Uranium's New Ally: Environmentalists

[farbersa <farbersa@optonline.net>]

Hi everyone including anti-nuclear activists who often post to radsafe.

Found this interesting article from www.caseyresearch.com, an investment  

newsletter which is worth reading.



Stewart Farber, MSPH

[203] 367-0791

=================

Uranium's New Ally: Environmentalists



By Dave Forest

November 19, 2004



www.caseyresearch.com



In 2000, the world's top environmentalist, James Lovelock - pioneer of the  

"Gaia hypothesis" on the interconnectedness of life on our planet - stood  

nervously before a meeting of Friends of the Earth members. He had come to  

deliver a new message to his peers, a message he wasn't certain they were  

ready to hear.



The time has come for us to go nuclear.



The statement, which stunned Lovelock's audience, was the culmination of  

some hard thinking that led him to the conclusion that global warming was  

the single greatest environmental danger facing humanity. Fossil fuels  

were killing the planet. But what could be done? Alternative power sources  

- solar, wind, geothermal - weren't nearly at the stage to provide  

substantial relief. Something else would have to save the Earth.



Just before the Friends of the Earth meeting, Lovelock had spent time  

talking with Bruno Comby, a man with an answer. Comby was a nuclear  

physicist by training, who had spent several years working for the nuclear  

industry in France. Concerned over what he felt were larger problems  

facing the world, Comby quit his job to start a natural-living research  

organization focused on organic gardening, air pollution, and, of course,  

climate change. But the more he studied environmental issues, the more he  

thought back to his old line of work. Nuclear power, he realized, was the  

clean energy solution that the Earth desperately needed. Comby wrote a  

book on the subject and founded the advocacy group Environmentalists for  

Nuclear Energy (EFN).



When Comby and Lovelock met, they found they shared numerous views,  

including Lovelock's growing realization that nuclear power might be a  

solution to global warming. Hand wringing aside, atomic energy was already  

one of the only emissions-free electricity sources widely in use across  

the world. Unlike most renewable power sources, the technology was well  

developed and not limited by location the way hydro, solar, and wind  

energy are. Chatting with Comby helped persuade Lovelock to finally go  

public with his support for nuclear power.



Spurred by Lovelock's endorsement, the green nuclear movement has steadily  

gained momentum over the past few years, with EFN now boasting over 6000  

members and supporters in 50 countries. The cause got a further shot in  

the arm this past May when Lovelock published an editorial in London's  

Independent entitled "Nuclear power is the Only Green Solution". In the  

article, Lovelock begged his fellow environmentalists to end their  

opposition to nuclear plants, saying that the green community is "more  

concerned about threats to people than with threats to the Earth, not  

noticing that we are part of the Earth and wholly dependent upon its  

well-being."



Lovelock himself does few interviews these days, but we recently caught up  

with Bruno Comby, president of EFN, to find out what effect the  

organization's efforts, and Lovelock's celebrity endorsement, are having  

on worldwide opinion of nuclear energy, and the impact that a reversal of  

opinion on the issue within the environmental community could have for  

already hot uranium stocks.



Comby told us that his organization is in fact finding surprisingly strong  

support amongst environmentalists. "Since EFN has been participating in  

public events," he says, "people in these organizations come to us and  

say, 'We know you're right.'" He believes that green support for nuclear  

energy has been increasing over the past years as the specter of climate  

change has become more prominent. But environmentalists who favor nuclear  

power, he told us, have in the past been silenced by the green movement's  

hard line anti-nuclear agenda, set by groups like Greenpeace that largely  

control funding to smaller organizations. "Those who are smart enough," he  

says, "understand that they'd better remain anti-nuclear... or they get  

fired."



So why are the top dogs in the green community so staunchly against  

nuclear? "Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund... have international money  

coming from other countries," Comby says. "And when you go up to the  

source, it ends up with the oil companies or the Arab countries. They have  

a strong interest in suppressing the nuclear industry."



Despite what Comby believes is special interest-driven anti-nuclear  

sentiment, he told us that the work of EFN, combined with endorsements  

like Lovelock's, is changing minds in the green community. "A lot of  

people write to EFN sort of shattered," he says, "saying things like, 'I  

heard that James Lovelock supports nuclear. Are there really advantages to  

nuclear energy?' They've always been told that nuclear power is bad, and  

then they hear just the opposite, and the guy who tells them is the pope  

of environmentalism." Comby also points out that some local chapters of  

Friends of the Earth now support nuclear, and that France's  

second-generation environmental political party is pro-atomic energy.



Comby attributes the increasing amount of pro-nuclear sentiment partly to  

the realization by many green thinkers that renewable energy, while an  

important goal, can't provide the quick fix needed to head off the climate  

change catastrophe they fear. "The problem of global warming is the number  

one environmental threat for the planet today," he told us. "Renewable  

energy should be developed, energy conservation should be encouraged, but  

these just don't face up with the numbers. Nuclear is the only alternative  

we have to replace significant amounts of oil and gas. It's by far the  

safest and the cleanest energy available today."



Comby's organization is growing quickly - last year opening a North  

American chapter - and the group continues to lobby governments, other  

environmental organizations, and anyone else who will listen, on the dire  

need to switch from fossil fuels to atomic power while there's still a  

chance to prevent the worst effects of global warming. Their suggestions  

about the dangers of climate change are, of course, sometimes met with  

skepticism, but one thing is certain: the green nuclear movement is just  

one more sign that atomic power is indeed enjoying a long-overdue  

resurgence. If EFN succeeds in its efforts, and a major group such as  

Greenpeace or the World Wildlife Fund come out for nuclear, then the  

single largest obstacle to a wider adoption of nuclear as the fuel of the  

future will have been removed and the recent gains uranium prices - and  

many of the uranium stocks we are following -- will be just the beginning.





-- 

No virus found in this outgoing message.

Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.

Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.6.9 - Release Date: 1/6/2005



************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To

unsubscribe, send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the

text "unsubscribe radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail,

with no subject line. You can view the Radsafe archives at

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/