co-founder of greenpeace now supports nuclear energy

[unblock]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.

...

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, is chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. He and Christine Todd Whitman are co-chairs of a new industry-funded initiative, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which supports increased use of nuclear energy.

[paul_fromatlanta]

1. Gonna be more stories like this as oil grow scarce and temps rise

[fed-up]

2. Patrick Moore is a Corporate WHORE-he sold out long ago

He was paid $10,000 to speak at Chico State against our initiative to ban genetically engineered crops here in Butte County in late 2004.

http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=89&page=MProfiles

Although the headline proclaimed Moore to be Greenpeace's 'founder', it's opening sentence changed his background to 'ecologist and co-founder of Greenpeace'. A paragraph later Moore's status was reduced yet further to ' a founding member of Greenpeace'....

..

The biotech industry flew Patrick Moore to appear as one of its expert witnesses in front of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification in New Zealand. His only 'expertise', however, was his connection with Greenpeace.  ...

...

Press articles have also portrayed Moore and his support for GM in terms of the recent disillusion with Greenpeace of its founder. But far from leaving Greenpeace recently, Moore quit almost two decades ago and he was never more than a founding member...

... Moore's activities on behalf of the Alliance have been extremely controversial. He claimed, for instance, that the World Wildlife Fund in some cases supported clear-cutting, provoking a furious response from Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, head of the forest programme of World Wide Fund for Nature International, who accused Moore of 'grossly misrepresenting' WWF's position, something WWF 'deplored'. ...

...By 1991 Moore was in serious financial trouble due to his fish farm business. Shortly after packing up the business, he approached the newly formed B.C. Forest Alliance, a timber industry front group who portrays itself as unbiased and objective. Because of his past affiliation with Greenpeace, his offer to the Forest Alliance was accepted and he has been a spokesperson for the BC logging industry ever since.

Moore also founded 'Greenspirit' in 1991, an environmental consulting firm. Projects have included advocating turning part of a rare local wetland called Burns Bog into a golf course and promoting a plan to barge garbage from Vancouver up to northern Vancouver Island....


edited to add another link I found in my old files

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Patrick_Moore

Clients

Moore’s clients <8> - though the list has not been updated since 2000 - have included:

B.C. Hazardous Waste Management Corporation (1991-92);
Moore established the B.C. Carbon Project – ‘working to achieve a common understanding of the carbon budget and the implications of global climate change for B.C’ - which received a $C145,000 grant in May 1991. Moores involvement ended in 1994;
on retainer to the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association to tour European countries to counter advocacy by environmental groups for a boycott of British Columbian forest products (1992-96);
Westcoast Energy and BC Gas 1993-1994 “to design a public consultation process to address greenhouse gas emissions for the natural gas sector in B.C”;
BHP Minerals to facilitate a round table on proposals to use the abandoned Island Copper mine as a landfill site (1993-94);
Director and Vice-President, Environment and Government Affairs for Waterfurnace International 1995-1998 to “build awareness of the benefits of renewable earth energy technology”. According to his website, Moore remains a member of the Board of Directors.
Consultant to the National Association of Forest Industries in Australia for a national tour defending the logging of native forests (1996);
consultant to the Canadian Mining Association and the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada “on the role of biodiversity in environmental policy in the mining industry” (1996);
consultant to BHP Minerals (Canada) Ltd. to author a paper on the environmental impact of submarine tailings disposal over the 23-year life of the Island Copper Mine on Vancouver Island (1996);
speaker for numerous timber industry associations including the American Forest and Paper Association, the Council of European Paper Industries, State Forestry Associations in Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, Maine, and Florida, the National Hardwood Lumber Association (1998-1999);
gave evidence in support of bio-technology before the New Zealand Royal Commission on Genetic Modification and undertook at tour of Southeast Asia, hosted by the International Service for Assistance with Agri-Biotech Applications. “Led seminars in Bangkok and Jakarta on the benefits of biotechnology for farmers in developing countries”, Moore’s website states (2000);
speaker for groups including the Filipino Society of Foresters and the Agri-Food Canada (2000); and
consultant to the largest manufacturer of PVC in Canada, IPEX, to “intervene in the environmental policy of the Toronto 2008 Olympic Bid”. The environmental guidelines adopted for the Sydney Olympics recommended against the use of PVC wherever possible.
Newmont <9>

[BlueEyedSon]

3. The lesser of many evils?

[Burning Water]

4. People are not

voluntarily going back to animal labor and wind and water power. In other words, people who want to increase their standard of living are not going to cut back on energy consumption. Some solution has to be found.

