National Radio Project

MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #42-98 Global Warming and Corporate Interests
October 21, 1998

Program description at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/1998/9842.html

Phillip Babich: Welcome to Making Contact. An international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas, and important information. This week on Making Contact.-

Oronto Douglas: There's really no debate here about whether it is the Third World that should cut emissions, or it is the First World that should not cut emissions. From the country where I come from, the country is governed and ruled most viciously by multinational companies, who continue to emit and pollute to the disbenefit of the totality of humanity.

Phillip Babich: Countries around the world, including the United States, signed onto the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997. The treaty was meant to reduce fossil fuel emissions that many scientists believe are causing global warming. Nearly a year later the US Senate has yet to ratify the Kyoto agreement. And, multinational oil companies have been waging a glitzy campaign to debunk the severity of the so-called greenhouse effect. On this program we'll talk with two leading activists about global warming and corporate interests. You'll also hear what Shell Oil is teaching school kids about nature and gasoline. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact.

A provision has been added to a congressional spending bill for the US Environmental Protection Agency that bars funds for implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile, according to the Center for Response to Politics; the oil and automobile industries, and electric utilities, have contributed 7.3 million dollars to this election cycle in a three month period to lawmakers in the House and Senate. But what's happening here in the United States is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to global warming. Emissions are not contained by national borders and multinational oil companies are fanned out across the globe. According to human rights attorney and environmental activist Oronto Douglas, companies such as Shell and Chevron spew enormous gas flares day and night in his country, Nigeria, with impunity. Douglas is deputy director of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria and was a member of the legal team that defended writer and environmental activist , Ken Saro Wiwa, who was hanged, along with 8 others, by the Nigerian military regime in 1995.

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Douglas spoke with Joshua Karliner of Corporate Watch about how Nigerians view the climate change issue.

Oronto Douglas: The concern in Nigeria is survival, the concerns in Nigeria is how to protect cultures, how to protect traditions, how to protect the totality of humanity in that part of the world. Now, it is important for people to understand that the people out there, particularly those in the verdure of tropical Africa, in the tropical belt of Nigeria, they have a historical link with the environment that they live in. You're talking of a people who revere and protect certain animals, who revere and protect forests, because certain forests they are kept sacred, certain animals there are deities, certain rivers they are not to be polluted because they are places of worship. Now in that part of the world that we are talking about, there has been a reckless and ceaseless assault on nature. The forest that the people who are also there are cut down and destroyed by multi-national companies. The rivers are polluted, the waters are fouled, the airs are fouled through ceaseless gas flaring. And most of this gas flaring comes out from multi-national oil companies, which helps to increase the over-carbonization of the atmosphere. This gas killed moats, killed wildlife, this pollution killed things of nature and therefore impoverishing what the people hold so dear. So for them to survive they have to protect what they have. So they may not use the exact words of the educated people who can read and write in this part of the world, as climate change, but they do understand that anthropogenic effect of reckless activities could have a full effect of what they hold so dear. Their forests, their rivers, their water and their way of life.

Joshua Karliner: Explain what gas flaring is.

Oronto Douglas: When we talk about gas flaring, it may be difficult for somebody who lives in the United States, in America, to imagine. But just imagine yourself in hell, all around you is fire, lips of tongues of fire, as giant and as huge as the Golden Gate in San Francisco. Yeah, just giant tongues of fire, coming out from great pipes that abound into the atmosphere, do you understand? Now the gas that is flared comes naturally from the ground. Now when you produce oil in some of the worlds, they come with gas, so there need to be separation from between the gas, the oil and the water. Now the oil industry feels and believes that it is too expensive to eject that gas back into the rocks. As for the water, it is simply pumped into the water sources, together with trickles and traces and every contamination of for the gas is just simply flared.

Joshua Karliner: So part of the debate right now on the climate issues, about whether Third World governments or developed countries, or First World industrialized countries should make the changes. Or who should make how much change. In a place like Nigeria, is it the Nigerian government that is responsible for this or are there multi-national corporations like Shell and Chevron that are responsible for climate change. And if so, how would they be held accountable.

Oronto Douglas: For the Third World, the so-called Third World, their concerns are survival. But when you look deeply, those who caused the pollution in Third world countries are multi-national corporations who have their umbilical cord in the so-called First World. So when the Third World ignorantly talk about "we want to emit pollution," you know, they are simply parroting the views from multi-national companies from the North. If you look at the world's economy, 68 percent of the world's economy is controlled by the G7. The big, big seven. And the big seven are then controlled by multi-national companies. And so you find that the bigger emissions that have been produced and polluted, whether they are coming out from Nigeria or coming out from the United States. Dig deep, search well and you'll find that they are flowing from the multi-national companies. So there's really no debate here about whether it is the Third World that should cut emissions or it is the First World that should not cut emissions. From the country where I come from, the country is governed and ruled most viciously by multinational companies, who continue to emit and pollute to the disbenefit of the totality of humanity.

