If You Love This Planet, Dr. Helen Caldicott

To Our Listeners:

Welcome to If You Love This Planet Radio. We will occasionally feature new programs including my recent lectures and proceedings of conferences. Please enjoy our archive of nearly 200 interviews. The complete catalog of programs available for listening and downloading is on the Archives page. A book of 25 of my interviews called Loving This Planet may interest you. I am now concentrating on other new initiatives of The Helen Caldicott Foundation , including a two-day international symposium on the risk of nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, to be held February 28-March 1 2015 at the New York Academy of Medicine. Watch this space for registration details on this important conference, The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, which will be open to the public. And be sure to visit nuclearfreeplanet.org for news, reports and other resources related to the work of my foundation.

Helen Caldicott, M.D.

ON THIS WEEK'S SHOW

February 14th, 2024

REGISTER TO WATCH: February 19, 2024 7 pm EST webinar Dr. Helen Caldicott and Martin Sheen

helen-webinar

Register to watch a 7:00 to 8:30 pm EST webinar on Zoom featuring remarks by Dr. Helen Caldicott and Martin Sheen. Dr. Caldicott will introduce the 1983 Academy Award-winning film “If You Love This Planet” about the effects of nuclear war, and discuss the present Ukraine and Gaza conflicts. President John F. Kennedy’s American University address on world peace will also be shown. Dr. Caldicott will answer questions from the Zoom audience.

Register here:

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMlc-qrqTMoHtWKsHBFPpvEEpaTayxERpFE#/registration

Event sponsored by the JFK Peace Committee and the Community Church of Boston.

April 17th, 2017

Steven Starr, Bruce Gagnon and William Hartung at the Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction symposium

Clip 1B

 

In this episode, we hear more presentations from the Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction symposium held at the New York Academy of Medicine in New York City in February 2015. Some of the speeches include visuals which can be seen by watching the presentations in streaming format on the official conference hosting site. Since the conference, U.S. politicians and mainstream media have only amplified the reignited hatred of Russia, particularly president Vladimir Putin, and made nuclear war more likely. Read Demonization of Putin as “Personally” Behind Clinton Hack Is Old Propaganda Technique, Mikhail Gorbachev: Appears ‘The World Is Preparing for War’ and Thanks, Trump. Doomsday Clock Now Two and a Half Minutes to Midnight.

Steven Starr

Steven Starr

First up is Steven Starr, Associate of Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and Senior Scientist at Physicians for Social Responsibility. Hear Dr. Caldicott’s 2010 interview with Starr. Visit Starr’s website NuclearDarkness.org to learn more about the consequences of nuclear war, nuclear winter and how nuclear weapons explosions would irreparably harm the global climate. In Starr’s presentation, “Nuclear War: An Unrecognized Mass Extinction Event,” he explains how nuclear war would be the crime to end all crimes, and would mean the end of all human life on earth. Among the issues addressed are the phenomenon of nuclear winter, why political leaders by and large do not discuss nuclear war, and the lack of Read the rest of this entry »

June 23rd, 2016

Dr. Helen Caldicott, Ted Postol, Max Tegmark and Alan Robock at The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction symposium

Clip 1A

Dr. Caldicott addressing the symposium

Dr. Caldicott addressing the symposium

In this program, we hear the first series of speakers at The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, a two-day symposium organized by If You Love This Planet host Dr. Helen Caldicott at The New York Academy of Medicine last year. With the continuing revival of Cold War tensions between the U.S. and Russia, the presentations are still timely. Read the June 2016 article by Noam Chomsky, The Doomsday Clock: Nuclear Weapons, Climate Change and the Prospects for Survival, the May 2016 article U.S., NATO Look to Combat an Aggressive Russia, the April 2016 article Inevitability: Nuclear War is Coming and the February 2016 story Russia-NATO relations have fallen to new Cold War level – Russian PM. Some of the presentations include visuals which can be seen by watching the presentations in streaming format on the official conference hosting site.

In her introductory remarks, Dr. Caldicott tells the audience how her concern about accidental nuclear war was raised by reading a 2014 article on Read the rest of this entry »

February 16th, 2015

Dr. Caldicott’s October 2014 speech: The Ukraine Crisis, Is Nuclear Conflict Likely?

