Greenpeace co-founder supports nuclear energy

I pray that we can prove him wrong with solar and wind energy.

Nuclear power today is a very different animal than the designs that resulted in TMI or Chernobyl. It deserves a new look.

As long as the worldwide population continues to grow, the need for power will grow along with it. Current solar and wind technology cannot even keep pace with the growth requirements for power let alone replace existing infrastructure.

We'd do well to keep an open mind until all of the facts are in and it may be the lesser of two evils in reducing carbon, but as MM points out, we KNOW sun and wind don't have any negative affects as power sources. Maybe in the long run when wind and solar catch up with the pace we can revisit it's use.

*shriek* nuclear. what can I say?

I've been having some serious concerns about the Canadian Green Party (selling blog 'marketing' & going after the **demonstrably effective NDP** support base) & GreenPeace has been acting bizarre (I'm a human rights & animal rights activist, but have you noticed they're more wound up about protesting impoverished East Coasters surviving the Fisheries Collapse with Canadian seal harvesting, than the School of the Americas, Congress-funded torture & insurrection school?) I find it all rather suspect.

===
EXCLUSIVE:
Cops and Former Secret Service Agents Ran Black Ops on Green Groups

Meet the private security firm that spied on Greenpeace and other environmental outfits for its corporate clients. A tale of intrigue, infiltration, and dumpster-diving.

11.Apr.08: A Mother Jones exclusive
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/04/firm-sp...
Mother Jones has exposed that a security firm run by ex Secret Service agents spied on Greenpeace, Fenton Communications, the Center for Food Safety, and others.

James Ridgeway, the Mother Jones senior correspondent who obtained the never-before-published internal company documents now available on the Mother Jones website, revealed in today's story that a private security company organized and managed by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organizations from the late 1990s through at least 2000, pilfering documents from trash bins, attempting to plant undercover operatives within groups, casing offices, collecting phone records of activists, and penetrating confidential meetings. The smoking gun documents show that Beckett Brown International (BBI), collected confidential records—donor lists, detailed financial statements, the Social Security numbers of staff members, strategy memos—from these groups and produced intelligence reports for public relations firms and major corporations
involved in environmental controversies.

BBI also conducted background checks for the Carlyle Group, the Washington-based investment firm; provided "protective services" for the National Rifle Association; handled "crisis management" for the Gallo wine company; engaged in "information collection" for Wal-Mart. It conducted background checks for Patricia Duff, a Democratic Party fundraiser then involved in an acrimonious child custody battle with billionaire Ronald Perelman. And for Mary Kay, BBI mounted "surveillance" and vetted Gayle Gaston, a top executive at the cosmetics company (and mother of actress Robin Wright Penn), retaining an expert to conduct a psychological assessment of her.

Also listed as clients in BBI records: Halliburton and Blackwater.
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Spread Love...

BlueBerry Pick'n
can be found @
ThisCanadian com
~~~
"We, two, form a Multitude" ~ Ovid.
~~~
"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"
"do no harm"

You can get a free 25 or so minutes video of a James Lovelock interview at

http://firstscience.tv/sc/view/an-interview-with-james-...

You need to register (it is free), and then you can get that free video. You will receive by email the url from which to dowload that video, as well as the license number so that you can watch the video. In this video, James Lovelock explains why wind, solar, etc., energy cannot furnish but a fraction of the energy we need, and that nuclear energy leaves a very small footprint in the environment. A must see.

BlueBerry_PickN - why should Greenpeace (an organization whose purpose is the protection of the environment and with protecting animal species from human predation) be more concerned about the School of the Americas, Congress-funded torture & insurrection school than about the barbaric slaughter of thousands of newborn seals? What is so suspect about that? Would you also say that if masseurs were more concerned about stiff muscles than about the quality of cat litter you would find it rather suspect? I honestly don't see the logic there. Greenpeace is an organization concerned with the protection of the environment, not with the protection of human rights.

I have read where they are coming up with better technology to use up more of the fuel cells, and are making progress in safety etc. I'm trying to keep an open mind. I'm still afraid of it and there is still waste. Plus the damage from an accident is permanent.

Homo sapiens is the most important species to homo sapiens, Cosmo, it is only natural that it will seek to do all it can to preserve itself. That's the nature of all life forms.

Vierotchka catlitter? dear god, you scare me.

I just showed you an article on how the US Gov't privatized the monitoring & privacy invasions of GreenPeace MEMBERS... but GreenPeace shouldn't be concerned about the PRIVACY or HUMAN RIGHTS of its OWN FREAKING MEMBERSHIP??

good on ya.

