A Renegade Against Greenpeace

NEWSWEEK ^ | Apr 21, 2008 | Fareed Zakaria

[george76]

Why he says they're wrong to view nuclear energy as 'evil'.

Moore: 'Gas costs three times as much as nuclear, at least … Solar costs 10 times as much.'

Patrick Moore is a critic of the environmental movement—an unlikely one at that. He was one of the cofounders of Greenpeace, and sailed into the Aleutian Islands on the organization's inaugural mission in 1971, to protest U.S. nuclear tests taking place there.

After leading the group for 15 years he left abruptly, and, in a controversial reversal, has become an outspoken advocate of some of the environmental movement's most detested causes, chief among them nuclear energy.

My belief, in retrospect, is that because we were so focused on the destructive aspect of nuclear technology and nuclear war, we made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons, as if all things nuclear were evil. And indeed today, Greenpeace still uses the word "evil" to describe nuclear energy. I think that's as big a mistake as if you lumped nuclear medicine in with nuclear weapons.

Nuclear medicine uses radioactive isotopes to successfully treat millions of people every year, and those isotopes are all produced in nuclear reactors.

That's why I left Greenpeace: I could see that my fellow directors, none of whom had any science education, were starting to deal with issues around chemicals and biology and genetics, which they had no formal training in, and they were taking the organization into what I call "pop environmentalism," which uses sensationalism, misinformation, fear tactics, etc., to deal with people on an emotional level rather than an intellectual level.

Other than hydroelectric energy—which I also strongly support—nuclear is the only technology besides fossil fuels available as a large-scale continuous power source...

[george76]

“’nuclear renaissance” ?

[george76]

California’s $3.2 billion in solar subsidies is all just going into Silicon Valley companies and consultants.

[Paradox]

This guy is right on the money, it looks like the idea is getting more MSM traction.

[I see my hands]

To: Patrick Moore

Guess what? Nuclear weapons aren't evil either.

[goldstategop]

Patrick Moore is a true environmentalist. The rest are con artists preying on people's emotions, both by blocking environmentally friendly and lifesaving technologies and by making everything else less accessible and more expensive. That sums up the modern environmental movement and its agenda in a nutshell.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[CedarDave]

See this related article:

New Mexico Suggested for Reactor Waste

[Dad yer funny]

FR bookmark

[skeptoid]

I'm a big Patrick Moore fan even though he has a Ph.D. in Ecology . . . because he also has a B.S. in Forest Biology, he grew up in a logging and fishing community on Vancouver Island and his old Greenpeace associates have labeled him an 'eco-Judas'!

I can't can't find my copy of his Pacific Spirit (the forest reborn) to quote from, but he has distilled it down to 18 pages in "Trees are the Answer" at his Greenspirit website and it's well worth the time if you want to understand the benefits of clearcutting.

May the Forest be with You

[OeOeO]

How many BTU’s can be extracted from your average enviro?

[Herakles]

“After leading the group for 15 years he left abruptly, and, in a controversial reversal, has become an outspoken advocate of some of the environmental movement's most detested causes, chief among them nuclear energy. “

Cram it clown; we don't need you now; the damage has been done and is not repairable.

Prepare for the end of the great American empire based on cheap energy! Prepare to watch your grandchildren chase chickens in the street for food - things are going to change big time and the screw-ups in DC and their commie leftist pinko wackos in the environmental movement are responsible!

It didn't need to be this way, but the Yimmy Carter and the democrats had a better idea.

[going hot]

depends on how well they...uh..have been dining.

[skeptoid]

Patrick Moore is a true environmentalist.

Courtesy Greenspirit Strategies Ltd

He is, indeed

. . . the last paragraphs of 'Trees are the Answer' at Greenspirit:

To conclude, let me take you back to the rainforest of the West Coast of North America. About 300 feet from my house in downtown Vancouver is Pacific Spirit Park, 2000 acres of beautiful native forest, right in the heart of the city. It is not a botanical garden where people come and prune the bushes and plant tulip bulbs, it is the real thing, a wild west coast rainforest full of Douglas-fir, western red cedar, hemlock, maple, alder and cherry. But people who come by the hundreds each day to walk on the many trails in Pacific Spirit Park would find it hard to believe that all 2000 acres were completely clearcut logged around the turn of the century to feed the sawmills that helped build Vancouver.

The loggers who clearcut Pacific Spirit Park with double-bitted axes and crosscut saws long before the chainsaw was invented didn't know the words ecology or biodiversity any more than my grandfather did on the north end of Vancouver Island. They just cut the timber and moved on to cut more somewhere else. Nothing was done to help restore the land, but it was left alone. It became part of the University of British Columbia Endowment Lands, and was not developed into housing like the rest of Vancouver. It all grew back into a beautiful new forest and in 1989 was declared a regional park.

In Pacific Spirit Park, there are Douglas-firs over four feet in diameter and over 120 feet tall. All of the beauty has returned to Pacific Spirit Park. The fertility has returned to the soil. And the biodiversity has recovered; the mosses, ferns, fungi, liverworts, and all the other small things that are part of a natural forest. There are pileated woodpeckers, barred owls, ravens, hawks, eagles, coyotes and a colony of great blue herons nesting in the second-growth cedar trees. It is a forest reborn, reborn from what is routinely described in the media as the "total and irreversible destruction of the environment". I don't buy that. I believe that if forests can recover by themselves from total and complete destruction, that with our growing knowledge of forest science in silviculture, biodiversity conservation, soils, and genetics; we can ensure that the forests of this world continue to provide an abundant, and hopefully growing, supply of renewable wood to help build and maintain our civilization while at the same time providing an abundant, and hopefully growing, supply of habitat for the thousands of other species that depend on the forest for their survival every day just as much as we do. The fact is, a world without forests is as unthinkable as a day without wood. And it's time that politicians, environmentalists, foresters, teachers, journalists, and the general public got that balance right. Because we must get it right if we are going to achieve sustainability in the 21st century.

May the Forest be With You

[skeptoid]

I'm assuming you caught this in the article: . . .

SNIP. . . As is now planned, I'd establish a recycling industry for nuclear fuel, which reduces the amount of waste to less than 10 percent of what it would be without recycling. How many Americans know that 50 percent of the nuclear energy being produced in the U.S. is now coming from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads? The environmental movement is going on about how terrible it will be if someone does something destructive with these materials. Well, actually the opposite is occurring: all over the world, people are using former nuclear-weapons material for peaceful purposes—swords into plowshares. . . . . SNIP

[gogogodzilla]

Depends... If you just burn the body, you get one figure.

But if you use thermal depolymerization to rend the body into a light, crude oil... you’ll get another.

:-P

[RightWhale]

The news reaches Newsweek several years after the news reached FR. It’s ancient enough to be showing up in school history and civics textbooks except for the little problem of GW heresy.

[george76]

Thanks

[jazusamo]

It’s good to see an environmentalist that’s not an enviro nut job!

Thanks for the ping.

[george76]

Some are surprised that an alleged environmentalist like Paul Watson has not killed him.

[Marine_Uncle]

Let us hope the clowns wake up and start going nuclear. We have so many river systems and such a huge coastline it is simply wrong to not be erecting nuclear power plants with how safe they can now be maintained. Wonder how many people who are against nuclear energy even have a clue as how much France for instance depends on it. Without that route they would be poor from having to depend solely on oil.