands: Black gold or black eye? which has several related and linked articles. See the statistics about the emissions and other problems of the tar sands in By the numbers. Check out the map of where the tar sands are being extracted. Read Dirty oil: Who’s who?: Nikiforuk’s 10 major players driving the ‘dirty oil’ label. Also read Canada’s Highway to Hell and Alberta’s Oil Sands: Key Issues and Impacts. Visit the Wikipedia page about the Athabasca Oil Sands. Read the blog entry Time gushes over boys with toys. And see the ad placed by Forest Ethics in the New York Times, “Canada’s Tar Sands: The Dirtiest Oil on Earth”. One topic not addressed in this program is Canada’s endangered Boreal Forest, which is damaged by tar sands mines. Read the NRDC fact sheet Strip Mining for Oil in Endangered Forests and see Forest Ethic’s tar sands page. Read how the Boreal Forest helps shield the world from global warming and see the Greenpeace report, Turning Up the Heat : Global Warming and the Degradation of Canada’s Boreal Forest.

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If you’ve ever wondered how the body is affected by cell phone radiation, you won’t want to miss this show. Dr. Vini Gautam Khurana is a senior staff specialist neurosurgeon at the Canberra Hospital in Australia, and Associate Professor of Neurosurgery at the Australian National University Medical School. Dr. Khurana has exhaustively studied the medical research on electromagnetic radiation from cell phones. After graduating with medical and research degrees in Australia in 1995, Dr. Khurana moved to the USA for advanced training at the world renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He returned to Australia after ten years of specialist training. Dr. Khurana has received 17 national and international awards, and has written over 35 peer-reviewed articles as well as two books: Brain Surgery, and The Brain Aneurysm. See his webpage about cell phone dangers which includes his report Mobile Phones and Brain Tumors – A Public Health Concern. As background for this show, read the Independent/UK article, Mobile Phones ‘More Dangerous Than Smoking.’

Billions of people now use cell phones worldwide, Dr. Caldicott says near the start of the program. She starts off the interview by asking Dr. Khurana how he became interested in studying the medical effects of cell phone usage and electromagnetic radiation, also known as electromagnetic fields (EMF).
Dr. Khurana explains why the death of doctor and professor Chris O’Brien, a surgeon and close friend of Dr. Khurana’s, provided one impetus for his studies of cell phone hazards.

Dr. Khurana’s study of existing reports on cell phones and cell phone masts, and their electromagnetic radiation was followed by a peer-reviewed publication, Cell phones and brain tumors: a review including the long-term epidemiologic data. Children’s brains are more vulnerable to cell phone emissions. See this diagram from Spain’s Neuro Diagnostic Research Institute of how much cell phone radiation is absorbed in a child’s brain.
Dr. Khurana mentions the work of Professor Leonard Hardell of Sweden, discussed in the article Mobile phone use ‘raises children’s risk of brain cancer fivefold’. Read his research paper Long-term use of cellular phones and brain tumours: increased risk associated with use for greater than 10 years.

Dr. Khurana explains how the cell phone signal powerfully tracks the user with a constant stream of radiation.
Dr. Khurana then illuminates the truth about plug-in microphones, wired earpieces, and other variable equipment that can or cannot reduce the radiation from cell phones. To reduce, but not block, cell phone radiation, Dr. Khurana recommends an earpiece with an air tube that provides more distance from the user’s head as it transmits the audio. A device that uses this technology is the Blue Tube advanced Aircom2. To learn more about the Blue Tube and have the option to buy one, see “Does a Cell Phone’s Radiation Effect Stop When the Call Ends?” which includes a seven-minute video commentary by osteopathic physician Dr. Joseph Mercola.

Dr. Caldicott asks Dr. Khurana how scientists think that cell phone radiation and EMF can induce cancer. He describes the various types of electromagnetic radiation and where cell phones fit into the spectrum. See a diagram of radiation frequencies. At one point, Dr. Caldicott refers to measuring devices which check the fields of electromagnetic radiation. Some meters also measure cell phones. Check out the Trifield gauss meter from AlphaLab, Inc. This appliance has an electric & magnetic setting to measure EMF, and a radio/microwave setting which can also measure cell phone radiation.

Dr. Khurana mentions a new study on human sperm and cell phone radiation, Mobile Phone Radiation Induces Reactive Oxygen Species Production and DNA Damage in Human Spermatozoa In Vitro. Other topics of this program include where cancers from cell phone use might develop in humans, the drastic increase in brain tumor incidence in the last 10 years, and how children are being affected by mobile phones. Dr. Caldicott is quite shocked to hear that Ireland and England have declared cell phones safe for children.
Dr. Khurana talks about the Bioinitiative Report, in which several scientists weigh in on “A Rationale for a Biologically-based Public Exposure Standard for Electromagnetic Fields (ELF and RF)” and the potential for an epidemic of brain tumors and leukemia.

Another recent study found a very high incidence of brain tumors among offspring of women who work with electric sewing machines, Dr. Khurana says. Read an abstract of Maternal occupational exposure to extremely low frequency magnetic fields and the risk of brain cancer in the offspring. Dr. Khurana talks about the hazards of laptop computers, before exploring the paradigm shift about understanding the dangers of electromagnetic radiation which might be occurring, noting that the U.S. Senate and European Parliament have both pledged to study the health effects of cell phones. Dr. Khurana provides more safety recommendations throughout the end of the program.

For more information, watch Dr. Khurana’s appearances on Larry King Live and on 60 Minutes on his website’s Media page. Read Heavy Cell Phone Use Linked To Cancer, Study Suggests which mentions the work of Israeli scientist Dr. Siegal Sadetzki. See Dr. Sadetzki’s study Cellular Phone Use and Risk of Benign and Malignant Parotid Gland Tumors—A Nationwide Case-Control Study. See the article Pittsburgh cancer center warns of risk from cell phone use and the related report Tumors and Cell Phone Use: What the Science Says. And read Cellphone use potentially risky for kids, teens: health agency. See the webpage Cell Phones Linked to Brain Cancer which has several television segments and diagrams showing how cell phone radiation damages the body. Read 14 die of cancer in seven years living next to phone mast with highest radiation levels in UK.

Wireless internet (Wi-Fi) is considered by some to be another major health risk. Read Germany warns citizens to avoid using Wi-Fi and WiFi Radiation - Is WiFi Technology Bad For Your Health?. Other forms of life may be strongly affected by electromagnetic radiation and cell phone transmissions. Read Electronic smog ‘is disrupting nature on a massive scale’: New study blames mobile phone masts and power lines for collapse of bee colonies and decline in sparrows. Check out the Q-link pendant developed by university scientists and extensively studied which helps protect the body from the harmful effects of electromagnetic radiation. Cell phone manufacture requires the use of the mineral coltan, and mining coltan is creating terrible conflicts in Africa. Read We’re All Raping the Congo, One Cell Phone Call at a Time and Can You Hear Congo Now? Cell Phones, Conflict Minerals, and the Worst Sexual Violence in the World. Read the October 22 article Stop Texting, to Save Lives in Africa. Also see the article The Radiation Poisoning Of America for more about cell phone tower and microwave transmissions.

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Dr. John Wright from
the Australian Common-wealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) talks about the CSIRO Home Energy Saving Handbook. Published by Pan McMillan in 2009, the Handbook is designed to educate people how to save energy and money while reducing their carbon footprint. Dr. Wright and the Handbook’s two other authors are leading experts on climate change and sustainable living, and everyone will find valuable advice and ideas in this interview that they can apply to their own households.

At the start of the episode, Dr. Wright reveals how a young boy’s curiosity was the impetus for writing the Handbook, which is intended to give the public tools to feel more powerful in the face of global warming. Dr. Caldicott says the ideas presented in this Australian book are totally relevant to the U.S. and other industrialized nations. The Handbook can be ordered from Australia and shipped anywhere in the world. Dr. Wright says the Handbook’s 11 chapters cover basic facts about global warming, carbon footprints, and how householders can save energy.

One of the key themes in the Handbook is the carbon footprint of food – packaging, travel, refrigeration, etc.
Dr. Caldicott says that food now travels an average of 1,500 miles before it reaches the store. In talking about food miles, Dr. Wright mentions several studies done in England about the carbon footprint of food. See the report Our health, our environment: The Ecological Footprint of what we eat. Read the article Local food ‘greener than organic’ according to a report published in the journal Food Policy. Some argue that in certain cases, production or storage of local food may create more greenhouse gases than food imported from afar. See The “Food miles” lie: buying local could be no greener than importing. But Dr. Caldicott says that the luxury of being able to buy “any food in any season,” particularly in the United States, must be forsaken in order to reduce fossil fuel emissions and save the earth.

The Handbook also talks about how much electricity is used by computers and other appliances, the gasoline mileage consumed by automobiles, the role of the media in educating the public about global warming, and the waste and energy used represented by product packaging. Dr. Caldicott has long called for an “unpackaging revolution.” She notes that billions of plastic shopping bags discarded annually in Australia (and beyond). She mentions a gas, nitrogen trifluoride, used to produce flat-screen televisions which she says is much more potent than CO2 in causing global warming. See the articles The Greenhouse Gas That Nobody Knew and Nitrogen Trifluoride: Potent Greenhouse Gas More Common in Atmosphere Than Estimated and the relevant study Nitrogen trifluoride in the global atmosphere.

Dr. Wright and Dr. Caldicott discuss various household energy-saving tips and techniques, from cutting the power on microwave oven clocks and shutting off computers when not in use, to turning off all unnecessary lighting at home. Microwave ovens can make food toxic to the human body, according to Swiss studies. Dr. Caldicott rails against the notion of leaving numerous lights on throughout a home, even when people are sleeping. Nighttime light pollution from excess lighting of office buildings, stores, parking lots and illuminated advertising signs is now a major environmental issue. Light pollution harms human, animal and plant life and it also contributes to global warming. Read the National Geographic cover story on light pollution and visit the website of the International Dark Sky Association.

Dr. Wright mentions the efficiency of central heat pump systems which can control and restrict the use of heating and air conditioning in a home to only those rooms where it is needed. Double-glazed or double-paned windows are another energy-saving device described in the Handbook. Dr. Caldicott says that people can coat windows with a plastic film to add insulation if double-paned windows are not affordable.

The interview next looks at the present status of both solar and wind power.
Dr. Caldicott notes that oil companies like ExxonMobil have funded think tanks to create the false mindset that renewable energy is far from being feasible, and will never produce enough base energy, and therefore the world must use nuclear and coal. Read Despite Pledge, Exxon-Mobil Still Funding Climate Change Deniers. Dr. Wright says that solar energy is the ideal way to heat water, given how energy-intensive that process is. He mentions other developments in solar energy. Read the recent National Geographic article Plugging Into the Sun and see Chinese solar plant expected to be the biggest. For apartment and condominium dwellers, installing rooftop solar panels may not be feasible, but there are solar panels that can be installed in windows. See Solar Power for Apartment Dwellers. Dr. Caldicott says that all parking lots should be covered with solar panels to recharge plug-in solar electric cars, thus using only renewable, non-polluting energy. The feasibility of this scheme, and how renewable energy can now meet all of the world’s needs, is covered in depth in Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Policy by engineer Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D., based on a study commissioned by Dr. Caldicott.

