Nuclear meltdown is not an alternative to global warming

Whereas the 2010 Gulf Oil spill showed the inherent dangers of the oil economy, the current nuclear crisis in Japan shows that nuclear power is not a solution. As we approach the 25^th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, it’s time to shift away from both oil and nuclear and towards good green jobs for all.

TRIPLE CATASTROPHE, 
ONE AVOIDABLE

     Japan has been hit by the worst crisis since 1945, as an earthquake and tsunami have killed 10,000,  destroyed tens of thousands of buildings, displaced hundreds of thousands, and left millions without power or water. As the nation braces for more aftershocks, people have resorted to using sea water in an attempt to prevent a nuclear meltdown from adding a third catastrophe, which has already leaked and caused a mass evacuation. According to Greenpeace, 

"We are told by the nuclear industry that things like this cannot happen with modern reactors, yet Japan is in the middle of a nuclear crisis with potentially devastating consequences…The evolving situation at Fukushima remains far from clear, but what we do know is that contamination from the release of Cesium-137 poses a significant health risk to anyone exposed. Cesium-137 has been one if the isotopes causing the greatest health impacts following the Chernobyl disaster, because it can remain in the environment and food chain for 300 years.”

Whereas the first two catastrophe’s were natural and unpredictable, a nuclear meltdown is entirely unnatural and entirely predictable. According to the local anti-nuclear group, Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre,

"A nuclear disaster which the promoters of nuclear power in Japan said wouldn’t happen is in progress. It is occurring as a result of an earthquake that they said would not happen…and we warned that Japan's nuclear power plants could be subjected to much stronger earthquakes and much bigger tsunamis than they were designed to withstand.”

HEALTH MELTDOWN

     The nuclear crisis comes a month before the 25^th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the largest nuclear meltdown in history, which showered Europe in a radioactive cloud causing a quarter of a million cancers, 100,000 of them fatal. As of this writing the disaster in Japan is already the third worst in history, behind Chernobyl and the Three Mile Island partial meltdown in 1979, and comes only 12 years after a fatal overexposure of workers at a nuclear plant in Tokaimura, Japan. Even without the inherent risk of a meltdown, nuclear power is a threat to health. The problem is not just the few terrible times when they don't work, but the daily experience of when they do work. As climate campaigner George Monbiot wrote more than a decade ago, 

“The children of women who have worked in nuclear installations, according to a study by the National Radiological Protection Board, are eleven times more likely to contract cancer than the children of workers in non-radioactive industries. You can tell how close to [the nuclear plant in] Sellafield children live by the amount of plutonium in their teeth.”

Add to this the morbidity and mortality or working in uranium mines and the dangers of disposing of radioactive waste, and you have negative health impacts at every stage of nuclear power (for a summary see the UK’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). Despite this, governments have invested massively in the nuclear industry and globalized the risk. Canada has exported nuclear reactors while building seven of its own, and despite concerns about safety the Ontario government plans on investing $36 billion into nuclear power at the same time as its backing off wind power.

REASONS AND EXCUSES

     While nuclear power is a clear and present danger to the health of the planet and its people, it is a thriving industry driven by economic and military competition. Vandana Shiva—who studied nuclear physics and now leads the climate justice movement in India—has exposed the hypocrisy of US hostility to Iranian nuclear power when it is doing the same thing to promote nuclear power and weapons in India as a bulwark against China:

“the nuclear deal with India, in fact, shows the double standards of US nuclear policy, because for the same things that Iran does—Iran is "axis of evil"—but India here, through this nuclear agreement, is being told, we will separate civilian use and military use. Military use will be India’s sovereign decision. I don’t think it will be India’s sovereign decision, because I think in this deal is a strategic use of India for Asia, for a containment for China. But in addition to that, there is turning India into a nuclear market: a sale of nuclear technologies, of nuclear fuel…Not only will it spread nuclear risks and hazards in India, it will also allow corporations, like General Electric and others who pollute with carbon dioxide, as well as them, get quotas through emissions trading and markets for nuclear technology.”

As Shiva summarized in her book Soil Not Oil, “nuclear winter is not an alternative to global warming”, and it is a tragedy that Japan has become the test case against both military and civilian arms of the nuclear industry--from the atomic bomb 65 years ago to the nuclear meltdown today.  But instead of admitting the problems of nuclear power, the nuclear industry and its supporters have greenwashed it and presented it as a solution to global warming. Some environmentalists, such as Gaia theorist James Lovelock, have fallen prey to these claims. Lovelock, whose ideas are driven by apocalyptic predictions and an extreme pessimism, has gone so far as to claim that  “nuclear power is the only green solution”.