Dr. Helen Caldicott

Dr. Helen Caldicott


TUC Radio recently aired
Dr. Caldicott’s October 2014 speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. This special two-part If You Love This Planet feature, The Ukraine Crisis, Is Nuclear Conflict Likely?, comes courtesy of TUC. Listen to Part One here and listen to Part Two here. To hear other programs produced by TUC, visit this page. Here is TUC Radio’s description of the program:

“On October 8, 2014, the life long antinuclear campaigner and author Helen Caldicott addressed the National Press Club Newsmakers in Washington, DC. She said Read the rest of this entry »

December 28th, 2012

Dr. Helen Caldicott interviewed by Bob Herbert about her latest book, “Loving This Planet”

 

Bob Herbert and Dr. Helen Caldicott

Bob Herbert and Dr. Helen Caldicott on Nov. 8 (The New School)

Renowned journalist Bob Herbert interviews Dr. Helen Caldicott at The New School in New York, November 2012.
Dr. Caldicott discusses her latest book, Loving This Planet (The New Press, Oct. 2012) which features 25 interviews from “If You Love This Planet,” as well as the state of the earth and U.S. presidential election (held two days before this interview). Among the topics covered are the urgency of addressing global Read the rest of this entry »

December 21st, 2012

Best of 2011: Dr. Caldicott’s speech in New Hampshire three weeks after Fukushima

 

Helen Caldicott, M.D. (nuclear-free.com)

Helen Caldicott, M.D. (nuclear-free.com)

This week, we hear a repeat of Dr. Caldicott’s March 31, 2011 lecture in Hanover, New Hampshire, three weeks after the Japan earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Fukushima nuclear power plant. She discusses the dangers of radioactive elements and the future of the planet. Note: Dr. Caldicott is convening a two-day international symposium on the medical and ecological effects of Fukushima on March 11 and 12, 2013 at the New York Academy of Medicine. The public is welcome. Details at nuclearfreeplanet.org. At the start of her lecture, Dr. Caldicott refers to the book Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout. She also mentions her appearance on Democracy Now, debating George Monbiot, after Fukushima. Later in the talk, she refers to Read the rest of this entry »

December 14th, 2012

Subhankar Banerjee on how corporate resource wars and global warming are decimating native peoples and forests worldwide

 

Banerjee (Jon Chase/Harvard News)

S. Banerjee (Jon Chase / Harvard News)

Subhankar Banerjee is an Indian-born American photographer, writer and activist. Over the past decade he has been a leading international voice on issues of arctic conservation, indigenous human rights and global warming, and over the past five years he has also been focusing on forest deaths from global warming. His photographs and writing have reached tens of millions of people around the world through exhibitions, publications and public lectures. His new book is called Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point. At the start of this interview, Dr. Caldicott refers to a September 2012 report of a massacre of members of the Yanomami Indian Tribe of the Amazon. A week after this program was recorded, the report was found to be false, yet the general situation of native Read the rest of this entry »

December 7th, 2012

Marion Pack on the many safety risks at the San Onofre nuclear power plant and how a Fukushima-type meltdown would contaminate Southern California

 

Marion Pack

Marion Pack

In this conversation recorded in June, Dr. Caldicott talks with California anti-nuclear activist, Marion Pack. Pack is one of many members of the Orange County community who highlight serious safety issues with the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, located a few miles south of San Clemente, California. If San Onofre were to melt down, it would contaminate Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, and make large regions of southern California uninhabitable forever. As background, read Shut down San Onofre: The continuing nuclear threat to southern California and Bad Vibrations: San Onofre steam generators cannot safely be repaired – new Fairewinds video and report. Topics addressed in the interview include nuclear waste, the 1980s Nuclear Read the rest of this entry »

November 30th, 2012

Tom Engelhardt on Washington’s increasing war focus to the exclusion of everything else and its indiscriminate use of drones

 

Tom Engelhardt

Tom Engelhardt

This week’s guest is Tom Engelhardt, creator of the TomDispatch.com website, a project of the Nation Institute, a non-profit media center based in New York, where he is a fellow. Englehardt is the author of two collections of his TomDispatch columns: The United States of Fear and The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, as well as The End of Victory Culture, a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War. Another of his recent books Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare 2001-2050, which he co-authored with Nick Turse. Note: This particular interview was recorded in summer 2012, before the November election. Topics discussed include the Read the rest of this entry »

November 23rd, 2012

Holly Barker on the devastating ongoing effects of mid-century U.S. nuclear weapons testing on the Marshall Islands

 