Only two possibilities present themselves to my mind, although I welcome other ideas. One, massive coercion by the governments of the world to roll back energy consumption and standards of living. This would have to include the rapidly developing nations such as China and India, who want what we have and far out-number us in the West.

Two, technological advances such as nuclear power.

There is, of course, a third solution, too horrible to contemplate. Darwinism steps in. Massive die-offs due to starvation, war, diseases such as Ebola or aggressive flu strains or plague. In fact, recently some professor out in Texas was talking about this. Sorry, I don't have a link.

[BlueEyedSon]

5. I wouldn't categorize nuclear power as a "technological advance"

it's well over 50 years old....

[Burning Water]

7. True, but

unused mostly in the USA. Still, a fusion reactor would be a huge advance. Maybe non-polluting ways of using coal, of which the USA has enormous reserves.

[The2ndWheel]

6. Animal labor?

Hell, if we run out of cheap energy, human slavery will come back eventually. It's the reason slavery no longer exists, at least in this country.

What happens when the uranium supply starts to run dry?

Wish I knew where we were going with civilization.

[Burning Water]

8. Well, humans

are animals, biologically, and slaves were not considered human in some slave-owning societies.

Besides, while not legal, slavery still exists. Mainly sex slavery.

[BlueEyedSon]

10. The will be "peak uranium" (just like oil) it's a finite natural resource

[Burning Water]

16. Technology needs to keep

advancing. Hydrogen is an unlimited resource. Fusion reactors, when developed, are the way to go.

Or, primitive (eventually) standards of living, or war,death, and disease to lower the population to levels that could be maintained (although that, horrible as it is, is no guarantee that population levels would not rise back up in just a few generation.)

There's only the three choices, and one of them is a choice no one would willingly make, and another one is pretty bleak.

[The2ndWheel]

19. Which brings up an interesting question

"Hydrogen is an unlimited resource."

Since nothing is perfect, what will be the unintended consequences of hydrogen?

[Burning Water]

22. Well, first

off, we can't do it yet.

Second, I don't know that it has any. Since nothing is perfect? Is that a philosophical position, or do you have empirical knowledge of hydrogen's secondary effects?

But even if it does have some unintended consequences, and accepting your position that nothing is perfect, then is the time of trade-offs. Some people have been harmed by common vaccines, yet without them smallpox and other diseases would have killed millions.

So, do you do nothing because you don't know what might possibly happen if the gloom-sayers are correct, or do you try to make the world better? Is it better to have a population equivalent to that right after the fall of Rome with an equivalent standard of living, or is it better that things continue to improve for billions?

I'm not suggesting an answer. But I think the questions must be faced honestly.

[The2ndWheel]

28. I have no idea

of what the possible side effects would be. My best guess would be that it'll involve state terrorism, backed by the corporations that require stability in order to make a profit.

"Is it better to have a population equivalent to that right after the fall of Rome with an equivalent standard of living, or is it better that things continue to improve for billions?"

What about the billions that things won't improve for? Will each of the 6.5 billion people and counting on this planet live in luxury? What about the other species? If humans continue to increase in number, how much more land do we use?

"So, do you do nothing because you don't know what might possibly happen if the gloom-sayers are correct, or do you try to make the world better?"

What if slowing down made the world better? Does anyone even know where we're going exactly?

[BlueEyedSon]

32. Hydrogen is unlimited, usable energy is not. How do you get all the

hydrogen if not with limited (and costly) energy?