Dr. Wright says wind power can provide power in areas where solar is not as effective, and vice-versa. He says a “smart grid” can make adjustments to use whatever green energy source is most available. Read about Australia’s smart grid in Govt nears decision on smart grid builder and about U.S. smart-grid plans in The Smart Grid Is Not Just for Geeks Anymore.

For more information, see three other books offering energy-saving and green living advice: The Earth-Friendly Home: Save Energy, Reduce Consumption, Shrink Your Carbon Footprint and How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint and When Changing a Lightbulb Just Isn’t Enough: 150 Ways to Slash Your Household Bills & Save Energy, Too. And read the article Reduce your Carbon Foot Print: Here are ways you can reduce your Carbon Foot Print; A Gaia How-to Guide.

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Alexandra Spieldoch is the Director of the Trade and Global Governance Program at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. She specializes in analysis of international policy and institutions that support fairer rules in food and agriculture. In this interview she discusses food security and global governance from a human rights and development perspective. Dr. Caldicott starts the conversation by remarking how disturbed she was by the information in Spieldoch’s 2009 article Global Land Grab. In
providing an overview of the international food and water situation, Spieldoch says 200 million more people are now
hungry since the 2006 food crisis. And water supplies are decreasing; two-thirds of the world may suffer from lack of water stress if urgent action is not taken.

For background, see Spieldoch’s May 5 PowerPoint slide presentation, Land Grab: The Race for the World’s Farmland. Read her 2008 article The Food Crisis and Global Institutions. Also see the 2009 articles Fears for the World’s Poor Countries as the Rich Grab Land to Grow Food and Wish You Weren’t Here: The Devastating Effects of Rich Countries Buying Land in Poor Countries to Grow Food and Cash Crops and
Land Grab: The Race for the World’s Farmland. Visit the blog, FarmLandGrab.org. And see World Hunger Facts 2009.

As they talk about the trade in “commodities” and the theft of land from the world’s poor to grow food and flowers, Spieldoch provides a historical perspective back to the 1980’s when globalization initiatives started to dismantle cooperative and community agriculture programs. For more information on the impact of globalization, visit the website of the International Forum on Globalization. Spieldoch explains why governments go along with free trade agreements that cut domestic programs which help the poor. Dr. Caldicott refers to research by Australian social psychologist Alex Carey on how Americans have been trained by corporate think tanks to worship free enterprise and to disdain government social welfare. Her just-released book If You Love This Planet covers the “manufacture of consent” by corporate America in depth. Listen to a two-part program on corporations, propaganda, and democracy based on Carey’s research.

As they discuss water, Dr. Caldicott quotes a corporate leader who says the world will run out of water before it runs out of fuel, and points out the impact of glacier melt on billions of people. Spieldoch says that agriculture contributes up to 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, and irrigated agriculture uses over 70% of the world’s water. Read Millions of Rural Poor in Nepal Could Face More Hunger as a Result of Climate Change; The melting of the Himalayan glaciers will be felt well beyond Nepal’s borders.

Spieldoch comments on recent riots in countries that can no longer grow enough food. Dr. Caldicott cites Madagascar, where South Korean firm Daewoo tried to take over half of the country’s arable land for 99 years, which led to violent protests which successfully blocked Daewoo’s plan. Spieldoch explains the significance of these events, and then talks about the large size of the new land-lease schemes. She states which nations are buying land in other countries to grow food, and which countries are victims of the land schemes, mostly in Africa.

Dr. Caldicott moves the conversation to biofuels, which create more greenhouse gas emissions, not less. See the September 23 press release More Than 200 Scientists and Economists Call on Congress, Federal Agencies to Account for All Emissions From Biofuels. Dr. Caldicott alludes to Archer Daniels Midland, the world’s largest grain and ethanol producer whose former slogan was “Supermarket to the World.” She says that biofuels are an inappropriate response to the real problem of peak oil. Read The Era of Xtreme Energy: Life After the Age of Oil and visit the Web site of Post Carbon Institute. Spieldoch notes that big agribusiness, not small farmers, profits from biofuels. Spieldoch talks about genetically modified foods and Monsanto’s new advertising campaign, “How can we squeeze more food from a raindrop?” Watch the new French documentary The World According to Monsanto in 10 parts on YouTube (narration in English). See the September 22 news article Court Rejects Genetically Modified Sugar Beets. Read Agriculture -South Africa: Small Farmers Pushed to Plant GM Seeds.

Dr. Caldicott says that in a future world without oil, communities will need to grow their own food and harvest their own water. See the nine-minute Web video Eat the Suburbs: Gardening for the End of the Oil Age and read Creating a backyard vegetable garden. Spieldoch says that increasing world populations will exacerbate land struggle issues, and she notes that women farmers have few legal rights. Global investment should support local efforts. To that end, Spieldoch closes by praising a landmark study, International Assessment of Agriculture Science, Technology and Development. The report emphatically advocates sustainable practices, small-scale farming, local knowledge, healthy food and biodiversity to solve critical food problems and safeguard farmers.

For additional information on the topics she discussed, Spieldoch recommends people read Free Trade in Agriculture: a Bad Idea, Integrated Solutions to Water, Ag and Climate Crises, Global Food Responsibility: the EU and the U.S. Must Chart a New Path, and the executive summary of the International Assessment of Agriculture, Science and Technology, in which Spieldoch at one point refers to the role of women in agriculture. She also recommends The World Bank’s Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook. See The Hunger Project’s fact sheet, Women Farmers and Food Security.

For a more general look at the world food situation, read the article Half the world’s population faces major food crisis by 2100, Science study finds, and look for the new documentary film, Food Inc., which might be shown in your area (or later available on DVD). Also check out the book Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations about the importance of soil to world survival. For more about global warming and the world’s food and water, see the reports Cooking up a storm: Food, greenhouse gas emissions and our changing climate and Livestock’s Long Shadow. Read River systems worldwide are losing water due to global warming, Water Scarcity Looms as Population, Temperatures Rise, and As water and power dry up in India, the people revolt. And check out a Ugandan woman’s account of how global warming is affecting rural African farmers, Climate Change is Killing Our People. For more on looming world water issues, read the book Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

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This week’s guest is Carole Gallagher, author of American Ground Zero: the Secret Nuclear War (MIT Press, 1993). Gallagher’s book documents the effects of nuclear testing in Nevada on those living downwind, the test site workers themselves, and atomic veterans who were exposed to the bombs at very close range. The U.S. government program to expose soldiers to the bomb was an experiment to see what a man could withstand emotionally and physically on the “nuclear battlefield,” should a full-scale nuclear war occur, or during more limited nuclear exchanges. After living in Utah for seven years to work on the book, Gallagher returned to New York in 1990 because she was being harassed by locals, even receiving death threats. Gallagher is also a successful artist/photographer, and has exhibited in museums and galleries nationally and internationally.

In 1983, Gallagher began documenting the effects of nuclear testing in Nevada on Utahans, and on U.S. veterans made to walk over Ground Zero shortly after each bomb was exploded. Dr. Caldicott says she was “flabbergasted” to read the shocking personal stories and see the accompanying photos in American Ground Zero, and urges all listeners to buy the book.

Gallagher and Dr. Caldicott look at the enormous amount of radiation released by each of the above-ground Nevada bomb tests, the sense of guilt or lack thereof on the part of bomb scientists such as Robert Oppenheimer, the Pacific Ocean bomb tests and how the bombs compared in size to those exploded in Nevada, the sort of nuclear weapons now stockpiled by the U.S. and Russia, the huge number of people in the American West who were exposed to bomb-test radiation, and how far east in the U.S. the bomb fallout was blown.

They also explore the Mormon culture and how it dealt with what the U.S. government told residents about bomb test effects, case histories of bomb test victims, many of whom were children when the bombs were detonated, and how physicians turned their backs on studying the health effects of radiation on sick patients. Dr. Caldicott has strong words for her colleagues who treated patients contaminated by the Nevada weapons tests.

Gallagher refers to a National Cancer Institute study map of U.S. fallout exposure. Dr. Caldicott and Gallagher ponder the global extent of cancer cases and deaths stemming from nuclear radiation. Dr. Caldicott mentions
Prof. John Gofman’s book, Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants Before and After Three Mile Island, which helped her understand how radiation damages the human body. The book can be read on-line. Gallagher refers to Richard Miller’s map of U.S. areas affected by nuclear test clouds. Gallagher says that the nuclear scientists knew about the effects of the bombs on downwinders.

The program also examines the terrible plight of U.S. military personnel forced to take part in the Nevada tests, as well as the foreigners who were brought in to take part in terrible experiments. In discussing the psychology of the weapons scientists and warmakers, Dr. Caldicott mentions a book she is reading, The Sociopath Next Door. Dr. Caldicott refers to scientist Karl Morgan, the father of health physics who denounced nuclear weapons, and she talks about the new generation of health physicists who cover up the medical effects of radiation.

Dr. Caldicott praises Gallagher for her work to reveal the nuclear bomb devastation in the U.S., and mentions whistleblower Karen Silkwood, who tried to expose the safety lapses at a plutonium factory. Read The Killing of Karen Silkwood (Cornell University Press). In closing, Dr. Caldicott again urges listeners to buy and read every page of American Ground Zero to understand more about the Nuclear Age. The book is a powerful complement to the Emmy Award-winning documentary White Light Black Rain, available on DVD, about the effects of nuclear weapons and radiation on Japanese atomic bomb survivors.

For more information on downwinders, watch the short documentary, Forgotten Victims: The Story of Utah’s Downwinders. Read the book They Never Knew: The Victims of Atomic Testing, an excerpt of which can be read here. And see the article Did Utah Kill John Wayne? about the fate of the cast and crew of a 1953 Hollywood movie filmed in a highly radiated part of Utah downwind of a nuclear test explosion in Nevada. For more about the originators of the atomic bomb, read the book Brotherhood of the Bomb. And for more about nuclear contamination, read Uranium Contamination Haunts Navajo Country and Plan to Pay Sick Nuclear Workers Unfairly Rejects Many, Doctor Says.

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Rhett Butler is the founder of Mongabay.com, an environmental science news web with a focus on tropical forests, now celebrating 10 years on-line. Butler is also co-founder of Tropical Conservation Science, an academic journal that aims to provide opportunities for scientists in developing countries to publish their research in their native languages. He has written for BBC News, Washington Monthly, Trends in Conservation Ecology and other publications. In this program, he describes to Dr. Caldicott the threats currently facing the world’s rainforests, which play a key role in reducing global warming.

At the start of the interview, Butler speaks about how his childhood exposure to nature and world travel inspired his passion to preserve rainforests. As he and Dr. Caldicott begin to look at rainforests, they first look at the current situation for forests and animals in Madagascar, where 80% of the country’s native plants and animals, such as lemurs, are found nowhere else. Lemurs are now threatened by the new trade in lemur bush meat. Read Bushmeat trade threatens Madagascar’s rare lemurs.

The show then examines logging in Australia, Indonesia and elsewhere. Butler mentions the new initiative, REDD (Reducing Emissions for Deforestation and Degradation), a plan for governments to be paid for keeping forests standing which has already had some successes. See the new Seed magazine article Forests for the Trees: Five experts discuss paying countries to keep forests intact, what role carbon markets should play, and how to protect the people whose lives depend on trees. For more on REDD, read Are we on the brink of saving rainforests? and Investing in conservation could save global economy trillions of dollars annually. They then discuss the notion of carbon offsetting to reduce greenhouse gases, a solution Dr. Caldicott considers worthless.