Holly Barker

Holly Barker

This week’s guest is Holly Barker, author and teacher at the Anthropology Department at the University of Washington in Seattle. Barker worked for the Republic of the Marshall Islands Government’s Embassy in Washington D.C. for 17 years, helping conduct research in the Marshall Islands about the effects of nuclear testing from a Marshallese perspective. She was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Marshall Islands from 1988-1990, and lived on a remote outer island with a Marshallese family for two years while teaching in a local elementary school. Barker is the author of Bravo for the Marshallese: Regaining Control in a Post-Nuclear, Post-Colonial World (which just came out in second edition), and co-authored with Dr. Barbara Rose Johnston an award-winning book called Consequential Damages of Nuclear War: The Rongelap Report. During the interview, Barker mentions the activism of Dr. Neal Palafox. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s 2011 interview with Dr. Palafox. Dr. Caldicott recommends listeners watch the documentary film Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1

November 16th, 2012

Brian D. Victoria on Buddhism’s role in Japan and on freeing societies from tribalistic thinking

 

Brian D. Victoria

Brian D. Victoria

This week’s special guest is Brian Daizen Victoria, Professor of Japanese Studies and director of a program at Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio titled: Japan and Its Buddhist Traditions. Apart from numerous journal articles, Victoria’s major writings include Zen at War; Zen War Stories; an autobiographical work in Japanese and a translation of The Zen Life by Sato Koji. In this discussion, Dr. Caldicott and Victoria look at the evolution of Buddhism in Japan including its role in Japan’s militarism in World War II, how individuals in societies can be gripped by tribalistic thinking or embrace a universalist point of view, death and dying, why men kill, and the moral choices we all face in a time when nuclear war still threatens everyone, and other profound questions. Victoria refers to the film Joyeux Noël [note: the website has a clickable English-language version].

November 9th, 2012

Jay Harman on the enormous promise of biomimicry to create more efficient technologies

 

Jay Harman

Jay Harman

This week’s guest is Jay Harman, entrepreneur and inventor. Harman has taken a hands-on approach to his lifelong fascination with natural fluid systems. In the process, he has grown companies that design innovative products, ranging from prize-winning watercraft called the WildThing and the Goggleboat, to a medical research company that developed a non-invasive technology for measuring blood glucose, to his latest company, PAX Scientific. Born and raised in Australia, Harman’s love of nature began as a boy swimming in the ocean near his home. He began his career as a naturalist with the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, but he quickly demonstrated talents as an inventor. While still with the Australian government, Read the rest of this entry »

November 2nd, 2012

Prof. Wayne Getz on facing global warming tipping points including hurricanes and other weather catastrophes

 

Wayne Getz

Wayne Getz

This week, Dr. Caldicott speaks with Professor Wayne Getz, and ecologist and population biologist with the Getz Lab at University of California at Berkeley. Students and postdoctoral students in the lab work on a broad range of theoretical and applied questions in population biology and behavior with application to problems in epidemiology and conservation and wildlife biology, particularly in Africa. This conversation was recorded in June, but has many important points relevant to Hurricane Sandy, which caused unprecedented destruction in the U.S. this week. Dr. Caldicott asks Getz to discuss the recent article the Getz Lab produced, Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere.

October 26th, 2012

Donna Mulhearn on her work to protect innocent Iraqi and Palestinian civilians from the ravages of war

 

Donna Mulhearn

Donna Mulhearn

This week, Dr. Helen Caldicott speaks with Sydney-based peace activist Donna Mulhearn, an author, former journalist and political adviser. She was a human shield in the war in Iraq in 2003 and later returned to Iraq as a humanitarian aid worker. Mulhearn was part of an international team of volunteers that established a small NGO “Our Home - Iraq’ which set up a shelter for street kids in Baghdad, a center for traumatized children and provided emergency aid to displaced families. During this time she witnessed the massacre of Fallujah in April 2004, survived constant bombing, being kidnapped by fighters, and being shot at by American soldiers. In 2004- 2005, Mulhearn spent four months in the West Bank of Palestine as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement. During these years she continually wrote reports and reflections called pilgrim notes, which were distributed widely around Australia and the world. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s June 2010 interview with Mulhearn.