**duh** can you say... "you don't get that the US & US media is ensuring that nobody actually talks about how Freedom of Speech... the Beating Heart of Democracy... is under complete attack by corporate $$$ interests? "

along with privacy.

**DUH** the point is that GREENPEACE wants to be able to protest... but if nobody fights for PRIVACY or the RIGHT TO Freedom of Speech...

then they'll just catch a rubber bullet @ the next protest, right? gee, that will inspire a lot more public demonstrations for the Right Thing...

being narrow-minded twit is its own reward, apparently.

There is no WE in corruption
THERE IS NO POPULIST REFORM if there is no forum to share populist ideas without oppression.

The Thieves of Virtue: without the Will to PRIVACY there is no populist reform or genuine representative government.


~~~
Spread Love...

BlueBerry Pick'n
can be found @
ThisCanadian com
~~~
"We, two, form a Multitude" ~ Ovid.
~~~
"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"
"do no harm"

i was expecting Jan for Gore to do this one. Does that mean he's more orange than Green. Get it nuclear orange. I thought it was funny.

BlueBerry_PickN, it still has nothing to do with the School of the Americas which was centered on supporting friendly dictatorships in South America, **duh** yourself! Oh, and your self-promotion at the bottom of all your posts is pretty annoying.

Vierotchka likes treating the SYMPTOMS, but the CAUSE of corporate oppression.

gee, wonder why?

...is it sheer willful ignorance?
or ...something more?

you decide.

Don't let the facts get in your way, Vierotchka
its important that we separate these issues into such fragmented self-interested groups that nothing is actually accomplished for populist reform.

"that's not their *job*... "

yeah... that's it. we're so much more effective divided than when we're UNITED.

~~~
Spread Love...

BlueBerry Pick'n
can be found @
ThisCanadian com
~~~
"We, two, form a Multitude" ~ Ovid.
~~~
"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"
"do no harm"

I never thought about the fact that nuclear power has become synonymous with nuclear war, or explosion or blast.
He has a point that worst harm has come from people using smaller weapons like machetes and guns, but the idea that such a weapon could possibly obliterate a continent is scary on a crazy scale. He makes a really great point though. I'd like to see where this goes.

He sold his soul to the highest bidder.

His arguments are dated and out of touch at best if he really believes them.

I believe, however, that he really just sold out and uses these lame "reasons" to try and justify it to people that can't see through its disguise.

Since you wanted to hear from JanforGore, here is something she posted a few days ago. It's interesting how this story got buried but the pro-nuke killing machine story made it to the front page. I hope JanforGore is taking a well deserved rest. "....The impacts of the nuclear waste cycle are better described as inter-civilizational. Nuclear fuel wastes remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands to as much as a million years....The fact is that no political or economic system can assure the security or integrity of waste for a period of time even remotely approaching the time period during which waste poses extreme health, environmental, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation risks....Keep in mind that RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY has lasted for only 5,000 years. China, THE WORLD'S OLDEST, CONTINUOUS CIVILIZATION is 10,000 years old. Thirty thousand years ago NEANDERTHALS still populated the European continent. in that time period, the continental glaciers of the Wisconsin age have advanced and retreated, covering and uncovering and GRINDING TO DUST many of the locations of currently operating nuclear power plants and their waste piles......Put simply, the nuclear industry....has transfered and deferred the most expensive part of the cost of the nuclear fuel cycle to future generations and CIVILIZATIONS UNKNOWN."......Karl S.Coplan

it's a hard issue. but the Greenpeace cofounder seems to make some good points.

ideally, we'd all live on wind and solar, but if that's not possible, and the ice caps will be gone soon if we dont come up with an alternative to carbon emissions, then we're between a rock and a hard place arent we.

i dont see why we aren't creating solar fields all along the equator. or, using tidal coastlines for power. there are a lot of ways we can do this unfortunately only the rich can. and that'll be the day when opec says ok to something other than fossil fuels

good point diode. I dont see why we dont have wind turbines along every coast and solar thermal stations in the southwest. That should FIRST before anything.

Thanks, futuregen. It seems that no matter how much you write about this or the global water crisis it is ignored. The two most major catastrophes we have facing us in this age, and people on the whole don't see the urgency of them and only use them as a poltical wedge. Al Gore stated he had fallen out of love with politics... I definitely see why.

The article you reference which I did is one of the most comprehensive informational articles on nuclear power and the repurcussions of its use and yet as you stated it fell away. But no matter, because people won't stand up to this government regarding it, especially with presidential candidates who support it who they will support in the end above this planet.