[bmcatt]

9. Nuclear energy isn't *bad* if done right

Every seems to equate nuclear energy with either nuclear weapons (never mind that they use differing grades of fissionable material) or with places like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl (both of which were *human*-caused faults; oh, and there wasn't actually a significant radiation release from TMI, and the automatic safeguards at Chernobyl kept *trying* to shutdown the reactor but the humans kept overriding them because they wanted to test running at ultra-low power levels).

Ultimately, this winds up being about a very simple concept - energy density. The best way to explain this (that I've read, not my own creation) is to think of a jet airplane. Is it possible to build a wood-burning jet engine? Of course not. the energy density of burning wood is *very* low and even if you could burn enough of it to get the energy release to drive a jet turbine, you'd have to carry so much that you'd be unable to get off the ground.

Commercial energy production is much the same thing. Coal and fossil fuels have (relatively-speaking) very low energy densities. Sure, they're higher than burning wood, but they're not anywhere near the level that can be obtained by nuclear fission. And even "current" nuclear technology (not that we in the United States would know anything about that, it being so many years since a new plant was built) just uses the heat-generation aspects of fission to heat water for steam, nowhere near the theoretical energy density available.

Everyone just became scared of the boogeyman of radioactive gasses or a meltdown or "oh, no, it's just like having a bomb in the back yard!"

Pfft... Sign me up for nuclear energy and, yes, I have no problems with it being in my backyard.

[BlueEyedSon]

11. It's just so bloody hard to do it *right*

and think of the total costs these days.... watse disposal, security (from terra-ists, including anti aircraft guns?)

[ThomWV]

12. Nuclear Is The Future

And the sooner people figure it out the better off we'll all be.

Its the pollution that makes it so viable. If one were to collect every spent fuel rod ever used in every nuclear power plant ever operated in the United States it would fill an area the size of a football field to a depth of ... ready for this? .... nine (9) inches. Want to compare that to the (carcinogenic) ash from any coal fired plant? Would you even want to compare it to the piles of dead chopped-up birds under power producing wind mills? Hydro makes very large mud puddles over time and the production of electric by by burning oil should be punishable by an hour with the rack.

[MadHound]

15. Strawman comparison

Radioactive waste isn't just the spent fuel rods. It is the paper swipes, activated aluminum, tools, filters, spent mechanical parts, activated lead, maselin rags, etc. etc. And all of it would cover a hell of a lot more than nine inches in a football stadium. My bet is that the contaminated paper waste would surpass that nine inch figure all by itself.

And the thing is we don't need nuclear power. A 1991 DOE survey of our harvestable wind resources found that we had enough wind power in three states, North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas to power the entire US electrical grid, including factoring in growth, through the year 2030. Several energy experts, both foreign and domestic, have compared our wind resources to the plentitude of oil in Saudi Arabia, except that wind is renewable.

Nuclear energy has two huge problems that can't be overcome, and thus makes nuclear power completely unfeasible as an energy solution. The first problem is human error. It is human error that has caused each and every radioactive accident and incident in the world. And it doesn't matter how sophisticated and technilogical you build the reactor, you still need humans to run it, and thus human error is introduced.

Second problem is the waste. We can't continue to store it as we are currently doing, either at various central locations around the country, or in "temporary" waste storage sites that are next to nuke plants around the country. The current method of waste storage is failing us, slowly but surely as water seeps out of pools, waste goes unaccounted for, etc. And the alternative, one large central waste storage area at Yucca Mt. is insanely foolish. Not only is it situated in a quake prone region, it is also in an active volcanic region. In addition, dye tests on the groundwater that runs under Yucca Mt has found that two weeks after dye was introduced into the cracks in Yucca Mt., the dye showed up in the groundwater of Las Vegas. And given that waste containers rust, plastics break down, sooner or later there is going to be waste leaking into the groundwater of Yucca Mt., and thus making its way into the drinking water of Las Vegas.

We do not need to play Russian roulette with nuclear power, and we shouldn't. We have plentiful harvestable wind resources throughout our country, and other alternative power sources to back it up with. With this abundance of renewables, we should do the logical thing and start using it, rather than persuing a nuclear nightmare energy policy.