     While former US president George Bush defended his country’s 103 nuclear power plants as not producing "a single pound of air pollution or greenhouses gases”, Dr. Helen Caldicott has refuted the claim in her important book Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, which proves that even without meltdowns nuclear power is a threat to the planet:

“Nuclear power is not ‘clean and green,’ as the industry claims, because large amounts of traditional fossil fuels are required to mine and refine the uranium needed to run nuclear power reactors, to construct the massive concrete reactor buildings, and to transport and store the toxic radioactive waste created by the nuclear process. Burning of this fossil fuel emits significant quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2)—the primary “greenhouse gas”—into the atmosphere. In addition, large amounts of the now-banned chlorofluorocarbon gas (CFC) are emitted during the enrichment of uranium. CFC gas is not only 10,000 to 20,000 times more efficient as an atmospheric heat trapper (‘greenhouse gas’) than CO2, but it is a classic ‘pollutant’ and a potent destroyer of the ozone layer. While currently the creation of nuclear electricity produces only one-third the amount of CO2 emitted from a similar-sized, conventional gas generator, this is a transitory statistic. Over several decades, as the concentration of available uranium ore declines, more fossil fuels will be required to extract the ore from less concentrated ore veins. Within ten to twenty years, nuclear reactors will produce no net energy because of the massive amounts of fossil fuel that will be necessary to mine and to enrich the remaining poor grades of uranium.”

The false dichotomy between carbon emissions and nuclear power is also refuted by those developing the Tar Sands, who have proposed using nuclear power to pump Tar Sands oil.

 

PEOPLE POWER, GREEN JOBS

     Fortunately there are growing anti-nuclear campaigns uniting indigenous groups, NGOs and the broader climate justice movement to challenge nuclear power in all its stages—from mining to use to waste disporal. As Vandana Shiva writes in Soil Not Oil, 

“in 2005, the Navajo banned mining on their reservations, which covers 27,000 square miles across part of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. In Australia, where the world’s largest deposits of uranium are located, movements have forced companies to restrict mining to 10 percent of the reserves and the Australian government has recognized the aboriginal owners’ right to veto mining on their land.”

Meanwhile in Canada indigenous groups are leading opposition to transportation of nuclear waste through the Great Lakes and their surrounding communities, declaring “what we do to the land, we do to ourselves.” Last year the German government extended nuclear power against the will of the majority but after news of the leak in Japan, 50,000 people formed a human chain from a nuclear reactor to Stuttgart demanding an end to nuclear power. 

     Uniting these campaigns with the labour movement raises the demands of good green jobs for all, to transform our oil and nuclear economy into one based on ecological and social sustainability and justice. Instead of the billions in subsidies for the nuclear industry, governments could be investing in solar, wind and clean electricity, while retrofitting buildings, which could solve the economic and climate crises without the inherent dangers of nuclear power. As Greenpeace wrote,

"Our thoughts continue to be with the Japanese people as they face the threat of a nuclear disaster, following already devastating earthquake and tsunami. The authorities must focus on keeping people safe, and avoiding any further releases of radioactivity...Greenpeace is calling for the phase out of existing reactors, and no construction of new commercial nuclear reactors. Governments should invest in renewable energy resources that are not only environmentally sound but also affordable and reliable.”

Australia's floods: the wave of the future?

Within a few weeks of the global climate summit at Cancun--where governments refused to commit to the deep reductions in emissions required to stop climate change--floods “of biblical proportions” in Australia have revealed the costs of continuing the status quo. Far from being a "natural disaster", the floods are a result of climate change driven by an economy addicted to oil and coal, and highlight the urgent need to shift to a green economy. 

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE

     Massive floods the size of France and Germany have submerged the Queensland area of Australia affecting 200,000 people, and raising concerns of water-born disease and encounters with rodents and poisonous snakes looking for shelter. By immersing a major portion of Australia’s production, the floods will also ripple through the world economy. According to the Financial Times:

“Australia is the world’s biggest exporter of coking coal used for steel-making and accounts for about two-thirds of global trade. It is also the second-biggest exporter of thermal coal used for power generation. Queensland also accounts for nearly all of the country’s sugar production and export… Australia is also the world’s fourth-largest wheat exporter. Although Queensland provides only a small fraction of the total harvest, floods could cause as much as half the crop – 10m tonnes – to be downgraded to less than milling quality.”  