Dr. Caldicott reads from one of Butler’s articles, Brazil’s Plan to Save the Amazon Rainforest, in which he elucidates how global deforestation is a greater source of greenhouse emissions than cars, trucks, and airplanes. The Amazon rainforest, located in several South American countries, regulates global and regional climate, and as Butler notes, cutting down rainforest in Brazil negatively affects ranching in Texas. Read UN URGENT: End Deforestation, Conserve World’s Forests. They next explore the fate of native peoples in rainforests around the world, some of whom are manipulated by logging companies in terrible ways. Dr. Caldicott relates her experience visiting the Brazilian rainforest, where she encounteried indigenous tribes. This journey is described more fully in her book If You Love This Planet, a new edition of which is published this month. For more on forests and native peoples, read REDD may harm forest people, alleges report and Carbon conservation schemes will fail without forest people. Also see Adaptation Of Forests And People To Climate Change – A Global Assessment Report.

Butler enumerates which industries have been chopping down the Amazon rainforest, including cattle ranching, soy farming and gold mining. He says the 2009 Greenpeace report, Slaughtering the Amazon, which fingered major corporations which destroy the rainforest, has had a major positive impact. Many companies have drastically altered their behavior in the wake of the report. Read Shoe Brands Get Tough on Leather Suppliers to Save Amazon Rainforest. Butler speaks about the Peruvian rainforest, where over 30,000 indigenous Peruvians stood up earlier this year against energy companies that want to exploit the rainforest. Butler says that 70% of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest has been allocated for oil and gas exploration. Chevron has been sued for its practices in the Ecuadoran rainforest. For more background, visit the website of the Amazon Defense Coalition and read Mongabay articles Oil Extraction: The Impact of Oil Production in the Rainforest, Chevron expects to lose $27B suit but will refuse to pay damages and Oil development may destroy richest part of the Amazon rainforest. Also read Butler’s September 3, article Amazon tribes have long fought bloody battles against big oil in Ecuador. See the September 6 news article Chevron Awaits Verdict in Environmental Damage Case.

Brazil, Butler says, is making some good progress toward preserving its rainforest, with Brazilian leaders committing to raise significant money to save the forest. There has been concern that the government would continue to side with loggers and cattle ranchers, as stated in a June article at the time Slaughtering the Amazon was released, The Amazon is Dying: The Brazilian government is legalizing deforestation and western superbrands are benefiting from it. This needs to stop now.

Butler and Dr. Caldicott look further at the escalation of global warming that would occur if the Amazon rainforest is destroyed. She describes the relationship between burning trees and rising global temperatures. Butler is asked about soy companies’ role in rainforest destruction, and he points to another significant Greenpeace report, Eating up the Amazon, which came out in 2006 and helped force soy companies to change their practices. Dr. Caldicott brings up the topic of palm oil, and they look at the enormous growth in palm oil production from palms grown in areas cleared of rainforest. They examine which companies and which products are using palm oil, and how palm oil is used to produce biodiesel fuel for China. Butler notes that over 10 million hectares of palm oil farms have been planted in the rainforest. Read Is oil palm the next emerging threat to the Amazon? See the September 11 Friends of the Earth press release Environmentalists Welcome World Bank President’s Halt to Palm Oil Investments. Also read the September 2009 Mongabay article Palm oil paradox: a leading threat to orangutans and a key source of jobs in Sumatra, in which Butler interviews three experts on palm oil and saving orangutans.

Near the close of the program, Butler emphasizes the importance of compensating countries to save forests, which are often devalued when they remain living entities. He says that “smart people” are also working on building awareness that intact forests will retain more of the world’s water supply in the future, when water scarcity is expected to increase substantially. Dr. Caldicott in her closing remarks underlines the importance of rainforests, and all trees, in abating global warming, and says the rainforest issue is really about “the fate of the Earth.” Listen to this program and keep abreast of rainforest news on Mongabay.com and the Rainforest Action Network website to get the full picture.

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Dr. Caldicott interviews Scott Ludlam, Australian Greens Senator for Western Australia, about the uranium industry in Australia.

Sen. Ludlam was elected to the federal Senate in November 2007, and has campaigned for a nuclear-free Australia and nuclear-free world, Aboriginal land rights, energy market reform, and action on climate change, trade and globalization issues. At the start of the show, he explains why Australia has 40% of the world’s low-cost uranium reserves, the current state of Australian uranium mining, and the history of uranium mining in that country. He talks about how in the past, unions refused to mine uranium, but that ban was overturned. As he and Dr. Caldicott address the present growth of uranium mining in Australia, Ludlam explains how the environmental movement and native Aborigines have in some cases worked together to try to prevent mines on ancient Aboriginal lands. Read Uranium Mining and Aboriginal People.

Dr. Caldicott asks Sen. Ludlam about the enormous health hazards to the men who mine uranium. They look at the whole picture of the cycle from uranium mining to nuclear weapons and nuclear power production, and how uranium becomes more and more deadly along the way. Sen. Ludlam and Dr. Caldicott recently flew to one of the richest uranium sites in western Australia to draw attention to the dangers of uranium mining. Read his account of that expedition, Three days in the goldfields: on the trail of the uranium miners, which links to a photo gallery of the trip.

In exploring how Australia contributes to the danger of a global nuclear holocaust, Dr. Caldicott and Sen. Ludlam look at the denial mechanism of uranium and defense workers who prefer not to think about their contribution to nuclear war or cancer, how Australian uranium may be sold to both Russia and China, and the major role of the Pine Gap base in Australia. Sen. Ludlam visited the base and Dr. Caldicott is keenly interested in what transpired. They talk about the role of Pine Gap, the largest U.S. installation in Australia, in tracking defense satellites, spying, missile defense, weaponizing space, and targeting sites for a U.S./Russian nuclear war. Dr. Caldicott talks about the insanity of continuing to plan for a nuclear holocaust. They end the interview by looking at how the media ignores the continuing U.S./Russian nuclear war danger which threatens all life on earth. It is imperative that the media educate people about this reality, Dr. Caldicott says. Sen. Ludlam says he is gratified that younger people are involved in antinuclear activism.

For more on the fight to stop Australian uranium mining, visit these websites: People for a Nuclear-Free Australia, ANAWA (Antinuclear Alliance of Western Australia), Australian Conservation Foundation, Roxstop, and Friends of the Earth Australia. Read the artiicle, Uranium mine linked to US arms dealer.

For more on the health effects on miners, weapons plant workers and communities from exposure to uranium and other nuclear weapons materials, read Health Impacts for Uranium Mine and Mill Residents, Memories Come To Us In the Rain and the Wind: Oral Histories and Photographs of Navajo Uranium Miners & Their Families, and Tennessee’s sick nuclear workers get $1 billion.

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Former Australian Senator and social justice activist Jo Vallentine joins Dr. Caldicott to discuss the rejuvenated uranium mining industry in Australia, which Vallentine is fighting. She has been arrested several times doing civil diso-bedience, most recently for opposing U.S./Australian military exercises involving nuclear-armed warships. Vallentine also reflects on her career in Australian politics and the experiences that led her to fight for social justice causes, including an inspirational trip to America in her formative years. Vallentine was elected to the Australian Senate in 1984 as an advocate for nuclear disarmament. Read Vallentine’s August 5 submission to the South Australian Government, There should be no expansion of Olympic Dam uranium mine.

In explaining her commitment to social change, Vallentine discusses her college years when she spent a year in the U.S. on a scholarship, during which time she was able to hear a rousing speech by Robert F. Kennedy. In the early 1970’s, Vallentine’s lifelong concern about nuclear weapons began as she became concerned about children and their future, both as a schoolteacher and as a mother-to-be.

In the process of asking Vallentine why there is such an intense interest in uranium mining now when Australia has a more progressive government,
Dr. Caldicott wonders how politicians who support uranium mining and nuclear weapons can become separated from the horrific dangers of nuclear materials, and can still call themselves Christians. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s recent interview with Dave Sweeney for more on uranium mining and its global implications. Also visit the websites of People for a Nuclear-Free Australia, ANAWA (Antinuclear Alliance of Western Australia), Australian Conservation Foundation, Roxstop, and Friends of the Earth Australia.

Vallentine was elected to the Australian Senate three times, first on the issue of nuclear disarmament and later on a full Green-Party agenda. She explains how she became the candidate for the history-making Nuclear Disarmament Party, and was initially elected to the Senate at age 39. She says she was completely on her own in Canberra in terms of the progressive stances she would take on opposing nuclear weapons. There was intense media interest in her as a former teacher and mother of two young girls. Vallentine was deeply unsettled by then-President Ronald Reagan joking about using nuclear weapons as his administration greatly expanded the U.S. nuclear arsenal. She worked hard to put disarmament on the Australian government agenda, despite constant criticism from then-Prime Minister Bob Hawke, an ally of Reagan. She says she “got in trouble for asking too many questions.”

Vallentine and Dr. Caldicott talk about the U.S. base in Pine Gap, Australia, what Dr. Caldicott calls “the mid-brain of America’s military system.” Vallentine says that she was denied access to Pine Gap when she was a Senator, and that much about its true importance is kept secret. Dr. Caldicott says Pine Gap is part of a U.S. first-strike nuclear-war-fighting operation. The base presently targets U.S. drones when they bomb Afghanistan and Pakistan by remote control. It is also a key component of a U.S. missile defense system and is aiding America’s weaponization of space, part of the U.S. agenda to dominate and fight wars from space. Several billion dollars of contracts have been awarded to companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to put U.S. weapons in space. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s interview with Craig Eisendrath, Ph.D. about weaponizing space. Dr. Caldicott and Eisendrath wrote the book War in Heaven. Read about the Pine Gap 6 activists arrested for civil disobedience.

Vallentine continues the discussion of U.S. domination of the world. She talks about her experience at the recent Australian protest around the U.S. military exercise involving 20,000 U.S. service personnel and 6,000 Australians. She says Australia has a subservient relationship to the U.S., which operates at least 11 bases in Australia. Read about the global U.S. military presence in the 2008 article StratCom in Context: The Hidden Architecture of U.S. Militarism. Dr. Caldicott says that there is less opposition to U.S. policies and involvement in Australia than in the past, and she partly blames the Australian media led by Rupert Murdoch. The mad rush now to export Australian uranium, she says, is really about exporting cancer, leukemia and genetic disease, and young people in Australia are not educated to understand this reality.

Vallentine says that the nuclear war dangers have been blocked out from people’s consciousness since the ostensible end of the Cold War, and their concern has been transferred to the legitimate danger of global warming. Read Denial in the New Millennium: Nuclear Terror and Psychic Numbing by psychiatrist Carol Wolman, M.D. But she says the public needs to understand the fabrications of the nuclear industry about nuclear power and global warming, and she outlines how greenhouse emissions are produced by eight major stages of making power from uranium. The emphasis in opposing nuclear power should be on how renewables can fully power the future. This theme is covered in depth in a 2007 report Dr. Caldicott commissioned, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy by engineer Arjun Makhijani, which can be read on-line. To stand up to the steady propaganda of the nuclear industry, Vallentine says, antinuclear activists must be very specific about why nuclear power is totally contraindicated. Read Dr. Caldicott’s 2006 book about nuclear energy and climate change, Nuclear Power is Not the Answer and see the article The U.S. Press: The Top Ten Nuclear Lies.

