Not long ago, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was
America�s top op-ed cheerleader for George W. Bush�s attack on Iraq, portraying
it as a �war for democracy.�
Now, in a landmark Times Magazine article, he claims naming
rights to a �green� movement for nuke power and �clean coal,� portraying them
as part of the answer to global warming.
This is VERY dangerous stuff.
But before we proceed, this Earth Day we can welcome the
fact that major media types like Friedman finally do concede that we have a
global climate crisis. The din of Al Gore�s �Inconvenient Truth� has corporate
bigwigs lining up to be washed green. For that much, we can all be grateful.
There is much that�s positive in Friedman�s writings about
the need for emission-free energy. Most of it derives from countless concerned
citizens seeking a Solartopian system based on solar, wind, bio-fuels,
efficiency and a truly Earth-based culture.
Friedman never acknowledges them. But tens of thousands of
grassroots activists have contributed decades of loving labor, often including
jail time (mostly at reactor sites), to give birth to that vision.
Normally, a social movement would welcome the embrace of a
New York Times columnist. For a major establishment mouthpiece to start
spouting ideas for which so many have marched should be a deeply gratifying
accomplishment.
But Friedman�s sales pitch also sanctifies nukes and coal.
In a single horrifying phrase, he writes in the Times Magazine that �to reach
the necessary scale of emissions-free energy will require big clean coal or
nuclear power stations, wind farms and solar farms.�
Thus, in Tom Friedman�s new eco-Orwellian �greenspeak,�
atomic energy and �clean coal� have become the equivalents of solar and wind
power.
This is a suicidal double deception.
�Clean coal� is the ultimate atmospheric oxymoron. Fossil
fuel corporations justify it with �carbon sequestration,� the idea of pumping
C02 emissions into caverns and other underground storage facilities.
In other words: Yucca Mountain for the coal business. The
technology is unproven and the gas is certain, sooner or later, to leak out.
Continued coal mining -- even with a green veneer -- will devastate landscapes,
kill miners, cause acid rain and prolong the world�s dependence on fossil fuel.
Worse is the proven 50-year failure of nuke power. Atomic
reactors are pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction. Nothing can
guarantee their safety from a terror attack.
Fifty years ago the Price-Anderson Act gave federal
protection to save reactor owners from paying for a major disaster. No private
insurer has stepped into the void, not for the past generation of reactors, nor
for the future.
There is also no solution to the waste problem. Yucca
Mountain, the multibillion dollar alleged storage dump, cannot open for at
least two decades. It is capped with perched water, marbled with an earthquake
fault and surrounded by (so far) dormant volcanoes like itself. If it opens at
all, it will be a casino, in one form or another.
Nukes also spew huge quantities of radioactive radon from
the billions of tons of tailings that sit near uranium mines and mills. That
uranium is in increasingly short supply, with prices bound to skyrocket.
The enrichment of reactor fuel creates huge global warming
emissions. The nukes themselves pump out direct heat, harming air and water.
Radioactive emissions kill billions of fish and other life forms, including
humans. Near-misses, as at Ohio�s Davis-Besse, which was a bare shred of thin
metal away from a catastrophic meltdown, are all too frequent. Sooner or later,
by terror or error, we must expect the worst.
Friedman mourns that the meltdown at Three Mile Island
caused huge quantities of carbon-emitting coal to be burned for replacement
power. But if the $900 million it took to build TMI had been invested in real
green energy and efficiency, all those emissions could have been cheaply and
safely avoided, then, now and into the future. Take the additional $2 billion
required to deal with the seething radioactive mess and we could have had a
countryside layered with safe, clean, cheap solar and wind farms.
Friedman never interviews the thousands of central
Pennsylvanians who demanded the nuke not be built in the first place. Nor does
he mention the 2,400 locals who�ve tried for two decades to get a class action
trial on the death and disease caused by the 1979 meltdown�s radioactive
emissions. To this day, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not know how
much fallout escaped from TMI, where it went, who it affected or what harm it
did.
Friedman instead talks to TMI�s newly greenwashed corporate
biggies. More nukes would be a great solution to global warming, they say. But
they complain that a new reactor could not come on line for, perhaps, 15 years.
And private investment won�t do the trick. Government loan guarantees will be
required, they moan, because when it comes to energy, the market �doesn�t work.�
That�s an amazing admission for a free market ideologue like
Friedman. What he can�t face is that the market DOES work for nuclear power,
because nobody in their right mind will invest in it without gargantuan
subsidies and insurance protection. Only a Bush-style intervention like the one
for �democracy� in Iraq will finance new reactor construction.
The real numbers on both existing and new nukes are
disastrous. The current generation only looks profitable because the wave of
utility deregulation that swept the US a few years ago forced the public to eat
the true capital costs.
Back then Friedman yelled that a free market in energy would
yield competition and lower prices. But with fake shortages and market
manipulations, Enron and its corporate cohorts gouged California and other
states for more than $100 billion. Nowhere in the deregulated US is there
meaningful competition in electricity. Nor is there an accurate accounting for
the true costs of atomic power.
In the 1990s, California�s REAL green power movement wanted
to install some 600 megawatts of solar, wind and efficiency. That was killed by
John Bryson, the �green� chair of Southern California Edison. Bryson then used
deregulation to write off the multi-billion-dollar capital costs of four reactors.
And then came Enron, to gouge and go bankrupt.
Now Friedman and his fossil/nuke cohorts ask that we repeat
the experience in the name of global warming.
We can certainly say �thanks� to him for finally waking up
to the climate crisis. But we must also say �no thanks� to fossil fuels and
nuclear power.
The Solartopian solution embraces wind, solar, bio-fuels and
other truly renewable sources, along with increased efficiency. Wall Street is
lining up to invest in these technologies, which have high rates of real
return, both financial and ecological.
We�ve seen the horrific results of Tom Friedman�s advocacy
of utility deregulation. We�ve tasted the bitter fruits of his cheerleading for
the war in Iraq.
Why would we now buy his fossil/nukes, which are no more
green than the climate crisis itself?
Between the lines of Friedman�s columns there�s a lethal
brew of carbon emissions and radioactive crud. Every dime spent on �clean coal�
or �safe nukes� will only make things worse.
We�re glad so many corporate moguls finally feel compelled
to line up at the media greenwash. But there�s no need to buy in to their
proven failures.
The real solution to climate chaos is the Solartopian
Trinity of solar, wind and bio-fuels, with increased efficiency and the return
of mass transit. Accept no substitutes.
Harvey
Wasserman is author of SOLARTOPIA: OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030 (www.solartopia.org). Long ago he
pondered the true meaning of being green in jail cells near the Seabrook and
Diablo Canyon nuclear plants. Read more of his columns at www.freepress.org.