[Burning Water]

17. How do the

intelligent and sophisticated and environmentally conscious Europeans cope with all those problems?

[MadHound]

20. Apparently not very well

Judging by Chernobyl, and the various close calls, radioactive steam leaks and other such "minor" problems, the Europeans are just as prone to human error as we are. And as far as waste goes, well until recently the French, along with other European countries, simply dumped their hot waste into the ocean and let it sink. Now that there has been a large outcry against that, they're doing much like we are, storing the waste onsite until they figure out where to locate a central waste storage site.

But hey, at least some European countries, like the Dutch, are actually starting to invest in wind energy in a major way. They're putting up some major offshore wind farms in the North Atlantic and elsewhere.

[Burning Water]

24. Wind power is

good. That's why Teddy Kennedy doesn't want it is his back yard?

Seriously, though, it can be some help at the margins, but wind power will never be able to power an industrial civilization.

[MadHound]

25. According to the Dept. of Energy, what you say is false

Judging from various European countries investment in wind, it seems that they're buying into the idea. So why, in your opinion, do you think wind incapable of powering a civilization? We have the raw resource, hell, we've got the Great Plains. We have the technology. We have a nationwide power grid on which to move the electricity. All we need to do is to start putting up the wind turbines. So what, exactly, is missing from this equation?

[Burning Water]

26. Various European countries

are also "buying" into nuclear energy. Logically it follows, therefore, that wind power is insufficient for their needs.

Then there's the environmental factor. Why is it that Teddy Kennedy doesn't want a wind power generation plantation blocking his view? Aren't the rest of us entitled to a decent view out our back windows, too?

Then there's the birds that fly into the little suckers. If wind power plants are all over the place, at least a few endangered species are gonna have some pressure put on them.

All that being said, I think wind power should be used to the greatest extent possible. As should solar, ethanol, whatever. But in the end, we must go nuclear, or suffer a severe disruption in our lifestyles.

[MadHound]

27. Just because Europeans jump off a cliff, should we follow?

Europe doesn't have the geography to support wind energy that we do. The closest area to Europe that is comparable to the Great Plains is the steppes of Russia. As I said earlier, our harvestable wind energy resources have been compared to the vastness of Saudi Arabian oil fields, except that wind is renewable.

And the NIBY arguement is ridiculous on the face of it. Which would you rather have within a twenty five mile radius of your home, a wind farm, which is going to provide clean, renewable power, or a nuke plant which is nothing more than a ticking time bomb that has a good chance of a radioactive incident or accident at some point over the plant's lifetime? And as far as views go, why not level these same complaints against those fine cell phone towers that are sprouting up all over the place? I live out in the country, twenty six miles from the nearest large city. Yet within view of my house are two cell phone towers. I'm sure that you have the same experience, yet no complaints about them, even from Ted Kennedy:shrug:

And the bird scare is just bad propaganda that arose from one overblown incident. Altamount Pass Wind Farm was built a quarter century ago, and yes, they set up the farm with little regard to the bird population, and also with older, high speed turbines. And yes, this did turn out to be a "bird blender". However that is the only serious incident in which such a disaster occurred. Yet it was seized upon by wind power critics and used to comdemn the entire industry unfairly. Today's wind farms are much more carefully situated in order to not intefere with bird populations, and today's higher tech wind turbines get much more power at much lower tip speeds. Thus the bird population is not threatened in anyway.

You say that you wish to use wind power to its greatest extent, so do I. And like the DOE survey showed way back in '91, if we use wind power to its greatest extent, we can power our entire electrical grid, and thus there is no need for more nuclear plants. It is that simple, do you want a ticking time bomb of a nuke plant to power the country, or would you rather do so with safe, renewable, clean wind energy?

[Burning Water]

29. I don't know.

Lots of people want us to be more like Europe in many ways. Some good, IMO, some not so.

Nuclear power plants would not have to be nearly so numerous, nor make such a footprint upon our mother Earth, as wind plants would.

And Chernobyl was "one" incident, only.

[MadHound]

30. No, nuclear plants wouldn't have to be as numerous

But if there was any problems at one, it could effect people hundreds of miles away.