October 19th, 2012

Kathy Kelly on America’s resource domination agenda in Afghanistan and Iraq, and its increasing use of drones to kill civilians

 

Kathy Kelly

Kathy Kelly

This week’s guest is Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, an organization which has steadily researched consequences of drone attacks, night raids and aerial bombings in Afghanistan. Risking imprisonment, they frequently protest U.S. government plans to continue U.S. military presence in Afghanistan until 2024 and beyond. Drawing from recent experiences living for a month at a time in Afghanistan, Kelly frequently speaks and writes about perspectives of Afghan Peace Volunteers. They have told her and her companions their thoughts about prospects for their future in relation to NATO and the U.S. 21st Century military. Kelly previously lived alongside ordinary Iraqis whenever she and other Voices activists traveled there to break the U.S./UN economic sanctions against Iraq. They remained in Iraq throughout the Shock and Awe bombing in 2003 and during the initial months of U.S. occupation.

October 12th, 2012

David Freeman on the urgency of fighting the nuclear, gas and coal industries to save the Earth

 

David Freeman

David Freeman

Dr. Caldicott’s guest this week is David Freeman, a senior advisor with Friends of the Earth’s nuclear campaign. Freeman has more than four decades of experience directing federal, regional and local energy policies. He was appointed chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, where he stopped the construction of eight large nuclear power plants and pioneered a massive energy conservation program. Subsequently, Freeman served for two decades as general manager of several large public power agencies including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the New York Power Authority and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. He is a renowned expert on clean energy, efficiency and the risks of nuclear power.

October 5th, 2012

Helena Norberg-Hodge on building sustainable local economies

 

Helena Norberg-Hodge

Norberg-Hodge

This week’s special guest on If You Love This Planet is Helena Norberg-Hodge, the founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture, a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote systemic solutions to today’s social and environmental crises. Norberg-Hodge is a pioneer of the ‘new economy’ movement, and has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than 30 years. Trained in linguistics, she has given public lectures in seven languages, and has appeared on broadcast, print, and online media worldwide, including MSNBC, The London Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian. Her groundbreaking work in Ladakh, or ‘Little Tibet’, earned her the Right Livelihood Award, or ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ and her book, Ancient Futures, along with a film of the same title, has been translated into more than 40 languages. For more resources relevant to this interview, visit theeconomicsofhappiness.org.

September 28th, 2012

Best of 2011: Col. Ann Wright on opposing war and U.S. military corruption

 

Col. Ann Wright

Col. Ann Wright

This week, we play a repeat of Dr. Caldicott’s 2011 interview with Ann Wright, a diplomat and retired U.S. Army colonel. Col. Wright is also a peace activist and co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience, published by Koa books in 2007. She holds a Master’s degree in Law, and a Master’s degree in National Security Affairs from the U.S. Naval War College. In 1987, Col. Wright joined the Foreign Service and served as U.S. Deputy Ambassador in Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan, and Mongolia. She received the State Department’s Award for Heroism for her actions during the evacuation of 2,500 people from the civil war in Sierra Leone. Read the rest of this entry »

September 21st, 2012

Chris Maser on the changes in thinking needed to save the environment

 

Chris Maser

Chris Maser

This week, Dr. Caldicott talks to Chris Maser, author and international consultant in forest ecology and sustainable forestry practices. Trained primarily as a vertebrate zoologist, Maser has spent over 25 years as a research scientist in natural history and ecology, including positions as a research ecologist with the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management for thirteen years from 1974 the last eight studying old-growth forests in western Oregon and a landscape ecologist with the Environmental Protection Agency for one year in 1990. Maser is the author of Resolving Environmental Conflicts and Decision-Making for a Sustainable Environment: Read the rest of this entry »

September 14th, 2012

Dr. Wladimir Wertelecki on birth defects caused by Chernobyl and how nuclear power devastates human health

 

Dr. Wertelecki

Wertelecki

[This week’s guest is Wladimir Wertelecki, the founder and chairman of the Department of Medical Genetics and Birth Defects Center of the University of South Alabama, in the U.S. Prior to his training in Medical Genetics at Harvard University Medical School, Dr. Wertelecki trained in Pediatrics at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Washington University. Later, he served as Senior Surgeon, U.S. Public Health Commission Corps at the Epidemiology Branch of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Wertelecki is a Diplomate of the American Board of Pediatrics and member of the Academy of Pediatrics, and since 1994, he has served as Secretary-Treasurer of the World Alliance for the Prevention of Birth Defects. He has extensively studied the effects of the radiation released by the Chernobyl Read the rest of this entry »

September 7th, 2012

Phil Caldicott on the the science and environmental impact of wine production

 

Philip Caldicott

Phil Caldicott

Dr. Caldicott talks to Australian sommelier, Phil Caldicott, about the science of wine production. Among the topics they discuss are the history of wine production; how wine quality is judged and best tasted; preservatives, pesticides and toxic chemicals used in wine and the benefits of organic wine growing; and the harmful and costly effects on public health of excess alcohol consumption, including how native peoples can be particularly vulnerable to these issues. For some relevant background, read the article Top 3 Reasons Why You Should Drink Organic Wine.

