Today, I read in the International Herald Tribune that delegates from 120 countries came together.
Here's the first paragraph:
"BANGKOK, Thailand: Delegates from 120 countries endorsed a report outlining urgent steps needed to avert some of the most catastrophic results of climate change, but the United States warned that strict emission caps could cause a global recession."
read on here
Now, this is really good news! The absolute insanity that I hear, however is the last line: "the US warned that strict emmission caps could cause a global recession."
Please let me translate the entire paragraph:
"Delegates representing the leadership of the entire planet agreed that we need to take significant, life changing action now to stop climate change before we lose civilization as we know it, but the United States whined that they would not make as much money if we started doing something right away."
Hmmm... does this sound ridiculous to you too?
Also, I read in Forbes the following paragraph on the matter:
"But US officials defended nuclear energy as an important option for reducing dependence on fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases, saying scientists would develop technology to deal safely with radioactive waste." More here.
Yes, nuclear power has no emmissions... Yet Helen Caldicott just wrote her latest book "Nuclear Power is Not the Answer."
She just stated in a recent interview on Democracy Now:
"DR. HELEN CALDICOTT: Well, I have just discovered from the Department of Energy's data, that the enrichment of uranium produces 93% per year of the C.F.C. gas in this country, which is currently banned under the Montreal Protocol because it produces destruction of the ozone layer. In Australia, we've got an epidemic of skin cancer because the ozone is so thin. C.F.C. gas, which is the refrigerant gas banned, is up to 20 times more potent global warmer than carbon dioxide, which accounts for 15% of global warming. But also, to enrich uranium, they use 2 two 1,000 megawatt coal power plants to enrich the uranium itself for nuclear power. Massive quantities of carbon dioxide are produced in that very process but also in building the reactors, storing the radioactive waste for hundreds of thousands of years. The other thing is that nuclear power releases millions of Curies of unregulated radiation into the air every year of noble gases and of Tritium, which is very biologically dangerous and very carcinogenic. And it also creates massive quantities of radioactive waste, which lasts for up to half a million years, which inevitably will leak into the Ecosphere, bioconcentrate in each step of the food chain--the algae, the crustaceans, the little fish, the big fish. We can't taste the radiation, we can't smell it, we can't see it. Cancer takes years to evolve. If I sneeze on you, you're sneezing in two days because the incubation time for a cold is two days. But for cancer, when you've been exposed to radiation, its anytime from 5 to 60 years. Cancer doesn't wear a little flag saying what it was caused by years ago. What is predicted medically because of the nuclear wastes from nuclear power is epidemics of particularly childhood cancer, because they're very sensitive to radiation, leukemia, and genetic disease for the rest of time. And we're not the only species that have genes and get cancer. All other species do as well. So, a nuclear power is extraordinarily biologically dangerous. It produces filthy air with radioactive isotopes, carbon dioxide, and C.F.C. gas. The nuclear industry has been lying in its advertisements, being put out consistently on N.P.R. and P.B.S. and the like. You mustn't lie when you're talking about medical and environmental conditions. That's scientifically inappropriate and unethical to lie.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Scott Peterson, your response and also, given the fact that in the United States there hasn't been a new nuclear plant started to be built in decades, why would you expect the American public to suddenly want to change their perspective on the dangers of nuclear power?
SCOTT PETERSON: The American public's perspective on nuclear energy has actually been supportive for many years now, because they recognize the benefits that they get from nuclear energy, and they also recognize the safety of our plants, particularly over the last decade. 64% of the U.S. Public believes that we should build more nuclear plants, and we are now setting the stage in this country, working both with industry and government to begin building advanced reactors that have even better safety features. They're going to be more cost effective to build so the consumer electricity rates are going to be lower. They're also going to be built in a manner they're takes advantage of existing nuclear power plants so we're building them at the same sites, and actually, using less land, and taking advantage of the land and the transmission systems that we already have. So, we're taking a number of steps to make sure that we can meet consumer electricity demands as they continue to rise in the future. But meet them in a way that also protects the environment, and recognizes that we need to make changes in how we look at our air quality and how we combine the imperatives of having electricity and also protecting our environment. If you took the nuclear plants that we have today out of the electricity-
JUAN GONZALEZ: But if I can interrupt you for one second. What about the other part of my question, which is your response to Helen Caldicott's claims of the actual polluting nature of nuclear plants?
SCOTT PETERSON: I wouldn't know where to begin with some of the claims, because a lot of them are just not factually correct.
DR. HELEN CALDICOTT: But they are you see, because I have the data from the Department of Energy--They're correct. "
More here.
So, how does nuclear power address global warming?
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