UNNATURAL DISASTER

     The floods are being called a “natural disaster”, blamed on cyclones intensified by La Nina. But while these are weather phenomenon that occur periodically, what is happening now in Australia is unprecedented.  According to state premier Anna Bligh ,

“This is a disaster on an unprecedented scale and it is going to take an unprecedented, sustained effort to rebuild regional Queensland…we’ve had big floods before. We’re a tropical state. But we’ve never had them over so many towns, so many cities and had so much public infrastructure at risk because of the size of the area.”  

     These floods come just a year after historic bushfires near Melbourne, and are the last act of the devastating climate-related disasters of 2010 , the hottest year on record, which produced historic floods in Nashville and Pakistan, fires in Russia, and drought in the Amazon.

     While Australia, Canada, the US and others recently refused to tackle climate change at Cancun, they did agree to continue the oil-driven occupation of Afghanistan, which Autralian Prime Minister Julia Gillard promised would continue “through this decade at least ”. Meanwhile Australia continues unsustainable coal production that contributes to global warming, while Canada is killing the planet with tar sands. The oil and coal addicted economy is producing escalating unnatural disasters, with the floods in Australia just a taste of what’s to come unless global warming can be stopped.

DIFFERENTIAL DISASTERS

     Neither the floods nor their impact are purely natural. While Australia and other major powers have done the most to produce global warming, their economic development shields them somewhat from the human costs. Despite the volume of water, there has been relatively few casualties compared to the floods in Pakistan—where poverty, continual US drone attacks, and governmental allegiance to the “war on terror” including intentional flooding of civilian areas to save a US military base —combined to magnify disaster. 

     Similarly Western-backed militarism, poverty and deforestation in Haiti created a context for a 7.0 earthquake to kill 250,000 people, when the same or greater intensity quakes in New Zealand and Chile produced a fraction of the death toll. But this economic advantage is like having a better seat on the Titanic.

DISASTER CAPITALISM

     States and corporations are locked in competition for profit at any cost, that prevents them from collaborating to combat climate change. The inundation of a part of Australia, while threatening to cause a food crisis, has been celebrated in other quarters, from Alberta wheat producers to American coal companies. According to the Globe and Mail  

“Rising coal prices are set to spike at least 20 per cent higher because of supply shortages due to severe flooding in Australia...The severe supply disruption has been a boon for Canadian producers. Shares of three major Canadian coal companies hit all-time highs on Tuesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.” 

     Reconstruction of Queensland should include an unprecedented and sustained investment in green jobs, shifting from coal to solar and wind power, and diverting military spending into paying the climate debt owned to the Global South that is threatened with worse disasters. This could provide an alternative green and peaceful wave of the future, to save us all from the rising waters of climate change. 

Cholera: the latest war against Haitian democracy

A cholera outbreak in Haiti has killed more than 250 people killed, and infected more than 3300, in just over one week. Five of those infected were in the capital of Port-au-Prince, raising the specter of a mass epidemic. According to Imogen Wall, spokeswoman for the United Nations humanitarian office in Haiti, "It's tragedy upon tragedy for Haiti. We're working on a worst-case scenario. We're planning for a national outbreak."

     Worse than a tragedy, this is a crime. Cholera is terrifying but easily preventable and treatable. Spread through contaminated water it causes such severe diarrhea that it can kill through dehydration in a matter of hours. But it is treated with large volumes of simple fluids—either intravenous or oral rehydration—and can be prevented with clean water and proper sanitation. The science of cholera prevention has existed for 150 years, ever since Dr. John Snow famously plotted the deaths of a London outbreak on a map and found them to centre around a contaminated water pipe. When he persuaded the authorities to shut off the pump the number of cholera cases dropped.
     Rudolf Vircow, who studied epidemics at the time of Snow, concluded that “if disease is an expression of individual life under unfavourable circumstances, then epidemics must be indicative of mass disturbances”. The emergence of a cholera epidemic in Haiti, like the massive death toll following the January earthquake, exposes the mass disturbance imposed on Haiti by centuries of foreign intervention.

THE WAR AGAINST HAITIAN DEMOCRACY
     Two-hundred years ago Haitians carried out the only successful slave revolution. But France forced them to pay $21 billion for “lost property”, which it took over a century to pay. Throughout the 20th century the US has interfered in Haitian development, invading in 1915 and staying for 20 years, and supporting the Duvalier dictatorship from 1957-1986. The people of Haiti overthrew the dictatorship in 1986, but was saddled with its debt. The IMF provided loans that forced Haiti to privatize services and slash tariffs on rice, which destroyed the agricultural sector and drove people into sweat-shops in Port-au-Prince. The lack of local agriculture has made Haiti dependent on food aid, and--along with poverty and the privatization of electricity--forced Haitians to cut down the forests for income and charcoal for fuel.