August 31st, 2012

Arnold Gundersen with another update on the unfolding effects of the Fukushima disaster

 

Arnie Gundersen

Gundersen

This week, Dr. Caldicott brings on nuclear engineer Arnold Gundersen to update readers on the unfolding effects of the Fukushima meltdowns and what is happening with nuclear power in other parts of the world. As background, listen to earlier conversations with Gundersen (starting with April 1, 2011), which can be found on the Archives page.
Read the August 2012 news articles Study: Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Caused Mutant Butterflies and Grassroots Power Pushing Japan Towards Nuclear-Free Future . And visit Fairewinds.org, the website of Gundersen’s organization, for more information.

August 24th, 2012

Ralph Nader on fighting the complete corporate takeover of the U.S. Congress and White House + Dr. Caldicott’s speech

 

Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader

This week’s guest is author and lawyer Ralph Nader. (Note: this interview was recorded in April 2012.) A pioneer in the field of consumer advocacy, Nader is a a four-time U.S. Presidential candidate. He ran in 1996 and 2000 on the Green Party ticket. During a very close election in 2000, he was accused of taking votes away from democrat Al Gore. He ran again in 2004 and 2008 as an independent. Nader has helped pass several bills and written many books on the subject of consumer safety. The conversation covers the need for higher wages (Nader mentions timeforaraise.org), the weaknesses of the Occupy movement, the tenets of Nader’s book Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us and his forthcoming book 17 Solutions (fall 2012), nuclear weapons, the lack of free health care in the Read the rest of this entry »

August 17th, 2012

Best of 2011: Dr. Alan Robock on climate change and the continuing risk of nuclear war and nuclear winter

 

Dr. Alan Robock

Dr. Alan Robock

This week, we hear a repeat of Dr. Caldicott’s September 2011 interview with Dr. Alan Robock, Ph.D., a Distinguished Professor of Climatology in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University. Dr. Robock has published more than 300 articles on his research in the area of climate change, including more than 170 peer-reviewed papers. His areas of expertise include geoengineering, climatic effects of nuclear war, effects of volcanic eruptions on climate, regional atmosphere-hydrology modeling, and soil moisture variations. This week’s conversation looks at the latest models of nuclear winter after a nuclear war Read the rest of this entry »

August 10th, 2012

Dr. Brian Moench on the need for doctors to speak out against global warming and radiation from nuclear weapons and cell phones

 

Dr. Brian Moench

Dr. Brian Moench

This week’s guest is Dr. Brian Moench, President and Founder of the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Dr. Moench is an anesthesiologist at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has taught at both Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Moench has written over 60 op eds published in newspapers throughout the USA and on progressive online news sites such as Common Dreams, and received several local awards for activism in environmental and public health protection.
Dr. Caldicott and Dr. Moench cover such topics as global warming including the devastating fires in the West, as well as radiation exposure from nuclear Read the rest of this entry »

August 3rd, 2012

David Dufty on his book ‘How to Build an Android’, artificial intelligence, robots, and police states

 

David Dufty

David Dufty

In this episode, Dr. Caldicott talks to David Dufty, author of How To Build an Android: The True Story of Philip K. Dick’s Robotic Resurrection, published in the U.S. by Holt in 2012. Dufty completed a psychology degree with honors at the University of Newcastle and earned a Ph.D., also in psychology, at the University of Sydney in 2002. He moved to the United States in 2003 where he was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Tennessee. He now lives in Canberra, where he works for the Australian government. Among other issues, Dr. Caldicott and Dufty discuss reality vs. science-fiction, the disturbing aspects of robots and machines, police states, and artificial intelligence which could used by governments and the military. As background, read the 2012 New York Times article, Talking Head, about How to Build an Android.