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This episode features a speech Dr. Caldicott delivered in Battleboro, Vermont in April 2009. The Battleboro community are fighting to close down the ailing Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor, and Caldicott explains the medical consequences of living near a nuclear plant, and the situation locals face should the reactor leak or melt down.

Near the beginning of her talk, Dr. Caldicott says the elementary school right next to Vermont Yankee was constructed by Entergy, which builds nuclear power plants. Dr. Caldicott stresses throughout her speech how nuclear radiation particularly affects children. See the August 6 article Group calls for probe of Entergy, and also read Leaving Dirty, Dangerous Power in the Past about why this reactor should be closed. Read a 2008 article, Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate, about President Obama’s connection with the nuclear power industry. Exelon, a nuclear energy firm, donated over $200,000 to his campaign. See the July 8 article Obama Makes Nuclear Compromise to Pass Clean Energy Bill. Also read the July 24 article, Nuclear Industry Donations Target Moderate Democrats which documents the nuclear power industry’s continuing influence on Congress.

Dr. Caldicott acknowledges long-time antinuclear activist Randy Kehler in the audience. Kehler and Randall Forsberg coordinated the U.S. Nuclear Freeze campaign in the 1980’s. After Forsberg’s death, Kehler wrote the article
A New Vision of Security: Remembering Randall Forsberg.

Dr. Caldicott urges Vermont citizens (and people who want to close any other U.S. reactor) to meet with legislators and teach them about the medical effects of nuclear power. She then describes the nuclear fuel cycle, starting with uranium mining, and points out how much fossil fuel is required at every step of the way, repudiating the nuclear industry’s claim that nuclear power is “emission-free.” She says that National Public Radio and other media should reject ads from the Nuclear Energy Institute, because the NEI consistently lies to the public to make their case for nuclear energy.

All radiation exposure is cumulative, Dr. Caldicott says, and she describes different forms of nuclear radiation and how they cause cancer. Nuclear plants constantly emit radiation in what are known as “routine releases” which are never benign. She then tells the audience about the terrible damage caused by depleted uranium (DU) munitions used by the United States in Iraq (and Afghanistan and Kosovo). DU has created an enormous increase in cancer and birth defects in regions bombed with DU. To see graphic evidence of
DU-induced birth defects, do a search on Google Images for “depleted uranium” which will bring up hundreds of images. She calls the use of DU
“a war crime beyond belief.”

Dr. Caldicott covers the dangerous plans to “recycle” uranium into clothing and furniture, and how the nuclear power industry uses enormous quantities of ozone-layer-damaging chlorofluorocarbons (banned by the Montreal Protocol, but allowed for the nuclear industry). She mentions a German study, led by pediatrician Dr. Winfrid Eisenberg, which found a higher-than-normal cancer incidence around nuclear reactors. She describes how a nuclear power plant could melt down, and all the frightening variables that could go wrong to initiate a disaster which would affect hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. She reads from her book Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, a companion to her other book on nuclear power, Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do. Dr. Caldicott underlines how the public is ill-prepared to deal with the devastation of a meltdown.

Those who wish to close a reactor must use the media to make their case,
Dr. Caldicott says. She gives an example of how she and other activists, including Dr. Patch Adams, were able to attract extensive international media attention in 1999 to the need to safeguard nuclear materials during the Y2K transition by using a clever publicity gimmick.

Dr. Caldicott says that it is simply preventive medicine to want to close Vermont Yankee, which she calls both a “cancer factory” and a “bomb factory.” She reveals how the radioactivity of uranium increases by a magnitude of one billion when used in the plant. If Vermont Yankee were to melt down, it would render Vermont (and probably much of Massachusetts) permanently uninhabitable. Read about the 2007 cooling tower collapse at Vermont Yankee, an example of the fallibility of all nuclear power plants.

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George Vaillant, M.D. is a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and at the Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He has spent the last 35 years as Director of the Study of Adult Development at the Harvard University Health Service. The study charted the lives of 824 men and women for almost 70 years, charting adult development, schizophrenia and other personality disorders. Read What Makes Us Happy? from the June Atlantic Monthly. Dr. Vaillant’s latest book is
Spiritual Evolution: A Scientific Defense of Faith, published by Doubleday Broadway in 2008. Vaillant has also written Adaptation to Life, The Wisdom of the Ego, The Natural History of Alcoholism and The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited, and Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life From the Landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development. Read a review of Aging Well.

Dr. Caldicott and Vaillant cover many aspects of mental health and happiness, and their ramifications for the whole planet. She asks him how he became interested in researching happiness, after they reminisce about mutual involvement in 1980’s antinuclear activism. Vaillant describes the Harvard study, and Dr. Caldicott remarks about her fascination in learning about the men in the study at different stages of their lives. Vaillant broke with tradition to focus his study on healthy, well-adjusted men, and he found similarities in the resilience and coping mechanisms with people who have overcome addictions or dealt with scizophrenia. He notes how future happiness cannot be predicted from childhood and early adulthood. Vaillant talks about one of the study participants and his non-conformist attitudes, and whether he was in fact living a productive life in his own way. They touch on the Stonewall riots in New York City, a milestone in the gay right struggle, which occurred in 1969 (Vaillant gives the date as 1971).

Dr. Caldicott ponders if some seriously mentally ill people have more clarity and understanding than sane people. Vaillant responds by pointing to the overemphasis on left-brain, rational thinking at the expense of “the heart” in the modern world.
Dr. Caldicott mentions her experience giving lectures about nuclear war, and the striking difference between the comments of the men and women who approach her after she speaks. She notes the difference in brain structures between women and men, and in how they communicate and process emotions.

As they explore mental health in the context of social responsibility, Dr. Caldicott mentions Nazi Germany and the German people’s compliance with the horrors committed, and the importance of the Nuremberg principles. She moves the dialogue to the legacy of Robert McNamara, and
Dr. Caldicott illuminates her experiences collaborating with McNamara on antinuclear work. Read the article they wrote together in 2004, Still on Catastrophe’s Edge, about U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons maintaining the constant danger of global nuclear war in the 21st Century in the absence of complete disarmament. Dr. Caldiott mentions the work of Dr. Berry Brazelton, who has been honored for his work in pediatrics.

Next, Dr. Vaillant talks about some of the fascinating conclusions in his book Spiritual Evolution, and how we can experience more positive emotions. Dr. Caldicott shares her experiences with dying patients, and how their values often transform as the end of life approaches. Vaillant describes the differences between negative emotions and positive emotions, and how our emotional state alters our worldview and relationships with others. He discusses recent scientific findings about how people can experience the peaceful or euphoric states they might temporarily experience taking mind-altering drugs by engaging in constructive behaviors that involve helping others.

For more information about Dr. Vaillant and his work, read his article Mental Health in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Also see the articles The Talent for Aging Well and Happiness, Dissected: Can We Learn More About Happiness From Genes Or Lives?

In the last 10 minutes of this week’s program, we hear an excerpt from a speech Dr. Caldicott gave in Brattleboro, Vermont in April to support efforts to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. She states empathically how important it is to close the reactor, which poses an enormous risk to the local community and all of Vermont. She notes how the elementary school right next to the plant was paid for by Entergy, a company that makes nuclear power plants. Read the August 6 article Group calls for probe of Entergy. Also see Leaving Dirty, Dangerous Power in the Past which lists reasons to close Vermont Yankee.

Exelon, another nuclear energy concern, donated over $200,000 to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign to pressure him to support nuclear power. Read the July 8 article Obama Makes Nuclear Compromise to Pass Clean Energy Bill. Read an article from 2008, Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents atomic energy companies and promotes nuclear power, has been very busy building political support to build new American nuclear reactors. See the July 24 news article Nuclear Industry Donations Target Moderate Democrats.

Dr. Caldicott says that opposition to nuclear power and wanting to close the Vermont Yankee plant is preventive medicine, and should not be obscured by talk of money. Dr. Caldicott calls the reactor a “cancer factory” and a “bomb factory” and explains why. She illuminates how the radioactivity of uranium increases by staggering orders of magnitude when used in the plant, and how a meltdown of Vermont Yankee would render Vermont permanently unin-habitable. The 2007 cooling tower collapse at the plant is a reminder how easily a reactor like Vermont Yankee could blow up and melt down.

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Sally Henderson is an Australian whose passion is conserving endangered African wildlife - particularly elephants. In 1990 she joined the elephant research project in Zimbabwe, which inspired her memoir Silent Footsteps, published by Pan Macmillan in 2007. She has traveled extensively throughout Africa, studying many aspects of conservation and a diverse array of African cultures. Henderson’s new book is Ivory Moon, a memoir set in Namibia (also published by Pan Macmillan). In this deeply moving interview, Henderson shares with Dr. Caldicott her many powerful experiences being around elephants, lions, leopards and other animals in Africa, as she worked to save them and learned to understand them.

Dr. Caldicott asks Henderson how she first became interested in visiting Africa, and Henderson recounts how her rewarding childhood experiences surrounded by Australian animals inspired her lifelong interest in wildlife conservation.

Henderson speaks about her many close-up encounters with African elephants, including the terrifying time when an elephant saved her life. She tells Dr. Caldicott about the many ways elephants communicate, sometimes telepathically, and their great intelligence and sensitivity.

Elephants as well as rhinos are now endangered. Henderson talks about the poaching of the rhino population for products used in Asia and elsewhere. Poachers kill many elephants, and Henderson has aided efforts to keep them in protected areas, and to educate Africans to save the elephants, at least until old age. Elephant populations have fallen drastically from their original millions to endangered levels today. Read the April 9 Scientific American article Are Elephant Populations Stable These Days?

Henderson vividly describes her experiences in Namibia, more of a pristine wilderness than other parts of Africa. Dr. Caldicott says that Namibia is a major source of uranium, used to make nuclear weapons, and diamonds.

Over the course of the program, Henderson also imparts her electrifying experiences with big African cats on several trips and longer stays. She provides many insights into wild feline behavior, including the surprising difference between the leopard and other cats such as lions.

Dr. Caldicott and Henderson also touch on the quality of life for poor Africans, and the hardships and disease they often face. Henderson lauds the work
Bill and Melissa Gates are doing through their foundation in the area of malaria prevention, on
a continent where the vast majority of people cannot afford anti-malarial medications because of the greed of pharmaceutical companies (who would rather market and profit from drugs for depression and low libido, available
to affluent people).

The hunting-and-killing mentality of sport hunters is another topic of this episode. Henderson and Dr. Caldicott agree about the peculiarity of hunters who boast about slaughtering wild animals. They concur that humans are the worst predators on the planet. Erich Fromm’s book The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness inquires into why some men enjoy violence, including hunting animals.

After the formal conversation with Henderson ends, there is a three-minute music break, after which Dr. Caldicott comes back on the air to describe her experience attending a conference that included Robert Mugabe, the murderous president of Zimbabwe. During the dialogue with Henderson,
Dr. Caldicott had mentioned encountering Mugabe in the context of whether or not African leaders care about endangered animals.

For more information about saving African wildlife, visit the websites of Save the Elephants, World Wildlife Fund, The African Wildlife Foundation, Save the Rhino and Wildlife Direct. Also visit the web pages of PETA’s Save Wild Elephants campaign and actress Tippi Hedren’s Shambala Reserve, which saves big cats which were abused as illegal exotic pets.