     Twice Haitians have voted for Jean Bertrand Aristide—to restore services and raise wages—and  twice he has been overthrown by coups, in 1991 and 2004. Since then Haitians have protested against the occupying UN force, which has done nothing to improve their lives. The war against Haitian democracy has a political purpose that connects back to the original overthrow of slavery. As Haitian-Canadian Ronald Charles explained on the Real News

“you have a country independent for 200 years now, and from the beginning that was a bad example in the eyes of the big powers of the time. So when some people would say, look at them after more than 200 years look at their condition. So all the people around the world, all the people fighting for liberation, for freedom, the colonial powers will point Haiti to them and say look. For example, In Martinique and Guadelope they had elections to see if people wanted to be independent from France, some people said we don’t want that, and one of the arguments is look at Haiti. And many big powers want to use Haiti as an example of what not to do.”

NATURAL EARTHQUAKE, UNNATURAL DEATH TOLL
     Centuries of deliberate interference in Haitian democracy paved the way for two “natural disasters” this year, one geological and one biological. While a 7.0 earthquake in San Francisco in 19189 killed less than 60 people, and 7.0 earthquake in New Zealand this year killed 2, and a 9.0 earthquake in Chile this year killed 1000, a 7.0 earthquake in Haiti killed 230,000.

     This had less to do with events under the ground as on top of them—where centuries of foreign intervention has turned a wealthy and lush nation into an impoverished deforested nation, concentrated in urban slums, living in inadequately built houses on eroded soil, with almost non-existent governmental services, in the midst of a multimillion dollar occupation force that interferes with democracy and development. That the earthquake was so deadly after 6 years of UN occupation exposes its true purpose. According to Peter Hallward, author of Damning the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment:

“The international community has been effectively ruling Haiti since the 2004 coup. The same countries scrambling to send emergency help to Haiti now, however, have during the last five years consistently voted against any extension of the UN missions’ mandate beyond its immediate military purpose. Proposals to divert some of this ‘investment’ towards poverty reduction or agrarian development have been blocked.”

CHOLERA
     The same factors that produced a large earthquake death toll have produced conditions for the emergence of cholera. Partners in Health explain how the  environmental destruction of Haiti has magnified natural disasters, which have destroyed infrastructure—along with poverty—concentrated the population in overcrowded areas with poor sanitation:

 “in Gonaives the capital of the Artibonite has been destroyed in two waves of floods and mudslides, after tropical storm Jeanne in 2004 and after the series of hurricanes in 2008, made possible because of the environmental devastation of the region. The destruction contaminated the water supply and left the infrastructure (including the health infrastructure) of the upper Artibonite in ruins, forcing people to seek residence and medical care in St. Marc. The St. Marc region itself experienced significant flooding in 2008, displacing thousands of people. Lastly, the earthquake of January 12, 2010 resulted in the displacement of 1.7 million Haitians. While reliable statistics are not available currently, the last estimate, as of March of 2010 was that 300,000 addition Haitians had fled Port au Prince to the Artibonite. As there are no “camps” in the region, these displaced persons are “home hosted”—joining poor relatives in already overcrowded conditions, without water security or adequate sanitation. The dispersal of displaced people makes it difficult to provide centralized services.”

     In addition, Haitians are subject to poverty and a lack of food (reducing immunity), lack of transportation (impacting the precious hours between infection and death for those who have to travel to seek healthcare), and lack of healthcare. Coming 9 months after the quake, the cholera epidemic exposes how little “aid” has been provided since the quake. While ordinary Canadians delved deep into their pockets and organized fundraisers across the country, our government cynically used aid to justify a military response to the quake while announcing huge aid sums that clearly weren’t delivered. Harper announced $1 billion in aid for Haiti, and yet clearly Haitians don’t have access to the most basic services.