July 27th, 2012

Arnold Gundersen with the latest on Fukushima, including the perilous worldwide consequences if reactor no. 4 collapses

 

Arnie Gundersen

Arnie Gundersen

This week, Dr. Caldicott has a new conversation with nuclear engineer Arnold Gundersen about the ongoing nuclear disaster at the Fukushima plant and its effects on Japan and the rest of the world. Among the topics discussed are the little understood dangers of internal exposure to radiation. Read Dr. Caldicott’s 2011 article How nuclear apologists mislead the world over radiationin which she discusses internal emitters. Dr. Caldicott and Gundersen later discuss the new Japanese government report, The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission Report. As background, watch or read the transcript of As Japan Says Fukushima Daiichi Disaster “Man-Made” & “Preventable,” Fears Grow for Nuclear Plants Worldwide, Gundersen’s appearance on Democracy Now earlier Read the rest of this entry »

July 20th, 2012

Christine Milne on the the climate crisis, carbon taxes and the need to aid refugees driven by war and global warming

 

Christine Milne (Katherine Griffiths)

Christine Milne (Katherine Griffiths)

Dr. Caldicott talks to Christine Milne, leader of the Australian Greens Party and Senator for Tasmania. They discuss refugees, carbon taxes, green energy and other aspects of the climate crisis. Milne gives a history of Green parties around the world, saying that the first party started in Tasmania, and outlines the principles of the Green parties. She mentions the Global Greens Conference held this year in Dakar. Listen to
Dr. Caldicott’s interview with former Australian senator Bob Brown
. The conversation then covers the need to aid war refugees and global warming refugees, following by a look at the need for carbon taxes on polluting companies. Dr. Caldicott mentions the report Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free. Listen to one of
Dr. Caldicott’s interviews with report author Arjun Makhijani
. Read the rest of this entry »

July 13th, 2012

Professor Richard Falk on the status of democracy efforts in Middle Eastern nations and U.S. militarism

 

Richard Falk

Prof. Falk

This week, Dr. Caldicott talks with Richard Falk, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus at Princeton University, where whe was a member of the faculty for forty years until 2001. Prof. Falk is currently Research Professor at the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California, where he directs a research project on Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy. He served as Chair of the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation from 2004 to 2012, and in 2008-2009 he was appointed expert advisor to the President of the UN General Assembly. Prof. Falk has published more than 50 books, including his most recent (co-authored with David Krieger, an earlier guest on this program) published in 2012 titled Path to Zero: Dialogues on Nuclear Dangers. Relevant to this interview is the July 2012 article Iran Sanctions: War by Other Means.

July 5th, 2012

Bob Herbert on the state of America in 2012

 

Bob Herbert

Bob Herbert

This week Dr Helen Caldicott talks with author and former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert about the state of America in 2012. Herbert is now one of the experts for the think tank Demos. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s 2009 interview with Herbert here. Read Herbert’s 2011 columns Losing Our Way: The U.S. can find the resources for endless warfare, but not for nation-building here at home and Is Nuclear Power Worth the Risk? The public deserves a much fuller accounting of nuclear power’s pros and cons. Read more of his New York Times columns here.

June 29th, 2012

Robert Alvarez with more on Fukushima and the enormous risks of nuclear power, weapons and waste

 

Robert Alvarez

Robert Alvarez

This week, Dr. Caldicott interviews Robert Alvarez, a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. Alvarez is an award-winning author and has published articles in prominent publications such as Science Magazine, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Technology Review and The Washington Post. As background, listen to Dr. Caldicott’s November 2011 interview with Alvarez here. Read the May 2011 IPS press release Expert Cautions that 30 Million Spent Nuclear Fuel Rods Are Unsafely Stored in United States, Could Cause Fukushima-like Disaster and read the 2011 IPS report Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools in the U.S.: Reducing the Deadly Risks of Storage.

June 22nd, 2012

Amory Lovins on the future of renewable power and the many ways we can save energy

 

Amory Lovins

Amory Lovins

This week, Dr. Helen Caldicott talks about renewable energy with physicist Amory B. Lovins, cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, an independent non-profit think-and-do tank that drives the efficient and restorative use of resources. An advisor to major firms and governments in over 50 countries for the past four decades, Lovins is author of 31 books including his latest, Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era (2011), as well as over 450 papers. In 2009, Time Magazine named Lovins one of the world’s 100 most influential people. In this conversation, Lovins and Dr. Caldicott discuss the downsides of oil and coal, how America is reducing its coal use, cogeneration, Read the rest of this entry »