cancel2 2022
Canceled
George Monbiot leading light in the Green movement backs nuclear power, he answers many of the questions that doubters have had over the years. I particularly like this quote from the article.
Of his latest intervention, he says: “We live in a world of bullshit and I see my task as trying to sift it. I have a thick skin, but it does trouble me when I receive criticism from within the movements I feel I belong to. From time to time, I receive a great deal of vitriol. That has been the case in the last couple of days. But I’m not in a beauty contest here. I’m not trying to win friends. I’m just trying to say what I think is true.”
After Japan, this green guru’s gone pro-nuclear
http://www.timesplus.co.uk/sto/?log....uk/sto/newsreview/features/article587582.ece
Until Fukushima, George Monbiot took a neutral view of atomic energy. Now, he is in favour - because the disaster shows we can handle it
John-Paul Flintoff Published: 27 March 2011
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/multimedia/dynamic/00139/monbiot_139963k.jpg
George Monbiot says radiation leaks will be less harmful than climate change (Richard Stanton)
Last week George Monbiot, the environmental writer, sat down at his computer and typed sentences like grenades, calculated to explode in the face of fellow greens. “You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power,” he wrote in The Guardian. “You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.”
Boom!
The accident at Japan’s Fukushima plant was very bad, he conceded. “Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation ... Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small.”
Isn’t it a bit early to say? “Unless something very big and unexpected happens,” he told The Sunday Times, “I think we have seen the worst of it. We have a pretty good idea these days what kind of dose makes someone ill, enhances the risk of cancer, or makes them die. And so far there has been no sign of anything even approaching what in humanitarian terms could be described as a catastrophe. It doesn’t touch the impacts of climate change.”
And so far there has been no sign of anything even approaching what in humanitarian terms could be described as a catastrophe His change of heart has enraged former comrades on the eco barricades. Caroline Lucas, Britain’s first Green party MP, was quick to disagree: “Although George Monbiot and I agree on most things, on nuclear power we part company.”
Jeremy Leggett, founder of a solar power business, was with Lucas: if people such as Monbiot back nuclear power, Leggett fears, political support, and funding, will fall away from renewable sources of energy. On the internet, old enemies cheered Monbiot while supposed friends cursed him.
One comment hints at the feelings of betrayal: “Wow, add one more to the list of green traitors ... Let’s site a nuclear plant in his back yard and make him eat the waste.”
As this suggests, he is not the first green champion to have jumped the fence. James Lovelock, who formulated the Gaia theory, which proposes that the world is a single, self-regulating organism, lost friends in 2004 when he first endorsed nuclear power as the only energy source realistically capable of feeding our requirements while also reducing greenhouse emissions.
more at link (requires membership)...
Of his latest intervention, he says: “We live in a world of bullshit and I see my task as trying to sift it. I have a thick skin, but it does trouble me when I receive criticism from within the movements I feel I belong to. From time to time, I receive a great deal of vitriol. That has been the case in the last couple of days. But I’m not in a beauty contest here. I’m not trying to win friends. I’m just trying to say what I think is true.”
After Japan, this green guru’s gone pro-nuclear
http://www.timesplus.co.uk/sto/?log....uk/sto/newsreview/features/article587582.ece
Until Fukushima, George Monbiot took a neutral view of atomic energy. Now, he is in favour - because the disaster shows we can handle it
John-Paul Flintoff Published: 27 March 2011
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/multimedia/dynamic/00139/monbiot_139963k.jpg
George Monbiot says radiation leaks will be less harmful than climate change (Richard Stanton)
Last week George Monbiot, the environmental writer, sat down at his computer and typed sentences like grenades, calculated to explode in the face of fellow greens. “You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power,” he wrote in The Guardian. “You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.”
Boom!
The accident at Japan’s Fukushima plant was very bad, he conceded. “Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation ... Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small.”
Isn’t it a bit early to say? “Unless something very big and unexpected happens,” he told The Sunday Times, “I think we have seen the worst of it. We have a pretty good idea these days what kind of dose makes someone ill, enhances the risk of cancer, or makes them die. And so far there has been no sign of anything even approaching what in humanitarian terms could be described as a catastrophe. It doesn’t touch the impacts of climate change.”
And so far there has been no sign of anything even approaching what in humanitarian terms could be described as a catastrophe His change of heart has enraged former comrades on the eco barricades. Caroline Lucas, Britain’s first Green party MP, was quick to disagree: “Although George Monbiot and I agree on most things, on nuclear power we part company.”
Jeremy Leggett, founder of a solar power business, was with Lucas: if people such as Monbiot back nuclear power, Leggett fears, political support, and funding, will fall away from renewable sources of energy. On the internet, old enemies cheered Monbiot while supposed friends cursed him.
One comment hints at the feelings of betrayal: “Wow, add one more to the list of green traitors ... Let’s site a nuclear plant in his back yard and make him eat the waste.”
As this suggests, he is not the first green champion to have jumped the fence. James Lovelock, who formulated the Gaia theory, which proposes that the world is a single, self-regulating organism, lost friends in 2004 when he first endorsed nuclear power as the only energy source realistically capable of feeding our requirements while also reducing greenhouse emissions.
more at link (requires membership)...
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