Read the articles African Safaris - Elephants Must Be Saved From Extinction, Extinction Crisis Emerges for World Mammals: One in Four Species at Serious Risk, Will Central Africa’s Forest Wildlife Be Eaten into Extinction?, Elephants Slaughtered to Feed Soldiers in Zimbabwe, Satellite’s-Eye View of an Africa Despoiled [35-image slide show], and The Saddest Show on Earth, about the terrible plight of elephants in circuses.

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Ellen Augustine and Barry Hermanson are California residents who have started a campaign to alert fellow citizens to the gross overspending of the US military budget. Their campaign, called Not My Priorities, centers on educating people through a simple pie chart about the discrepancy in spending on the Pentagon versus all other areas in the national budget.

Hermanson, who founded the campaign, was a Green Party candidate for Congress in California’s 12th Congressional District. Augustine also ran for the US Congress, and founded four non-profit organizations. This is an inspiring interview with two people who believe Americans can harness their democratic process, and really make a difference.

In Part 1 of this episode, Dr. Caldicott starts the interview with Augustine by remarking how the U.S. military consistently argues that huge defense budgets are necessary and justifiable because they create jobs. She asks Augustine how many jobs are really created in the military, versus how many jobs could be created in health care, education, renewable and alternative energy and other environmental sectors if spending priorities were allowed to change. Augustine presents striking figures that spending on these other sectors would created twice as many jobs.

Next, they look at the current U.S. defense budget, and those large “black areas” where more money is spent but not accounted for, and might be used for nuclear weapons research, “homeland security,” veterans affairs, and paying down national debt because of present or past wars. Augustine says that the U.S. public is brainwashed that security is only achieved by military spending. She points out how America spends more than all countries combined on weapons and the military. Read the June 9 article Worldwide military spending on weapons hits
record high.

Augustine says the Not My Priorities campaign encourages citizens to distribute thousands of postcards showing the pie chart above to all members of Congress and the Senate. She describes the huge battles in Washington to allocate the one-third of tax dollars that are left over for social programs like education, housing, transit and health care, after two-thirds of tax revenues are handed over (usually with little debate) to the insatiable military.

Dr. Caldicott and Augustine converse about the hair-trigger alert launch status that U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons are still on, and the arms reductions promised by Presidents Obama and Medvedev. They also explore what percentage of the U.S. military budget is spent on nuclear weapons. Augustine refers to UN Development Program reports that stress the importance of universal access to education, basic health care, food and water. She says the money the U.S. spends annually on nuclear weapons - $40 billion - could more than cover such essential programs for everyone on Earth.

Augustine describes the 700 to 1,000 U.S. military bases around the world, the strong opposition to those bases in most countries, and how expensive they are to maintain. See Mother Jones magazine’s interactive 2008 map, Mission Creep: U.S. Military Presence Worldwide. Also see this map of U.S. domestic military bases and this map of U.S. overseas bases (click on the highlighted state or country to see which bases are there).

Augustine mentions a report released in April this year, Transforming the U.S. Strategic Posture and Weapons Complex For Transition to a Nuclear Weapons-Free World, which recommends the U.S. and Russia first reduce their nuclear arsenals to 500 weapons each, what Augustine calls a “moral declaration” to lead by example on the road to global disarmament. Dr. Caldicott points out how fewer than 1,000 nuclear bombs exploding could bring about nuclear winter, making total and rapid disarmament between the nuclear superpowers extremely important. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s interview with Professor Alan Robock one year ago for more information or nuclear winter and climate change.

Augustine sums up by saying that “when the public has focused on a new vision, the power of the people has prevailed.” She and Dr. Caldicott agree that now, with economics such a preoccupation, the U.S. public should want to support cutting the military budget when so many other problems need to be fixed, from poverty to the environment.

In Part 2, Dr. Caldicott begins her interview with Barry Hermanson by asking him to describe the pie chart in detail (see above – a more recent version of the pie chart with updated dollar figures is shown on the postcards Not My Priorities will mail anyone who is interested). Hermanson says the public can influence politicians to oppose war and weapons funding, and cites the evolution of Congresswoman Jackie Speier of California.
Dr. Caldicott ponders what would happen if most residents of California, a major weapons-production state, were educated about spending priorities and became firmly committed to reducing the military budget. Given the state’s dire financial situation at present, freeing up a large portion of federal tax dollars from the military budget would provide enormous benefit to California, not to mention the other 49 states.

Dr. Caldicott says that a national movement to drastically cut the military budget should start in California, and strongly recommends listeners contact the Not My Priorities campaign to get postcards to sign and distribute to legislators. She reminds listeners that Pres. Obama said in a speech that he can’t function as a bold, visionary leader unless he has the people behind him. Hermanson says that Congress, as well as Obama, must hear from more citizens about cutting the military budget. He notes that Congresswoman (and now Speaker of the House) Nancy Pelosi called for enlarging the Army and Navy at the end of 2007, and like many Democrats is often pro-war. Dr. Caldicott notes how Washington Democrats are frequently more hawkish and warmongering than Republicans so they can maneuver to raise money for social programs.

Six firms now produce most of the weapons in the U.S., Hermanson says. See the list, Top 25 Publicly Traded Companies Receiving Prime Contract Awards from the U.S. Department of Defense, Fiscal Year 2008. Weapons firms are focused on profit and expanding global arms sales. Read the June 13 article Weapons Makers Look Overseas as Pentagon Scales Back.

For more information, read Postcards from the Outraged: Ellen Augustine on reslicing the American pie and Green Party nominee [Hermanson] rallies to reduce military spending. Also read Jeremy Scahill’s April 9 article Billions More in War Spending: How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama’s Bloated Military Budget? and see the Global Issues web page about world military spending.

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This week’s guest is Lawrence Wittner, Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. Prof. Wittner is an award-winning American historian who has written extensively on peace movements and foreign policy. He is the author of seven books, including his most recent: Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, published by Stanford University Press in 2009. He also wrote an earlier trilogy of books Toward Nuclear Abolition: The Struggle Against The Bomb upon which Confronting the Bomb is based. Prof. Wittner is a recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Program on Global Security and Sustainability Research Writing grant.

On this week’s program, Dr. Caldicott first asks Prof. Wittner how he came to write on the topic of the peace movement, and he says that disarmament activism has been the “greatest mass social movement of modern times.” He lays out in detail the three major upsurges of antinuclear activism around the world since the late 1940’s.

Prof. Wittner describes his findings about government response to antinuclear activism in various countries and at various points in the last 60 years. In many cases, the peace movement helped change government policies and was appreciated by politicians such as President John F. Kennedy. Prof. Wittner enunciates his point of view about whether or not peace activism has prevented nuclear war.

Dr. Caldicott asks about the mindset of those who continue to favor retaining, building or using nuclear weapons. Dr. Caldicott and Prof. Wittner explore spying and surveillance of peace groups, and
she describes her own experiences as a prominent leader of the antinuclear movement in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Dr. Caldicott asks Wittner if the antinuclear movement in the U.S. is approaching a resurgence. In the discussion, they talk about some of the ways the public can become more involved in supporting nuclear abolition efforts, and they mention groups like Peace Action, Women’s Action for New Directions (formerly Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament) (WAND), Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom whose project Reaching Critical Will is all about nuclear disarmament. The groups Global Zero, Beyond Nuclear and The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation are also very actively working toward total disarmament.

Prof. Wittner says the 2010 conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Obama has promised to reinvigorate, is a crucial event, and he says the U.S. Senate needs to feel pressure to pass the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Read Prof. Wittner’s articles How the Peace Movement Can Win, What the Peace Movement Can Learn from the NRA, and Have Peace Activists Ever Stopped a War?

Dr. Caldicott says that churches have a “moral obligation” to make eliminating all nuclear weapons a high priority. She is surprised that the mainstream media chose to ignore Prof. Wittner’s earlier books on the disarmament movement, which she says document crucial struggles to save all life on Earth. She encourages all listeners to buy a copy of Confronting the Bomb.

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Dave Sweeney is one of the key voices in Australia educating people about the environmental and public health dangers of uranium mining. Sweeney works with the Australian Conservation Foundation, a 40-year-old organization that liases with the community, business and government to protect and sustain the Australian environment.

In this interview with Dr Caldicott, Sweeney talks about the plans that are underway for a massive expansion of the uranium industry in Australia, and the push to build the first Australian nuclear power plants.

The show starts off by examining the history of uranium mining in Australia, and the lack of remediation for the toxins that are released in processing uranium. Sweeney talks about Aboriginal myths and wisdom, their claims on the land used to mine uranium, and how Aboriginal homes have become missile and rocket testing ranges. Read Aboriginal cancer doubles near uranium mine.

Promoters of uranium mining, Sweeney notes, are saying that Australia could become the “Saudi Arabia of the Nuclear Age.” Sweeney works with activist groups to teach Australians that uranium mining is far more dangerous than extracting any other mineral. He and Dr. Caldicott delve deeply into the lack of concern by media and politicians about the horrific health and environmental consequences of such a deadly material, which is used to make “the worst weapons in the world.” Sweeney says there is much “institutional denial” and a “sanitized view” about uranium as well as nuclear power.

The program looks at the proposal to build the world’s largest mine, Roxby Downs, to mine uranium and triple exports. Several groups have been working to block this dam and the destruction it would create, including the Australian Conservation Foundation, Roxstop, and Friends of the Earth Australia. Dr. Caldicott mentions the enormous electricity usage and CO2 emissions such a mine would necessitate.

Subsequent to the recording of this show, Australia approved the nation’s fourth uranium mine, a decision supported by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Read the July 15 article Garrett approves new uranium mine and the
July 14 article Rudd defends uranium mine decision, both of which quote Dr. Caldicott.

There is enormous potential to use only green and renewable energy in Australia, with the country’s vast solar, wind, geothermal and other reserves. Read Australia: the Saudi Arabia of solar? Yet today, Australia is still locked into a “quarry economy.” Australia is a major coal exporter, and coal and uranium profits are enormous.

Dr. Caldicott asks Sweeney about the railway line built between Adelaide and Darwin to transport uranium from the south to the north coast of Australia. She has him outline the purpose of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which former president George W. Bush strongly supported. Read more about the hazards of GNEP here. Sweeney describes the Australian Nuclear-Free Alliance, and explains how Australia could become nuclear-free like New Zealand.

In closing, Dr. Caldicott says that “either money will determine the fate of the Earth, or morality.” Tune in to realize just how critical uranium mining is in perpetuating the nuclear dangers that continue to haunt the planet.

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Founder of environmental non-profit research group Earth Policy Institute as well as the Worldwatch Institute, Lester Brown has been described by the Washington Post as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers.” He
holds 24 honorary degrees and has written 50 books. In this interview with
Dr. Caldicott, he talks about the rise of failed states around the world, how
the price of grain will in the future be linked to the price of oil, and the danger posed to civilization if food and water shortages and hunger continue to increase. Read Fears for the world’s poor countries as the rich grab land to grow food.