BIOLOGICAL WARFARE
     This is not first time the great powers have colluded in cholera epidemics, doing John Snow’s experiment in reverse. In their Orwellian-named “Sourcebook on Community Driven Development in the Africa Region—Community Action Programs”, the World Bank pushed African nations to privatize their water, explaining that “work is still needed with political leaders in some national governments to move away from the concept of free water for all.” The South African government followed suit by installing pre-paid water meters that cut people off from free water. Predictably, those who couldn’t pay drank stream water, resulting in an epidemic of cholera that killed 180 and infected 80,000.
     During the Gulf War and the sanctions that followed, the US intentionally destroyed Iraq’s water treatment facilities and blocked the importation of required equipment, knowing it could lead to cholera. As intelligence documents explain: “failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease…unless the water is purified with chlorine, epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid could occur.”
     While Bush junior was sounding the alarm on Iraq’s supposed “weapons of mass destruction”, he was maintaining sanctions that spread cholera in Iraq, while cutting funding to water treatment in Haiti. Before joining Canada to overthrow the democratically elected Aristide, Bush waged an economic war that included cutting funding for water sanitation—including to the Artibonite region currently affected by cholera. As Partners in Health explain:

“In 2000, a set of loans from the Inter American Development Bank to the government of Haiti for water, sanitation and health were blocked for political reasons. The city of St. Marc (population 220,000) and region of the lower Artibonite (population 600,000) were among the areas slated for upgrading of the public water supply. This project was delayed more than a decade and has not yet been completed. We believe secure and free access to clean water is a basic human right that should be delivered through the public sector and that the international community’s failure to assist the government of Haiti in developing a safe water supply has been violation of this basic right.” 

WATER, DEMOCRACY, AND REPARATIONS
     Humans are made up mainly of water, making access to water our most basic and life-sustaining right. That 100,000 people around the world continue to die of cholera, 150 years after its prevention was discovered, is a clear indication that people’s most basic rights are being ignored. According to Dr. Lyon from Partners in Health:

“70% of the population have no access to clean water or sanitation. People cannot protect themselves. So the country is terrified at this point. It’s a terrifying situation rooted in the lack of infrastructure, lack of sanitation and clean water, which has been very clearly slowed down by manipulation from the outside…cholera will not go away in Haiti until the conditions that make people vulnerable are changed”.

In Haiti, the fight against cholera is part of the fight for democracy--which includes the right to water, the right to their democratically-elected president Aristide instead of an unwanted UN occupation,  and the right to reparations for $21 billion taken as punishment for a slave revolution that should be celebrated. 

capitalism + climate change + war = disaster in Pakistan

The massive floods in Pakistan that affect 20 million people are far from a random “natural disaster”. Rather, they are a predictable result of global warming, capitalist development, and US-backed war.

There have been 12 major floods in Pakistan since 1973, and three years ago the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of worse floods to come due to global warming. 2010 is the hottest year in recorded history, which has brought Russia’s worst heat wave, massive forest fires in BC, a huge ice island to break off Greenland’s glacier, and devastating floods in China and Pakistan. The current floods that have inundated one fifth of Pakistan have displaced one million people, killed 2,000, partially or totally destroyed 722,000 homes, and raised the threat of a cholera epidemic.

This disaster is not simply from record monsoon rainfall but the country it landed on, which has been decimated by profit-driven “development”. According to Riaz Ahmed, a socialist based in Karachi: “Cities like Mianwali and Charsadda have been allowed to drown in order to save dams and hydroelectric stations. Military installations have been saved, but entire villages have been submerged because budget cuts have meant the loss of vital riverbank defences. And forests and jungles have been plundered by millionaire-owned timber businesses. This has created soil erosion and the destruction of natural defenses that can prevent flooding. Local and national governments have awarded the contracts for this kind of work, knowing the dangers.”

Rescue-workers are unable to reach 600,000 in the Swat valley, where the flood waters have inundated a region weakened by war. Last year the Pakistani military launched a war against resistance movements in the Swat valley, trying to clear a path for the US to its bases in Afghanistan. Obama has followed up with drone attacks, which have continued despite the humanitarian catastrophe. These combined attacks have destroyed bridges and roads, and displaced vast numbers into refugee camps.

The “war on terror” helped create the current disaster, and is now undermining relief efforts. In the first few days of flooding Pakistan’s President Zardari was on a European tour pledging loyalty to the “war on terror”, and refused to cut it short—leading many to call the floods “Zardari’s Katrina”. The United Nations has appealed for $460 million for relief, but the same countries spreading climate change and war refuse to meet that goal. The US, the world’s largest polluter, provides Pakistan with $1 billion in military aid that has been used to bomb its own country, but initially only offered $10 million for flood relief. Meanwhile, the Harper government, which promotes the environmentally destructive Tar Sands and promises $18 billion for new fighter jets, initially only pledged $2 million for humanitarian relief.[5] Islamophobia surrounding the “war on terror” has weakened donations, but still an outpouring of support has pressured Western powers to increase their pledges.

The people of Pakistan need not only urgent humanitarian aid, but an end to war and climate change, and an economy that puts people and the planet above profits.