http://www.magna.com.au/~prfbrown/gaia.html
Now Here is James defending Nuclear Power:
We Need Nuclear Power, Says the Man Who Inspired the Greens As A Wide-Ranging Energy Policy Is under Way, James Lovelock, Independent Scientist And Inventor of Gaia Theory, Asks The Government to Revive Atomic Energy As An Alternative to Burning Fossil Fuels The Daily Telegraph London ( August 15, 2001 )
Our fear of all things nuclear has that same quality as our forefathers' fear of hell. We reject nuclear energy with the same unreasoning arguments that our ancestors would have used to reject geothermal energy, the effort to harness the heat of the Earth.
Compared with the imaginary dangers of nuclear power, the threat from the intensifying greenhouse effect seems all too real. I wholly support the Green wish to see all energy eventually come from renewable sources but I do not think that we have the time to wait until this happens.
Nuclear is the only practical energy source that we could apply in time to offset the threat from accumulating greenhouse gases. Greens could look on the use of nuclear power as a temporary bandage to be used until the harm from carbon burning has been remedied.
We do not know for certain the consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuel but a sizeable group of scientists, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), predicts a rise in global temperature of between 1.5C and 6C by the end of this century. This may not seem to be serious - the mid point, 3.5C, is less than half of the difference between spring and summer in Europe. Yet the consequences of a 3.5C global rise in temperature could be awesome. It is an increase comparable with the difference of the temperature of the Earth between the ice ages and the pre-industrial world of the 18th century.
It could change the world into a hotter place as different from our pleasant world of today as was the change from the glaciation. To comprehend the consequences, consider someone living 12,000 years ago in a coastal region of south-east Asia in the milder climate of the ice age tropics.
Who then could have imagined that in a short time the sea would rise 393ft (120 metres) and put beneath the waves an area of land equal in size to Africa? Who then would have predicted the emergence of the tropical rain forests and a five-fold decline in ocean life? Humans survived through these changes and will survive through those to come, but civilisation is more fragile.
This is why we have few options other than to use nuclear energy to supplement alternative energy and eliminate carbon fuel combustion.
Nuclear electricity is now a well-tried and soundly engineered practice that is both safe and economic; given the will it could be applied quickly. It is risky if improperly used but, even taking the Chernobyl disaster into account, it is, according to a recent Swiss study, by far the safest of the power industries.
Disinformation about its dangers sustains a climate of fearful ignorance and has artificially inflated the difficulties of disposing of nuclear waste and the cost of nuclear power. If permitted, I would happily store high-level waste on my own land and use the heat from it to warm my home. There seems no sensible reason why nuclear waste should not be disposed of in the deep subducting regions of the ocean where tectonic forces draw all deposits down into the magma.
We used to look on atomic energy as something desirable that would set us free. Its bad name is unjustified by scientific fact and comes in part from its association in our minds with nuclear weapons and the fear that ever accumulating stocks of nuclear explosive would lead to war.
The fear continues because we live uneasily with more than 1,000 tons of weapons grade plutonium and uranium in the world, but if we use nuclear power, as do the French, we could lessen this burden. The most practical way to reduce these stockpiles of uranium and plutonium is to use them as fuel in civilian reactors for power generation.
What stands against the use of nuclear power are not sensible scientific or economic arguments but a widespread, but unjustified, public fear and practical politics.
The Greens, have so frightened their supporters that a change of mind would be almost impossible. The old Left see it as a buttress of capitalism. They remember the failure of the coal miners' strike in the early Eighties, and how it was linked with nuclear power, which maintained a supply of electricity. To the old Left, this is an important human and political objection, but when the global consequences of fossil fuel combustion are fully recognised, I think that they will understand that such an objection is a luxury we can ill afford. Sometime in the coming century the first greenhouse catastrophe may happen and then we will look back and see what a vast disservice our politicians had done by neglecting the atom. Those so unwise as to order the closure of working nuclear power plants will have much to answer.
The accident at Chernobyl is almost always presented as if it were the greatest industrial disaster of the 20th century. Even the BBC, in a recent programme, stated that thousands had died there. Such exaggeration suspends rational thought and is an unnerving triumph of fiction over science. In fact, 45 died at Chernobyl, according to the UN report on the disaster, and many of them were the firemen and helicopter crews who tried to extinguish the fire. It was an awful event and should never have happened, but it was far less lethal than the smog of 1952, when 5,000 Londoners died from poisoning by coal smoke.
A fact about Chernobyl that is rarely mentioned is the unscheduled appearance of a wildlife park in the land nearby, which is considered too radioactive for people to enter. The animals and birds of the Ukraine find the absence of humans more than offsets the potential harm from radiation and live and breed there more successfully than on the uncontaminated ground outside their enclave.
The wildlife of Chernobyl know nothing about radiation and do not fear it. That they might live a little less long is of no great consequence to them.
I have wondered if the small volumes of nuclear waste from power production should be stored in tropical forests and other habitats in need of a reliable guardian against their destruction by greedy developers.
Nuclear power is unpopular but it is safer than power from fossil fuel. The worst that could happen, if Chernobyls became endemic, is that we lived a little less long in a mildly radioactive world. To me this is preferable to the loss of our hard-won civilisation in a greenhouse catastrophe.
James Lovelock is Honorary Visiting Fellow, Green College, Oxford University, and best known for his Gaia theory. Named after the Greek goddess of Earth by the novelist William Golding, Gaia theory says that creatures, rocks, air and water interact in subtle ways to ensure the environment remains stable.
Next month sees the publication of his latest book, Homage to Gaia: The Life of An Independent Scientist (OUP, pounds 8.99). The paperback is available for pounds 7.99 plus 99p postage through Telegraph Books Direct. To order please call 0870 155 7222 or write to 32-34 Park Royal Road, London NW10 7LN.
(C) 2001 The Daily Telegraph London. via Bell&Howell Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
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