Brown’s recent book titled Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization is published by W.W. Norton. It can be purchased in print or downloaded for free. Read A Conversation with Lester Brown in the summer 2009 issue of Earth Island Journal. Read Brown’s article in the May 2009 Scientific American, Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

At the start of the program, Brown describes the components of a failed country, and lists nations which meet this description. He says that as the list of failing states grows, the fate of these nations may create a failed global civilization, with major repercussions for all humanity. One of the problems affecting failed states is deforestation and soil erosion. Read geologist David Montgomery’s article Soil erosion and agricultural sustainability and buy his book Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations. Brown says a country like Haiti, an “ecological basket case,” is in many cases also an “economic basket case.” How the First World may block aid to the Third World is also worth noting. Read the July 6 Oxfam International press release More than 3 Million Face Death [in Subsaharan Africa] while Berlusconi and the G8 Fiddle about how “urgent action” is needed “to protect poor people from the triple threat of the economic crisis, rising food prices and climate change.” The failed-states issue is one of many incredibly urgent topics on this week’s episode. Also see the July 6 Oxam press release about their new report on hunger and climate change, Millions Face Climate-Related Hunger as Seasons Shift and Change.

Dr. Caldicott brings up the Amazon rainforest, and Brown then delineates the three major land expansion efforts over the last century, one of which is leveling the Amazon. Brown notes how some of the disasters spawned by earlier land-expansion strategies were later reversed through careful conservation and planning. The fate of the Amazon rainforest is crucial to the health of the rest of the globe, particularly in terms of climate change. Read 85% of the Amazon may be lost due to global warming.

Brown discusses the relationship between food production and world hunger; which countries are changing from food exporters to food importers; and how crops grown for animals and for fuel will create more food shortages for humans. Brown says that the world used to have a separate food economy and energy economy, but now with ethanol, these economies are totally interconnected and interdependent. Up to one-quarter of the U.S. grain harvest is now going toward fuel for cars. Dr. Caldicott points to the folly of “feeding cars not people,” and creating more CO2 than is produced processing petroleum. Brown says that all the latest findings say that there is a net increase in carbon emissions when growing corn for ethanol (which also may involve major deforestation to create more cropland). Global warming will also cause food shortages. Read Half the world’s population faces major food crisis by 2100, Science study finds.

Brown notes the increasing competition between the 860 million people with cars who want to maintain mobility without concern for the fuel source, and the vast majority of the world’s people whose primary concern is survival. He describes how the number of hungry people is now increasing, not decreasing, and may reach 1.2 billion by 2017. With food prices on rise, the world could see more failing states, as governments may not be able to provide food.

Another critical issue affecting the world community is falling water tables. Brown talks about the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau, and what the loss of the glacier water will mean to the major river systems in China and India. One dramatic effect of this projected loss of water is that China, the world’s leading wheat producer, and India, the second larger producer, will no longer be able to grow most of their wheat. These same two countries also produce the bulk of the world’s rice for their own consumption and for export.

Dr. Caldicott talks about the major forest fires in Australia. Hear her interview with Paul Carroll about forest fires. Later, she points to another factor that can destabilize nations – nuclear weapons proliferation.

In closing, Dr. Caldicott asks Brown for his perspective on the Obama administration’s environmental team, and whether they will follow Brown’s contention that only an 80% reduction in fossil fuel emissions by 2020 can help avert catastrophic global warming. Be sure to tune in to what
Dr. Caldicott calls a “fascinating, insightful and visionary interview.”

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This week’s guest, Dr. Bryan Brooks, is an Associate Professor of Environmental Science at Baylor University in Texas. He has given over
60 invited presentations and lectures in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Poland, Portugal and Australia on the water quality dynamics of rapidly urbanizing regions. Dr Brooks is particularly interested in contaminants like pharma-ceuticals, personal care products and endocrine active substances, and the way in which these chemicals - as well as the excretion of medical drugs - affect the ecosystem and marine environment in which they end up. Read Baylor Begins First National Study On Pharmaceutical Contaminants, Personal Care Products in Fish Tissue.

In this interview, Dr. Brooks starts off by defining the term “PPCP” (pharmaceuticals and personal care products) as first used in the Journal of Environmental Health Perspectives. These PPCPs are entering the wastewater stream as consumers excrete or throw away drugs, and as they use shampoos, detergents and other body care goods that are washed down the drain. See the EPA’s Pharma-ceuticals and Personal Care Products as Pollutants (PPCPs) page.

Dr. Brooks is asked which surfactants or soaps are having adverse effects on aquatic life. Dr. Caldicott brings up the topic of antimicrobial soaps and other anti-germ agents, and what she calls an obsessive drive to sell people products that over-sterilize bathrooms and kitchens, when in fact we must live with some bacteria to develop our resistance. Read Cleaning Up Antimicrobial Hand Soaps and Warning: Toxic Chemical Triclosan Can Turn Your Toothpaste or Bathroom Soap into Chloroform about the negative aspects of these cleansers.

Dr. Brooks says scientists are assessing if current approaches to assess the environmental impact of PPCPs and hormone-disrupting chemicals are stringent enough & have the right design. He refers to the effects of water pollutants on alligator sexual development. Read the PBS Frontline Fooling with Nature feature, “Teeny Weenies.” Dr. Brooks also mentions the study by John Sumpter, Feminized responses in fish to environmental estrogens.

Dr. Caldicott refers to recent medical literature about more boys being born with smaller-than-normal or malformed penises, and she says we are definitely seeing the results of unstudied chemicals entering the environment. Read It’s official: Men really are the weaker sex: Evolution is being distorted by pollution, which damages genitals and the ability to father offspring, says new study.

The program discusses antibiotics in animals, and the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, before Dr. Caldicott asks Dr. Brooks to explain his findings on antidepressants and other pharma-ceutical drugs which are ending up in rivers (and other studies find, in tap water). Dr. Brooks says he found Prozac and Zoloft in fish. He describes how fish affected by antidepressants lose their ability to catch prey. Read Study: Pharma-ceuticals Found in North Texas Fish: Human drugs show up in fish caught near wastewater treatment plants about one of Dr. Brooks’s studies.

Dr. Brooks says the notion of mixtures is part of our lives with the advent of chemicals, and the challenge for scientists is to find the consequences in aquatic life of mixtures of drugs excreted or thrown by humans. Read the full text of Effects and Interactions in an Environmentally Relevant Mixture of Pharmaceuticals which describes a study of drug combinations similar to those combinations entering the water supply on the health of fish. Dr. Caldicott emphasizes that the EPA must become more involved in investigating the chemical cocktail humans and other creatures are forced to live in now.

To read more on the topics in this week’s program, see Endocrine Disruption Found in Fish Exposed to Municipal Wastewater and Cancer Drugs Found in Tap Water and Fish in U.S. Rivers Tainted With Common Medications and AP: Drugs found in drinking water and Benadryl, Antidepressants Found Tainting US Rivers
and Earthwatch – drugs in the water and Tests for drugs in tap water and How Drugs Can Contaminate Drinking Water.

Read Dr. Brooks’s paper, Ecotoxicological Investigations In Effluent-Dominated Stream Mesocosms (161 pages, 2002) and read an abstract of Dr. Brooks’s 2005 study Determination Of Select Antidepressants In Fish From An Effluent-Dominated Stream.

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This week, Dr. Caldicott continues her exploration of the “plastic plague” that is seriously harming ocean life and increasingly linked to numerous human health problems. Her guest Dr. Richard Thompson is a Senior Lecturer and Reader in Marine Ecology at the University of Plymouth in the UK. He is a leading scientist on the subject of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) binding to ocean plastic debris. His research, some of which he discusses in this interview, focuses on three main topics: the effects of plastic trash in the marine environment, the ecology and conservation of shallow-water habitats, and habitat modification to enhance biodiversity of marine engineering such as coastal defenses and off-shore renewable energy devices.

Dr. Caldicott asks Dr. Thompson to talk about what plastic debris in the oceans is doing to the marine food chain at the macro and micro level, and he starts off by pointing out the enormous increase in plastic production. He mentions the shocking fact that in the first nine or 10 years of the 21st Century (in other words, from 2000 through 2010), the world will have produced more plastic than in all of the 20th Century. And nearly all that new plastic will stay in existence for a very long time. In the oceans, he says, plastic items dating to World War II have been found perfectly intact.

As discussed in Dr. Caldicott’s recent interview with Captain Charles Moore, plastic particles of all sizes can harm sea organisms. The ocean plastic may disintegrate into smaller fragments, but it continues to be harmful to sea life, and does not disappear. Dr. Thompson’s laboratory has studied recovered plastic particles as small as half the diameter of a human hair in the seas and in the creatures that live there. Read more about
Dr. Thompson’s and Captain Moore’s pioneering research in the article, Polymers Are Forever: Alarming Tales Of A Most Prevalent And Problematic Substance, an excerpt from Alan Weisman’s book The World Without Us.

Dr. Caldicott asks Dr. Thompson to explain what she understands to be the five major categories of plastic, and he describes the different polymers.
Dr. Thompson argues that there are many societal benefits of plastic (in hospitals or schools, for example). He contends that how industry wastefully uses plastic to create packaging, and then fails to recycle most plastic, is the essential problem, not plastics themselves. Read Plastic. Fantastic? Can we learn to live with (and even love) plastic? Dr. Thompson says he believes the pace of industrialization and how goods are transported globally today would make it nearly impossible to eliminate plastic.

Dr. Caldicott questions if plastic is really necessary. She asks if we should abandon plastic in favor of re-usable items like glass beverage bottles. Perhaps only 2% of plastics are recycled now, and recycled plastic is presently used for a limited number of products. Dr. Caldicott talks about the amount of electricity and fossil fuel that would be required to recycle more plastic (vs. making products that can be reused virtually forever). Many people are attempting to remove plastic from their lives, and they describe their experiences in blogs. Read the articles Get Plastic Out Of Your Diet (If Your Food Or Drink Is In Plastic, The Plastic Is In You) and Alternatives to Plastic.

Dr. Thompson says that industry must consider how all products impact the environment, “cradle to cradle.” The book entitled Cradle to Cradle, mentioned by Capt. Moore, advocates redesigning everything with sustainability in mind. Dr. Thompson provides one solution to the problem of excess packaging. He notes how the United Kingdom is now requiring all food products with salt to rate the amount of salt with red, amber or green dots. He says a color rating system should also be used to rate the amount of packaging – minimal to excessive, which would force manufacturers to reduce excess packaging. Up to 60% of plastic, according to some figures, is packaging that is discarded. Americans produce about 250 pounds of plastic garbage per person, per year. Both re-use and recycling can be very successful, as exemplified by Germany, where among other practices, consumers return packaging to stores and manufacturers must take it back and recycle it. Read more about Germany’s policies here and here.

One topic not addressed on this program, which would factor into the future of plastic, is peak oil. If petroleum is no longer available or severely restricted, the majority of plastic materials as we know them today would be impossible to produce. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s interview with Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute on the topic of peak oil (and peak coal).

This episode also does not investigate bioplastics made from corn, soy, hemp, etc., and whether plant plastics are the correct solution to the plastic problem. Capt. Moore stated that plant plastics often do not biodegrade as advertised without being sent to special facilities which break them down. Plant plastics also play into the notion of disposability instead of re-use, and do not not alleviate the problem of people littering. Growing corn and other crops solely for plant plastic (or for biofuels) would displace land used for food production. While plant plastics would not have nearly the toxicity of oil-based plastic, they could still become debris that harms marine and land creatures. Read more about bioplastic in this Wikipedia article. Read about the bioplastic on the horizon in Biodegradable plastic made from plants, not oil, is emerging and A Turn to Alternative Chemicals and Coca-Cola Introduces Plant-Based Plastic Bottle [a bottle which is still 60-75% petroleum] and Scientists unveil plastic plants [genetically-engineered plants that actually “grow plastic”].