I then grow weary of the constant drumbeat regarding nuclear and people stating "let's wait to see what they come up with." Nuclear energy will NEVER be safe, and I would never believe a company or a 'politician' involved in it who told us it was. The nuclear industry is now using the climate crisis to reinvigorate an industry whose time has past and climate skeptics like Patrick Moore I am sure will gleefully dance to that tune. They see dollar signs in their eyes is all, and nothing they say will convince me that nuclear energy is anything but a fast track to oblivion.

Of course, that is not up for discussion either, because if you mention that in corrolation to the current Democratic presidential candidates who then actually agree with him as well as Bush and Cheney and dare to criticize the policy on this of one in particular, you are a pariah.

Solar energy is the answer, and there are great strides being made in photovoltaics.... but they will be cast aside for nuclear's dangers to human health and it's pollution and toxifying of our waterways because it makes lobbyists and campaign contributors large amounts of money that they use to grease the palms of political candidates that keep the status quo machinery well oiled, while solar, wind, and other forms of alternate energies will be constantly given second class status.

Al Gore's appearance on Capitol Hill last year proved that point well, as most of the questions centered on nuclear as they unfairly brow beat the man to accept it. Don't wonder now why the candidates who are still in this are. They aren't John Edwards or Dennis Kucinich or MIke Gravel who spoke out against nuclear.

Though some of us will continue to speak out, protest, write letters, and put this planet above all when it comes to these issues, those with the gold will continue to make the rules unless we make greater strides in sustainable investments and call upon businesses to look towards the future instead of the past, which is what nuclear is-the past. A nuclear world is no kind of world to be making for our children, and this isn't a "different POV" this is suicide.

We the human species are slowly killing ourselves by our own hand and giving people like Patrick Moore who couldn't give a fart in space about any of us the tools to do it with. Solar and other alternate energies could be brought to market faster than it takes to build one of their toxic monstrosities. But we will continue to believe the lies again. Why? .

I am not afraid of nuclear technology. I know that the past 20 years have seen a lot of good failsafe technology developed for use in Nuclear Reactors.

My problem is that nuclear power pollutes. Heat is Pollution. Nuclear plants take the massive amount of energy that is locked in nuclear bonds, and lets them out into the earth. Conservation of Energy kids...

Solar, Wind, and Wave power all actually take energy that is already there and use it. Net result: These technologies, have no net pollution other than from manufacturing.

We need a War On Waste, and spend ridiculous amounts of money decentralizing and cleaning up our national power generation system.

"Vierotchka likes treating the SYMPTOMS, but the CAUSE of corporate oppression." -- Pure, unadulterated excreta bovines - it takes a very twisted mind to come to such a warped conclusion based on delusions, Berry.

thanks futuregen, but i'm not going to read 290 pages of .pdf on the internet, much less print them out. The trees are already thanking me.

but I'll agree that we certainly aren't doing everything on the wind and solar front that we should be. what does Obama say about wind and solar? Will his administration start putting our money into these items, or will he "let the market take care of it," as some have suggested?

So a lot of Greens don't like nuclear power, because it is dangerous, and the byproduct is deadly for a trillion years (or something like that).

I know why Moore is for this. He is hoping that nuclear power will rise to replace fossil fuels, thus eliminating a lot of, for lack of a better term, nasty stuff.

Then once we are all on nuclear power, we will have a lot of radioactive waste and the constant fear of fallout, and since those things are a threat to US, not to our great great grandchildren, people will be more motivated to do something about it. See by pushing nuclear power he is trying to scare us into "real" green energy.

Either I am more paranoid then I thought, or absolutely brilliant.

I think that everyone is also missing another big problem with nuclear power; it is, like fossil fuels non-renewable. Say, for example if we started to replace many of the oil/gas/coal power stations with Nuclear power stations, Uranium/Plutonium supplies will start to run low and eventually just like oil is at the moment , it will start to run out. There is also a problem that nuclear energy is not economically or energetically feasible transportation fuel. Will also have the problem that it takes years and a hell of a lot of money to build and get a Nuclear power plant on line (I have read it costs $3-5 billion per plant) and putting that into a context of trying to replace many of the fossil fuel power plants, this can be very expensive to do. Also the waste problem as everyone else seems to have mentioned, and if an accident happens like Chernobyl. So in my opinion, if we try to swap to Nuclear energy, we will only be creating a dependence in nuclear fuel ores in the future, which looks similar to our situation now with oil/fossil fuels now.

see that link, Jan? looks like Nader is the candidate for you.

Thanks for that tip futuregen...the guy's a freakin' plant.

See how insidious these people are...they even got the people who hang out at current (more progressive than your average cyberspot) parroting t