Joshua Karliner: What's the relationship between the struggles for democracy in Nigeria and the struggles of Indigenous peoples like the Ogoni for justice, and addressing the climate problem, is there a connection?

Oronto Douglas: There is a very big relationship, a huge one for that matter. If you had the benefit of going to Ogoni, before Shell was chased out of Ogoniland. Every night and every day Shell pollutes, Shell flared gas, they devastate culture, they create communal clashes, they destroy the cultural tradition of the people, and create unconductive atmosphere that does not ennoble humanity.

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Ken Saro Wiwa, a writer, a journalist, a poet, an environmental rights campaigner, decided to mobilize his 500,000 Ogoni minority group to demand for ecological justice, to demand for freedom, to demand for the right to self-determination. And what happened, in collaboration with the military dictatorship, Shell conspired and created an atmosphere that led to the death of four pro-government Ogoni chiefs. That was the excuse that was needed to arrest innocent Ogoni people, including Ken Saro Wiwa, and have them hanged. Now their campaign was "look, stop the gas flaring, stop the pollution." We know that gas flaring contributes to the over-carbonization of the atmosphere, we know that this contributes to global warming. So you find a situation where they struggle for democracy, where they struggle for fundamental freedom, they struggle for ecological justice. It's intrinsically interlaced with a struggle that is happening elsewhere in the world for global climate stability and the need to protect the environment as a whole.

Joshua Karliner: Can you talk a little bit about the relationship between the World Bank, corporations, and climate change in Africa.

Oronto Douglas: This World Bank and this IMF work in collaboration with multi-national companies. You know, they give them money to finance a major project. For example, take what is happening in the recent case of a pipeline to be built from Chad to Cameroon. Now this pipeline is owned by Exxon, and one or two other companies. The World Bank is involved in it. And we are saying this is wrong, because oil, as we know, creates human rights violations. As I'm talking to you now, at least eleven people from Chad have been shot, because of their opposition against the pipeline, their agitation against the destruction of their environment. This pipeline is going to pass through tropical forest. And Cameroon as you know, together with Gabon, Nigeria, Zaire, and Uganda have the biggest tropical forests in the whole of Africa. The thing that bothers me, is that why should the people of the United States allow their hard-earned tax money to be used in financing human rights violations. I understand that about 18 percent of the total World Bank funds come from the United States. The World Bank is also planning, and as said it's said to finance another project in Nigeria. Another gas pipeline project from the Niger delta to the Ghana delta. This time it is a gas project, the other one is an oil pipeline. The Nigeria project is also to be financed by the World Bank in collaboration with Shell and Chevron. And we are saying that the issues in the Niger delta have not been resolved. About 2,000 people have been killed brutally in Ogoni alone. Eight others, including the writer Ken Saro Wiwa, were brutally hanged. All because of oil. And you still now want to construct a gas pipeline to forcefully take this resource away from the people without discussing, without agreeing with these people. That has not been done, so the United States people cherish freedom, they cherish democracy, they cherish these good things. I think that they ought to know that their tax payers money is being used in financing this oppression and destruction of cultures, and the stealing of resources from the people of the Niger delta.

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We have called publicly for a stoppage of oil in the frontiers and in fragile environments as a first step towards arresting climate change. We have called out secondly, very publicly that there should be the need for sustainable energy and other alternatives to the current trend of oil dependency. We should look at other sources that are renewable, so that we can continue to be here on this planet earth. Right now, nothing has been done in that direction. But I think there are people of conscience out there, I think there are people who think about the future. It is to those people that we in Nigeria, we in the Ijaw ethnic area, we in the Ogoni area, we in India, we the powerless, we the voiceless, are appealing to, to take steps to right the wrongs of the present, so that tomorrow can be a better place.

Phillip Babich: That was Oronto Douglas, speaking with Joshua Karliner. The segment was produced by Julie Light, editor of the on-line magazine Corporate Watch. In the battle for public opinion, oil companies in corporate backed think tanks, are producing ads, studies, and educational material to present their views on global warming. In fact, a fellow with the conservative Hoover institute told the views PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer that global warming was nothing to worry about. It would be good for the economy and people would enjoy healthier lives because we would all experience tropical-like weather, he said. The following is an excerpt from a video Shell Oil is distributing to classrooms. A young couple is driving in an open-top jeep trough the country-side.