Dr. Caldicott moves the conversation with Dr. Thompson into the issue of toxicity of plastic, and the prevalence of the toxic chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) as discussed in her recent interview with Dr. Maricel Maffini. She refers to the recent Harvard University study that found that students who drank water out of plastic bottles had 70% more BPA in their urine than students in a control group who did not. Read Use of plastic bottles increases BPA in study. She mentions one of the highly toxic industrial corridors in New Jersey where plastic is made. Read about some of the pollutants released in the production of plastic in Plastic at your peril: The environmental and health costs of plastic.

Dr. Thompson talks about research studies finding minute particles of plastic in many consumer products like skin cleansers. If we are constantly flushing pieces of plastic into the water supply, he says, these microplastics are likely to harm many life forms. Do pets have plastic in them? Read about the findings of the Environmental Working Group’s study, Polluted Pets: High Levels of Toxic Industrial Chemicals Contaminate Cats And Dogs.

Dr. Thompson says the tiny plastic pre-production pellets or “nurdles” are becoming ubiquitous in the marine environment and in storm drains and rivers. He says that 95% of one seabird species has plastic in it. Nurdles now comprise 11 percent of beach litter.
Dr. Thompson discusses his findings about plastic on beaches throughout the world, and the increasing abundance of plastic fragments. One of Dr. Thompson’s studies showed that, in his words, “small plastic particles translocate to the circulatory system of the common mussel Mytilus edulis.” Read an abstract of Ingested Microscopic Plastic Translocates to the Circulatory System of the Mussel, Mytilus edulis (L.). Dr. Caldicott says she was fascinated to read how plastic particles can migrate throughout an organism, which she says could have major ramifications for animals and humans as plastic contaminants bio-concentrate in the food chain, and fish and other marine life become increasing polluted with plastic (and mercury, flame retardants, etc.).

Dr. Thompson explains how plastic polymers absorb carcinogenic and estrogenic mimickers from sea water, and which of these hydrophobic chemicals the plastic tends to absorb. He continues to study which chemicals are being absorbed, and which creatures are ingesting the most contaminated plastic. Dr. Thompson refers to the work of Dr. Hideshige Takada who is mapping the location of plastic pellets found worldwide, and which chemicals are binding to the nurdles. See more information on the International Pellet Watch website. Dr. Thompson says he is finding plastic particles everywhere in the world.

For more on Dr. Thompson’s research, read his 2004 article on microplastic, Lost at Sea – Where is All the Plastic? Read more on this study in Rising tide of micro-plastics plaguing the seas. Also read Potential for Plastics to Transport Hydrophobic Contaminants, another study by
Dr. Thompson.

For further information on this week’s topic, have a look at the following articles: Why Small Plastic Particles May Pose a Big Problem in the Oceans and Oceans Awash With Microscopic Plastic, Scientists Say and Warning on plastic’s toxic threat and Plastics ‘poisoning world’s seas’ and How to Help Prevent Birds and Sea Life from Dying. Learn about the new 85-minute documentary film, Addicted to Plastic : The Rise and Demise of a Modern Miracle, and watch the two-minute trailer here. And visit the website of Plastic Debris-Rivers to Sea, a project of Capt. Moore’s Algalita Marine Research Foundation and the California Coastal Commission.

This week’s interview with Dr. Richard Thompson is a vital use of your time to learn even more about the multifaceted problem of plastic.

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Do Pentagon nuclear-war planners really take into account the destruction nuclear weapons would unleash? This week’s guest, Lynn Eden, has found that the devastating and far-reaching fire damage that would result from use of nuclear weapons is not considered by the U.S. military, which only pays attention to the more limited blast damage. Eden is the acting co-director (2008-09) of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, where she is a senior research scholar. She is a co-chair of Pugwash USA. Her focus is on foreign and military policy, and science and technology in the nuclear realm. This program discusses Eden’s most recent book, Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge and Nuclear Weapons Devastation, which won the American Sociological Association’s 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book on science, knowledge and technology.

Dr. Caldicott has Eden expound upon the history and the more dysfunctional aspects of U.S. war planning and nuclear weapons targeting. Edens describes how much more destructive any nuclear blast on a U.S. (or Russian) city would be when firestorms are taken into account. Many U.S. and Russian cities have over 40 weapons targeted on them, a case of extreme “overkill”. This episode also looks at the Pentagon’s use of language regarding nuclear war casualties and the concept of “deterrence;” the number of U.S. and Russian weapons on alert and in storage; and the “football” that U.S. and Russian presidents would have to activate to launch nuclear weapons. Read Obama Gets Nuclear “Football”. Read more about the U.S. football here and see close-up photos here. Read about the Russian football or “cheget,” and how U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons-launch protocols differ in Changing the Nuclear Command.

The horrific damage that nuclear weapons can unleash, as explained in this episode, is well represented in Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors’ accounts in the Emmy-Award-winning 2007 documentary White Light Black Rain, now available on DVD. Dr. Caldicott and Eden explore how present-day nuclear weapons are much more powerful than those used on Japan. Our host refers to an article she co-wrote with former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Still on Catastrophe’s Edge: In a flash, U.S. and Russia could hurl thousands of missiles at each other, which notes the redundancy of cities nuclear targeters select to bomb. Watch a still-relevant 2003 lecture by Dr. Caldicott at the Goldman School of Public Policy, U.C. Berkeley in which she covers the present nuclear alert situation, the medical effects of nuclear war, and other nuclear weapons topics.

Today, U.S.-Russian relations are on the mend, and President Obama has declared his commitment to eliminate all nuclear weapons (though he has absolved himself of some responsibility by saying total disarmament may not be achieved in his lifetime). However, for now the possibility of global nuclear war between the superpowers, by computer or human accident or by design, is still a real possibility at every moment. Read about just a few of the known False Alarms on the Nuclear Front. Nuclear weapons could also be launched by the smaller nuclear states, which would create a regional catastrophe and exacerbate global warming, as described in
Dr. Caldicott’s interview last year with Professor Alan Robock.

Eden describes how her research on the fire damage of nuclear war enabled her to discover a great deal about how organizations make decisions and solve problems, often with pronounced blind spots and tunnel-vision thinking. Dr. Caldicott notes that as the work of U.S. and Russian nuclear-war planners involves the very real possibility of global annihilation, what they do in secret and how they think “affects every person on earth. They are determining our future.” Don’t miss this episode to learn more about the still-urgent issue of preventing nuclear war.

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How can we halt the pollution of our oceans with plastic garbage? And how can we stop the production of plastics which are contaminating not only the seas but also our bodies? In this fascinating episode, Dr. Caldicott speaks with Captain Charles Moore, who founded the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in 1994. In 1995, Moore launched his purpose-designed, aluminum-hulled research vessel, Alguita, in Hobart, Tasmania. On his return voyage from a yacht race in 1997, Moore veered from the usual sea route and saw an ocean he had never known. “There were shampoo caps and soap bottles and plastic bags and fishing floats as far as I could see. Here I was in the middle of the ocean, and there was nowhere I could go to avoid the plastic.” Ever since discovering this enormous plastic oceanic gyre the size of Africa, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Moore has dedicated his time and resources to understanding and remediating the ocean’s plastic load. This program addresses the enormous problem of plastic in the ocean, and also expands on the issue of how chemicals used to make plastic are damaging the human body, a topic first discussed in our recent program with Dr. Maricel Maffini. Have a look at this in-depth color graphic describing the garbage patch. And see this excellent color transparency about how the plastic gyre is created.

Capt. Moore, an ocean researcher, sea captain, racing sailor and surfer, describes how the floating plastic debris is damaging and killing many life forms, and is now found on one-quarter of the planet’s surface area, a total of 10 million square miles of ocean plastic litter. Moore has written about plastic particulate pollution for scientific journals and has developed protocols for monitoring beach and plastic pollution. See his articles A Comparison of Plastic and Plankton in the North Pacific Central Gyre and A Comparison of Neustonic Plastic and Zooplankton Abundance in Southern California’s Coastal Waters.

After Moore tells how he first came upon the vortex, he talks about how the ocean circulates the plastic trash, which now covers 10 million square miles. See this graphic of the approximate location of the trash vortex, and how deep underwater the trash goes. In 2006, the UN Environment Program figured that each square mile of ocean includes 46,000 pieces of floating plastic. Moore stated in another interview that “Except for the small amount that’s been incinerated – and it’s a very small amount – every bit of plastic ever made still exists.” See this chart showing how plastic production is growing at alarming rates. In this program, you will learn how plastic in the ocean never disappears, and that even when it breaks down into tiny particles, it is still extremely destructive. Moore describes how fish, birds and other marine life are killed by the plastic debris.

Moore informs Dr. Caldicott where the litter originates on land. He describes how sea traffic is increasing by leaps and bounds, increasing the stress on the oceans. Globalization, competition and consumerism are vastly and exponentially increasing the amount of plastic worldwide. Dr. Caldicott asks Moore about the carbon footprint of ships. See the press release EPA Urged to Reduce Global Warming Pollution from Ships and read Oceana’s report Shipping Impacts on Climate: A Source with Solutions. Capt. Moore talks about the unenforced treaty to halt marine pollution, and the outlook for the future of the oceans. No subsequent generation will swim in the ocean without encountering plastic, Moore says.

Moore mentions how plastic absorbs huge quantities of other oil-based chemicals. He describes the plastic pellets called nurdles which absorb up to 1,000,000 times their weight in pollutants, attracting chemicals such as DDT and hydrocarbons, and becoming part of the food chain. Moore refers to the work of Dr. Hideshige Takada of Tokyo University, author of the study Plastic Resin Pellets as a Transport Medium of Toxic Chemicals in the Marine Environment. Takada is now mapping the location of beached plastic pellets from oceans around the world through his group International Pellet Watch. See the diagram of how plastic pellets are transported and ingested by sea creatures. Moore describes how a plastic spill in the ocean is far more catastrophic than an oil spill. See Plastics ‘poisoning world’s seas’.

Moore refers to the book Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, and says we have to rethink how everything is designed if we are ever to stop damaging our planet with toxic chemicals and disposable products. Dr. Caldicott says that as with nuclear waste, the only sane solution to the plastic problem is to stop making it. Recycling is not a viable solution. Read Plastics: Your Formidable Enemy - Questioning exposure, recycling, biodegradability, alternatives which also talks about ocean plastic and the human health aspects of plastic.

This program does not explore whether efforts should be made to remove and recycle the ocean plastic, and whether such capture-and-recycling efforts would further harm ocean life. To read more about the pros and cons of the recycling idea, see the articles Feds want to survey, possibly clean up vast garbage pit in Pacific and Mission to Break up Pacific Island of Rubbish Twice the Size of Texas and So we’ve got this trash-filled gyre, right? Can we fix it? and Media Catches the Boat to Pacific Garbage Patch and Ocean garbage mess and possible solutions and Can’t we just scoop up the trash? Eliminating the use of plastic bags can definitely reduce the ocean plastic problem. Read about one determined anti-plastic activist in A Woman, a Village and a War on Plastic Bags.

