JANICE HARVEY
October 24th, 2007
When you come to the environmental movement through the nuclear lens,
as I did, you immediately find yourself at a unique point on a wide
spectrum of environmental concern.
It is a not a point on the spectrum concerned about management or
mitigation or middle ground – the “how-” where most issues sit. It is
a position that is fundamentally about saying “no.” It is about
drawing a line in the sand of human endeavour and not crossing it. It
is a stand against the modern scientific conceit that whatever can be
done should be done and the political conceit that there is a
distinction between the peaceful atom and the military atom.
It is an ethical position that says there are some things we simply
should not do, for the consequences of unleashing the power of the
atom are so grave – so utterly deadly – as to preclude human ability
to properly handle the responsibility it imposes. Those consequences
will be visited upon generation after generation as the mutagenic
effects of radiation work their way through the gene pool.
This is not a popular position, for it implies limits on human
activity and ability in a world ideologically committed to limitless
growth and capacity.
A similar concern is inherent in the debate over genetic engineering.
Novelist and microbiologist Barbara Kingsolver captured the essence of
this in her must-read 2002 essay, Reflections on the Genetic
Manipulation of Life. She subtitled the essay, “A fist in the eye of
God,” a phrase she attributed to Joan Dye Gussow, a prominent thinker
and writer on food issues.
The comparison is apt, since genes and atoms share the same
foundational space in Gaia’s composition. When you mess with them, you
mess with the sacred.
Religious or not, the point is that with nuclear and genetic
engineering enterprises, there are ethical boundaries that should not
be crossed because the very real implications for life on earth – now
and generations down the road – are unthinkable.
Dr. Helen Caldicott catapulted this view into public consciousness
when the National Film Board documentary, If You Love this Planet,
which featured Dr. Calidcott and won an Academy Award in 1982. A
pediatric physician, she has dedicated the past 35 years to an
international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards
of the nuclear age.
Born in Australia, where she earned her medical degree, she played a
major role in securing Australia’s opposition to French nuclear
testing in the Pacific and New Zealand’s ban on all-things nuclear,
and in educating trade unions on the dangers of uranium mining. She
moved to Boston in the 1970s, where she was an instructor in
pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and practised at the Children’s
Hospital Medical Centre. In 1980, she resigned to work full-time on
the prevention of nuclear war.
She co-founded Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization
of 23,000 doctors advocating about the dangers of nuclear power,
nuclear weapons and nuclear war and whose international counterpart
won the Nobel Peace Prize, as well as the STAR Foundation (Standing
for Truth about Radiation), and the Nuclear Policy Research Institute
in Washington, DC.
Dr. Caldicott has received 19 honorary doctoral degrees, was
personally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Nobel laureate Linus
Pauling, and was named by the Smithsonian Institution as one of the
most influential women of the 20th century.
Her books include Nuclear Madness, If You Love this Planet, War in
Heaven (her latest), and Nuclear Power is Not the Answer (2006).
This latter book was the subject of her lecture at St. Thomas
University last week. We are investing heavily in what some are
calling a nuclear renaissance. Our government is pursuing a second
nuclear reactor, a nuclear centre of excellence, and is
enthusiastically promoting uranium exploration. This path is not
without cost, Dr. Caldicott warned.
The inevitable byproduct of the nuclear fuel chain, from uranium
mining and refining to fuel fabrication, power generators and/or
nuclear weapons, to the wastes associated with each link, is
radioactive pollution – invisible, indelible, carcinogenic, mutagenic.
With latency periods (the time it takes from exposure to when cancer
is detected) ranging from five to 60 years, most nuclear operations
escape scrutiny as contributors to cancer and other illness (uranium
mines and Chernobyl fall-out sites are the exception).
In this age of global warming, society is being asked to trade its
carbon footprint for a radioactive footprint. It is a Faustian bargain.
We should have none of it. There are better ways to boil water to make
electricity than splitting atoms.
Janice Harvey is a freelance writer and a long-time director of the
Conservation Council of New Brunswick. She can be reached by e-mail at
waweig@nbnet.nb.ca. Her column appears on Wednesday.
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