Video segment

Female: Oh, what a beautiful day, huh. Here the sounds, smell the smells.

Male: Ah, Birds, flowers, newly-mown grass.

Female: I'm talking about the sounds of an internal combustion engine. The smell of the open road.

Male: But what about the wonders of nature?

Female: What about the wonders of cars and trucks, planes, and gasoline?

Male: What are you talking about.

Female: That's how we travel, see the sights, live where we want, work where we want.

Male: But what about nature? I mean...

Female: It takes gasoline to power the vehicles that get us to nature, and gasoline comes from nature.

Male: Gasoline comes from nature?

Female: Sure.

Phillip Babich: Thanks to the Center for Commercial Free Education for providing us with that clip. In a moment we'll hear what long-time anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott has to say about the nuclear industries response to global warming. One atomic energy organization claims that nuclear power is the ideal solution.

Shereen Meraji: You are listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you want more information about the subject of this weeks program, or you would like to learn how you could get involved with Making Contact, please give us a call, it's toll free: 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcript orders. That's 800-529-5736.

Phillip Babich: Joining us now on Making Contact is Dr. Helen Caldicott, she is a pediatrician and is the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Dr. Caldicott is a long-time anti-nuclear activist and is the author of Nuclear Madness. Dr. Caldicott, thanks for joining us on Making Contact.

Dr. Helen Caldicott: It's a pleasure.

Phillip Babich: Let me ask you some questions about nuclear power. Multi-nationals such as General Electric and Westinghouse are selling nuclear power plants to countries all over the world. One notable deal is with China; 60 billion dollars for 50 nuclear reactors. And the DOE in the nuclear industry bill these deals as ways to lessen global warming. In fact, the Nuclear Energy Institute said that nuclear power has done "More to prevent atmospheric emissions than any other form of electricity generation". Is this true.

Dr. Helen Caldicott: No, it's a lie. In the '70s it took seven 1,000 megawatt coal-fire plants to enrich the uranium to produce nuclear fuel-rods for nuclear power plants and some nuclear weapons, but mostly nuclear power. So, and it takes a nuclear reactor eighteen years of operation before you get one net calorie of energy from the nuclear part of it, because of all the fossil fuel that's used to mine the uranium, to mill it, and particularly to enrich it to built a huge nuclear reactor. And this doesn't even take into account the decommissioning of the reactor when it has finished its shelf life so to speak, or disposal of radio-active waste. So, in fact, nuclear power both contributes vastly to global warming, and to radioactive waste which lasts virtually forever in our terms and will damage the human gene pool irreparably I believe over time, and the gene-pool of all other species. So it operates for eighteen years before you get one net calorie of energy, but then within about twenty or thirty years the reactor has to be closed down anyway, because it's so radioactive that workers cannot go in there legitimately and operate it before getting a very high dose of radiation exposure. So, I hate the way they lie, and I don't think lying is compatible with a psychologically comfortable life. What do these characters think they are up to. Why are they lying.

Phillip Babich: Well, along of those same lines; the marketing of these reactors is quite interesting. I don't know if you've seen some of the on-line catalogues that these companies have: General Electric has one, Westinghouse has one. They've billed these reactors as simple nuclear products to be sold to countries. Have you seen any of the marketing for these.

Dr. Helen Caldicott: No I haven't, tell me about them.

Phillip Babich: Oh, it's pretty interesting pictures, diagrams, descriptions of the nuclear reactors, what they can do, how much power they can generate.

Dr. Helen Caldicott: Are they called new passively safe reactors.

Phillip Babich: I don't know if I came across that term.

Dr. Helen Caldicott: Well, I've written about their new, they've designed new ones where they use gravity to drop the moderating rods down and the like; control rods. I wrote about that in my book Nuclear Madness, and you can all purchase it from your local bookstore, WW Norton published it. But in that I talk about the nuclear generation reactors. Now for America.. Well first of all, GE runs NBC, so that's the nuclear network. Westinghouse runs CBS, that's a nuclear network. So we're in grave peril because we're not being told the truth by these wicked giant corporations doing evil things. And I use those words legitimately.

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And the second thing is, you know I remember when Clinton sold those, or authorized those 50 reactors to be sold to China. On the one side of his mouth he is talking about human rights in China, and on the other side he is selling 50 reactors to China. What about the human rights of the unborn Chinese children. I mean, what on earth does he think he's doing?

