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Harvey Wasserman: The Honor of Being Called a 'Jerk' by Pro-Nuker Patrick Moore

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 06/12/2007 - 10:57am.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Harvey Wasserman

Patrick Moore has called me a "jerk." He may not be Queen Elizabeth, but it feels like being made Knight of the Realm.

Moore is a supporter of nuclear power. He is also an advocate for clear-cutting forests, genetically modified foods, and a wide range of other corporate eco-assaults. The companies behind them fund Moore's "consulting" agency, which appears to specialize in greenwashing.

Moore's mission also seems to include tagging the Greenpeace name onto things Greenpeace opposes. As a voting member of Greenpeace USA, my e-mail box is often filled with contemptuous messages about Moore's latest outrage, and anger about his claim to be a Greenpeace founder. Many advocate ignoring him.

I'm not of that faith. Based on his appearances, too many people ask me why Greenpeace now "supports nuclear power." It doesn't. Its opposition to atomic reactors is as strong and clear as it was when Moore made his brief appearance on the organization's staff list, decades ago.

Moore is quoted as calling me a "jerk" in a long piece on the greenwashing of nukes that has graced the cover of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, for which I've written occasionally over the years.

The piece correctly quotes me as advocating "Solartopia," a world gone totally to renewables and efficiency by the year 2030. It is a world in which King CONG -- the coal, oil, nukes, and gas industry -- has been vanquished, and the way cleared for green technologies that are cleaner, cheaper, safer, more reliable, and more job-creating. Those would include wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, ocean thermal, wave, current, tidal, trash gas, and other forms of renewable generation, along with massively increased efficiency and a revival of mass transit.

My choice of the year 2030 for Solartopia works in tandem with a theory of "Thermageddon" put forth by the late Bob Hunter, who really was a founder of Greenpeace. Hunter called Moore an "eco-Judas." Moore says Bob recanted.

But King CONG is now Patrick Moore's employer. He advocates a "renaissance" for atomic power, a technology inseparable from the murderous meltdowns at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, with 50 years of proven economic failure.

In the half-century since the first commercial reactor opened at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1957, there has been no solution to the storage of high level radioactive waste. Since the terror attacks of 9/11/2001, it is more obvious than ever that commercial reactors are pre-deployed weapons of nuclear mass destruction. The private insurance industry appears to agree, as none will independently underwrite the risk of a major reactor catastrophe, either by terror or error.

Overall, the nuke power industry simply would not exist without gargantuan federal subsidies. The latest now involve huge proposed loan subsidies to drag Wall Street into a technology it would not otherwise touch.

None of this seems to bother Mr. Moore, whom I've never met. But I'd like to. Patrick, when you read this (and I'm sure you will), please accept my invitation to debate anywhere, anytime, with any format you choose, on any medium willing to host us.

Think of it as a form of renewable energy generation. Or as a "renaissance" of democracy.

But above all, think of it as a trip to Solartopia, where nukes are banned along with fossil fuels and all other forms of waste, and there is a green-powered confluence of pollution-free prosperity.

The only greenwashing in such a world, Mr. Moore, will be with mint and aloe vera. I'll bring you some of both.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Harvey Wasserman has been senior advisor to Greenpeace USA since 1990, and is senior editor of www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared. His Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030 is at www.solartopia.org.

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Harvey Wasserman & GreenPeace

Submitted by Greg Wingard on Wed, 06/13/2007 - 2:04am.

I was first active with GreenPeace in the 1970's in British Columbia. At that time they were active on a couple primary issues, which is why I was involved. The first was opposition to nuke testing in the French Pacific, the second was opposition to uranium mining, in particular the proposition to start uranium mining in British Columbia. At the time there was no doubt amoung the leadership in GreenPeace of the connection between uranium mining, nuclear power and nuclear weapons, or that all should be opposed. Well over 30 years later, most of us involved in the center or periphery of the early GreenPeace days other than Patrick still get it. The mining of uranium has and is causing horrific impact to native people in all the continents where it takes place (in particular the US & Canada, Australia, Africa and Europe). There is no differance in impacts from a ton of uranium mined for power plants or a ton of uranium mined for weapons. Likewise with each step from there on up the fuel and waste chain. From waste and industrial releases from milling the uranium (product yellow cake, wastes tailing, fines and slimes and greenhouse gasses), enriching the uranium (final product uranium fuel, wastes depleted uranium, fluoride, greenhouse gases), using the fuel (power, wide range of radioactive isotopes, and chemicals used in the process, and greenhouse gasses), (weapons, wide range of radioactive isotopes, acids, solvents and toxic metals used in the process, and greenhouse gasses), and the waste disposal. Contrary to the claims of those like Patrick who claim that nukes don't have greenhouse gas impacts, each step of the process has huge impacts. Just considering one limited aspect according to GreenPeace research on the transportation of nuclear materials a lot of the feedstocks and enriched products are shipped around the world in ships, burning bunker C fuel. These ships world wide are a huge contributer to greenhouse gasses. Something Patrick and friends in the greenwashing industry sweep under the rug. Likewise with the rest of the cycle through evential disposal and their shipping by ship, rail and diesel trucks. This doesn't even begin to address the huge amount of waste generated in the initial stages that are frequently abandonned by corporations and left to the taxpayers to cleanup (huge numbers of mines in the west, and mill sites like the Atlas mill in Moab, Utah on the Colorado River). The idea that nukes are a "clean" form of power is an artifact of a sales campaign that is deceptive in the extreme.

I remember being thrown out of a public DOE center in the Tri-Cities in Washington State. The center had exhibits and regularly brought schools through on tours of the center. During one such tour there was an exhibit that showed the number of railroad cars of coal that were replaced by a small number of uranium fuel pellets. I pointed out to the class that this was deceptive at best as coal was burned in power plants with little processing other than removing the overburden of rock and separating out the coal. Uranium on the other hand went through progressive steps of concentration and enrichment, each generating huge amounts of waste compared to the resulting product transported on to the next step in actually creating the fuel pellets they were comparing to the train loads of coal (not that I support coal burning as the environmental answer to uranium). I was quickly cut from the heard by forcefully polite but insistant DOE folks who kicked me out of the building before I could repeat the points with further tours of impressionable students.

In short summary, the point being the amount of snake oil sold by the nuke folks, whether weapons advocates or the supposedly separate power advocates is an almost unique cautionary tale of those willing to sacrifice the many for the benefit of the few.

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