And one doesn't have to have an "incident" the scope of Chernobyl in order to adversely effect people. Accidental release of radioactive steam is relatively common, as is seepage of radioactive material into grounwater. Sure, Chernobyl and TMI were big ones, but there are many many little incidents that effect the surrounding population both here and in Europe.

And then there is the problem of waste, which simply cannot be solved. Europeans, until recently, dumped it into the ocean, a move that is neither smart nor responsible. Now they're doing what we do, storing the waste on-site while casting about for a central burial ground. Such on-site storage is just a problem waiting to happen. Leaching into the ground-water, insecure storage, possbile release of radioactive steam or mist, not good.

And the central storage idea, especially Yucca Mt. is just flat out stupid. Situated on an active fault line, in the middle of an active volcanic area, directly over the groundwater that supplies Las Vegas, it's just a disaster waiting to happen. And the sad thing is is that there is no good place in this country for such a central repository for nuclear waste, so why should be continue to create more? It just seems very foolish to me.

And one more factor to consider. The US is running quite low on our natural uranium resources, most were used years ago for bomb creation. Right now we're using an increasing amount of uranium from South Africa. If we expand our nuclear program all we're going to do is substitute being bent over a uranium rod for being bent over an oil barrel. Rather than repeat the mistake of depending upon other countries for our energy needs, why not use the vast reserves of plentiful, domestically produced wind and solar that we already have? Why be beholden to other countries and their agendas when we can supply ALL of our own energy needs if we're smart about it? Makes sense to me.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

31. The British investment in wind power

Is largely motivated by politics, not by economics or environmentalism, I fear. The government wants to *appear* green, and some token wind power is the way to go to do that, but the amount of power being generated is fairly negligable. I suspect the same is true of the motivations of most of the other European nations doing so.

My understanding is that it's debateable whether or not in theory wind (and wave, and so forth) power *could* provide enough energy, if you put turbines absolutely everywhere - I've heard both sides argued - but that even if it could, the cost per kilowatt is sufficiently high to make it economically impractical. I'm far from well-informed on the subject, though, so don't quote that without checking it first.

[NickB79]

33. The key problems with wind: storage and transport

Wind is a peak energy source, not a baseload source like nuclear or coal. To turn wind into a baseload source, you need to build into it backup energy storage systems, such as batteries or flywheels.

A DU member on the environmental forum did a quick calculation using vanadium battery systems, a promising energy storage medium, to store enough wind energy to safely back up any windless periods of weather. The cost? 15 TRILLION dollars to convert the US to 100% wind power, with backups for 10 days worth of windless days. By comparison, a nuclear power plant can be built for 2-4 billion dollars (possibly less if a standardized model was used over and over again).

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x49639

Secondly, this doesn't solve the transport problem. All that wind power in the Dakotas can't be transmitted to either the West Coast or the East Coast due to massive power loss over long distances. The Great Plains wind resources can power the Great Plains, but not California or New York.

[DemonFighterLives]

13. This guy does see like a sellout according to some of the stuff

in this thread. As far a nuclear power is concerned, I think it is the best we have to date. A decent way needs to be found to get rid of the waste if possible.

[Ignacio Upton]

14. Unfortunately, we may have to resort to nuclear fission

Nuclear fusion, we should assume, will not be available baring a miraculous breakthrough. Peak Oil will force us to switch to fuel cells (which will come FROM nuclear power) and biodiesel.

[FredScuttle]

18. Sure....co-founder of Greenpeace

Just like Zell Miller's a Democrat.

[porphyrian]

21. Nuclear energy can be safe and clean.

The problems is with the corporations and governments who try to save a buck in building and maintaining them.

[Rosco T.]

23. Do a little reading on "Pebble Bed Reactors"...

you might be suprised at the research going on outside this country.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

34. Is this the same guy that's pro-GM foods?

Or is that somebody else?

And just how many co-founders of Greenpeace are there?

[KyuzoGator]

35. I'm inclined to agree.

I'd rather have a few tons of radioactive waste than millions of tons of greenhouse emissions. It's pretty simple math, really.