Why do people litter? Eighty percent of the ocean plastic originates on land (some of which occurs when nurdle pellets are spilled off trucks, but much of the trash starts with individuals littering). Read a U.S. study of littering behavior in Southern states and an Australian study about how to prevent littering. Also see this Litter Facts page.

Later in the show, Dr. Caldicott and Capt. Moore talk about phthalates, bisphenol-A and other toxic components in plastic, and how these chemicals are damaging human health from the womb to old age, disrupting hormone function and causing disease. See a handy table of plastics and their health effects, and visit the website Our Stolen Future for the latest on endocrine disruption research.

Moore describes how plastic is not inert, and releases chemicals at every stage. Moore mentions the work of Dr. Frederick vom Saal who contends that bisphenol-A is responsible for the epidemic of diabetes and obesity. See Diabetes and Obesity are Related to Plastics in Food and Beverage Containers. Also see An extensive new literature concerning low-dose effects of bisphenol A shows the need for a new risk assessment.

Americans go through 5 million disposable polyethylene bottles a day, Moore notes. Read the May 25 article Elevated BPA levels in people drinking out of plastic bottles, study finds which describes a 70% increase in bisphenol-A in urine among those drinking from plastic bottles. Read the study here. Moore says that Americans now have 100 -200 chemicals in their body – a large “body burden” of toxins that were unknown to science before the 1950’s. He says we have a huge challenge ahead of us to rid ourselves of these contaminants, especially when faced with a “growth economy.” Bioplastics (from corn, soy, potato, etc.) present their own problems as described in Rejecting the toxic plague: War on plastic.

In the oceans, Moore says, the ratio of plastic to plankton is increasing, and now averages a whopping 46 to 1. The plastic debris is creating oceanic deserts with very little plankton, and plankton is also being reduced by global warming. Plankton is the building block of all ocean life. See Decline in oceans’ phytoplankton alarms scientists: Experts pondering whether reduction of marine plant life is linked to warming of the seas and Warmer Seas Will Wipe Out Plankton, Source of Ocean Life.

For more on the big picture on the world’s oceans, read Altered Oceans, a five-part Los Angeles Times series which includes the article, Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas. To learn about the threat of overfishing, see the report Hungry Oceans: What Happens When the Prey is Gone?. Also read about the study, Ocean acidification impairs olfactory discrimination and homing ability of a marine fish and the report Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. And read the article Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH: The coming centuries may see more ocean acidification than the past 300 million years. And visit the Web site of the Ocean Acidification Network. Climate change is also bringing a jellyfish plague. Read Beautiful, but Deadly: Jellyfish Blooms Appear to be on the Rise. Is Global Warming Causing an Ocean Swarming?.

For more on the problem of ocean plastic, see the Greenpeace report Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans and the new Sierra magazine article Message in a Bottle. Also read Our Oceans Are Turning Into Plastic…Are We? and Why plastic is the scourge of sea life and The world’s rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan. Visit Greenpeace’s Disposal Oceans? page. Watch videos about ocean plastic on the Plastic Soup website. For more about the work of Captain Charles Moore, read Conversation: Captain Charles Moore Talks Trash and Plastic Soup: Where Trash Lives Forever. Watch Moore’s 7-minute presentation at the 2009 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference, “Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic.”

As Dr. Caldicott states on this episode, we must become scientifically literate to lead the planet toward survival. Be sure to listen to this program to inform yourself.

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This week’s guest,
Maude Barlow, is a Canadian author and activist. Holding seven honorary doctorates, she is the national chairperson of
The Council of Canadians, a progressive citizens’ advocacy organization with members and chapters across Canada. In October 2008, she was named Senior Advisor on Water Issues by the President of
the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann. Barlow founded the Blue Planet Project “to protect the world’s fresh water from the growing threats of trade and privatization”. She is the author of 16 books including her latest title Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water as well as Blue Gold: The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World’s Water. In 2005, she won the Right Livelihood Award (the alternative Nobel Prize).

In this interview, Barlow discusses with
Dr. Caldicott the water crisis and mismanagement occurring in different parts of the world, particularly the fights in both the Third World and the First World against the privatization of water by large corporations. Barlow’s activism is focused on establishing the right to water as a basic human right in all societies, which she says all nation-states and the United Nations should mandate. She spoke in March at the Fifth World Water Forum, the proceedings of which can be accessed here. Read Blue Planet’s Preliminary Submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council RE: Decision 2/104: Human Rights and Access to Water. Also see A UN Convention on the Right to Water: An Idea Whose Time Has Come.

Barlow explains how the world is running out of fresh water, and how we are creating deserts in many parts of the world because of the way we exploit the land and waste and pollute the water. She underlines that two billion people live in water-stressed areas. The poor do not have access to safe water, and Barlow describes how every 8 seconds, a child dies of a water-borne disease. Dirty water kills more children annually than AIDS and accidents combined. Groups like Global Water are working to create safe water supplies and sanitation in the developing world. For more on the big picture around water, see the reports World Water Development Report: Water in a Changing World and Climate Change and Water. Also read the article River systems worldwide are losing water due to global warming.

Dr. Caldicott asks Barlow to comment on global warming and overpopulation, before they move on to talk about the enormous impact of water privatization. Dr. Caldicott says she is “shocked to my back teeth” that corporations would move into countries, buy the water supplies and then expect people to buy the water back. Barlow talks about the brutal battles around the world against companies such as the French transnational Suez Environment, which tried to privatize Argentina’s water, and how citizens have been victorious in some of these fights to protect their access to water. The U.S. firm Bechtel attempted to privatize the water in Bolivia as outlined in Bechtel vs. Bolivia: The People Win An International Trade Battle. Also see the report Bechtel’s Dry Run: Iraqis Suffer Water Crisis about how profit is the only motive Bechtel has for controlling Iraq’s water. In the U.S., Atlanta abandoned water privatization as described in No Silver Bullet: Water Privatization in Atlanta, Georgia – a Cautionary Tale. The World Bank, as well as Kofi Annan of the United Nations, to their discredit, have advocated water privatization.

For more background, see Public Citizen’s Water for All Campaign Web site and their pages Water Privatization Overview and ABCs of Water Privatization. Also see the report Water Privatization Fiascos: Broken Promises and Social Turmoil and read the article Is the Water Privatization Trend Ending? Water privatization also results in job loss. Read the May 20 press release, New Food & Water Watch Study Reveals Privatized Water Systems Result in Job Losses and read the study here.

Barlow and Dr. Caldicott mention bottled water. Making the disposable bottles, and transporting them, requires a great deal of energy (which contributes to global warming). Their production also generates toxic waste. Discarded bottles may become part of ocean plastic gyres. Barlow says that several municipalities in Canada are banning bottled water. As discussed on last week’s interview with biologist Maricel Maffini, many plastic water bottles contain potent hormone disruptors and carcinogens.

See Dr. Peter Gleick’s blog about water issues, including entries on potential water wars, the amount of plastic bottles we use, conserving water, water to grow beef, etc. Dr. Gleick is the president of the Pacific Institute, which focuses much attention on water and sustainability.

Rainwater collection, Dr. Caldicott and Barlow agree, is an essential component of water conservation. HarvestH2O.com, “The online rainwater harvesting community,” is devoted to education around this issue. See the May 7 article Harvesting the Rain: An Old Idea Takes on New Life. Rainwater may contain some pollutants but not pharmaceuticals. See Drugs found in drinking water. Barlow notes that some societies, such as rural India, are following centuries-old traditions of water conservation and should serve as role models for the more industrialized world which sees water as an unlimited resource. Since the 1950’s, Barlow says, the human population has increased three-fold, but our water use has increased seven-fold. As societies become more “sophisticated” and industrialized, and emulate the consumer-driven culture of the U.S., they use much more water.

The water crisis today also involves the world’s oceans, and Barlow recommends the new book, Sea Sick, by Alanna Mitchell. She says we must stop thinking of the oceans as a giant waste dump. Barlow explains in depth why desalination is mostly a bad idea, and why more energy-saving and sustainable practices should be put into place to conserve water.

Barlow lays down the five principles of water use and conservation that must be implemented around the world. All the solutions to the water crisis must follow these guidelines. She quotes Martin Luther King Jr. who said that “legislation may not change the heart but it will restrain the heartless.” Read the June 3 article Another Water World Is Possible: Managing World Water which links to Barlow’s 10 recommended foundations for a well-managed water commons. Read the new report written by Barlow, Our Water Commons, Towards a New Freshwater Narrative.

Providing inspiration, Barlow explains how we can restore ecoystems, and actually bring back rain and fresh water. She and Dr. Caldicott agree on the importance of trees in mitigating climate change. How we handle the water crisis, Barlow says, is crucial in dealing with global warming. She says “we must put water and nature in the center. Everything we have and are is from nature, and if we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves.”

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The last third of today’s episode is an excerpt from a lecture given by
Dr. Caldicott in April 2009 at Middlebury College, Vermont, in which she talks about the medical effects of nuclear radiation. In explaining the looming threat posed by nuclear power plants such as Vermont Yankee, she says that most politicians are scientifically illiterate. They do not comprehend the effects of radiation or the causes of global warming. For example, many elected officials think increasing CO2 from the present 387 parts per million (which many scientists says is already beyong the tipping point toward catastrophic climate change) to 550 PPM is acceptable, but in reality such an increase would surely doom the planet. The group Safe Power Vermont wants to shut down Vermont Yankee. In 2007, one of the plant’s cooling towers, supported by rotting wood, collapsed, and water that should be cooling the reactor core spewed out of the broken plant (see photo by anonymous photographer below). Read the May 14 news article, Residents Forceful: Shut Yankee Nuclear Plant Down.

Dr. Caldicott teaches the audience what would happen if Vermont Yankee, near the Massachusetts border, or the Indian Point reactor, 30 miles from New York City, were to melt down, inducing widespread pandemonium, radiation sickness, and death. She mentions a 2004 report, Chernobyl on the Hudson? The Health And Economic Impacts Of A Terrorist Attack At The Indian Point Nuclear Plant, essential reading about a hypothetical meltdown. If the San Onofre plant, north of San Diego, were to melt down, the same dire effects would engulf much of Southern California. As indicated by this aerial photo, San Onofre could easily be flooded and damaged by the projected 30-foot sea level rise from global warming which could spell disaster for all coastal nuclear plants. A meltdown at any of the 100-odd U.S. nuclear reactors could impact millions of people. This speech also reveals what happened to the 600,000 soldiers who were brought in to clean up after the Chernobyl accident, and Dr. Caldicott explains what percentage of Europe is still radioactive, as suggested by this map showing cesium distribution. See How Chernobyl Could Happen Here about the danger of a U.S. plant accident. She gives examples of how a terrorist or other saboteur could easily melt down a nuclear power plant. And plutonium can be stolen from the plants to make nuclear weapons - read about how a New Generation of Nuclear Power Stations ‘Risk Terrorist Anarchy’. Dr. Caldicott makes it clear how atomic energy plants are really “nuclear bombs” in our midst as they could be intentionally melted down to kill hundreds of thousands of people, “cancer factories” because of the cancers caused by both routine radiation releases and accidents, and “bomb factories” since the material processed in the plants is used to make nuclear weapons.