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Because this nuclear waste leaks into the food chain and concentrates by orders of magnitude thousands of times of each step of the food chain. And when you're eating chocolate or fish, or drinking breast-milk, you can't taste the radioactive material because our tastebuds don't pick it up and we can't smell it or see it. And it lurks next to cells for many years. Like strontium lasts for 600 years, and cesium 600 years, and plutonium I talk about that in a minute, it lasts for half a million years. And it stays in the body irradiating just a small volume of cells. And the incubation time for cancer is any time from five to sixty years, whereas if I sneeze on you, within two days you are sneezing, so the incubation time for a cold is only two days. And that's the reason the nuclear industry gets away with the evil by producing this massive quantity of radio-active waste, because of the time it takes for people to get cancers. But we are seeing now clusters of cancer and leukemia around old nuclear reactors because of the time it takes for people to get their cancers. But children in particular are ten to twenty times more radio sensitive and likely to get cancer than adults.

Phillip Babich: You were going to talk about plutonium.

Dr. Helen Caldicott: Yeah, plutonium. Well, each reactor makes 500 pounds of plutonium a year, each nuclear power plant, 1,000 megawatt. And plutonium has a half life of 24,400 years. So physically it's around for half a million years. And it's the most dangerous element, one of the most dangerous ever known to the human race, and men produced it. And I say men advisedly too. Such that hypothetically, you can not do this, but if you could, if you took a pound of it, and put that piece of a pound in every person on earth, that's enough to kill everyone on earth, with lung cancer. Each power plant makes 500 pounds of it a year, and it lasts for half a million years. So if I die of lung cancer induced by plutonium and I'm cremated, out the chimney goes my smoke so that you can breath in the plutonium and you can die of lung cancer, and then that has an effect for the rest of time.

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But also, the body thinks plutonium is iron, so it's transported like iron by the body. It's stored in the liver where it causes liver cancer, in the bone marrow where the red blood cells are made and iron is necessary for hemoglobin synthesis, so it can cause bone cancer to the growing bone cells or leukemia. It crosses the placenta, and the placenta doesn't even let the AIDS virus pass, but because the body thinks plutonium is iron it gets passed. So it can damage a cell in the embryo that's going to form the left half of the brain, or the septum of the heart, or the right arm. And it does to fetuses what thalidomide did years ago, damage them irreparably. Only the plutonium lives on to be thalidomide forever.

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And last but not least, it actually gets into the testicles and deposits next to the cells that forms the sperm, so that not only is the incident of testicular cancer rising now, but it can damage the genes in sperm, which are then propagated from generation to generation. Meanwhile the plutonium lives on to get in to other testicles for the rest of time. So you can see there'll be an exponential increase in genetic aberrations for the rest of time.

Phillip Babich: This year the US Department of...

Dr. Helen Caldicott: Oh and I forgot to say. You only need ten pounds to make a bomb. So theoretically any country that has a reactor can make 50 nuclear weapons every year from its plutonium that it generates. So nuclear power plants are bomb factories.

Phillip Babich: Hmm, and the technical leap is not very complicated.

Dr. Helen Caldicott: Oh, it's easy.

Phillip Babich: This year the US. Department of Energy started a program that recovers spent nuclear fuel rods from foreign reactors, and the first shipments have begun arriving in the US into US ports actually. The DOE says that the program is meant to deter nuclear proliferation and to provide a save plays to store this highly radio-active material. What's your take on this program.

Dr. Helen Caldicott: First of all America has no right to be exporting fuel to other countries that enriches the fuel exports. But secondly, in the non-proliferation treaty America said, "look we're the only ones allowed to have bombs with nuclear power, but you countries, you're not allowed to have bombs but you want a nice nuclear power plant?" So, initially the whole thing was crazy, it was a push me, pull you thing. You can't have bombs but here's a bomb factory.

Phillip Babich: This is Atoms for Peace you're talking about.

Dr. Helen Caldicott: Atoms for Peace. So the logically extension now, America is so frightened that now the countries will build bombs, and America is the only one allowed to have them, with the other nuclear nations is to get the fuel rods back so the countries can't extract the plutonium and make themselves bombs. So that means you'll be getting all the nuclear waste back from all the other countries. And in a way it serves America right for having sold it in the first place. I mean it's an awful thing, isn't it. And think of future generations of young American children. What that means if they actually reprocess this material, or it leaks out and gets into the food supply and breast milk.

Phillip Babich: And critics also say that it opens up storage fuel pool space for these nuclear reactor in foreign countries, thereby allowing companies like GE and Westinghouse to sell more nuclear power plants.

Dr. Helen Caldicott: Yes of course. And also the reason they want to enact the Mobile Chernobyl bill in this country, and transport 1,500 shipments of highly radio-active fuel rods from nuclear power plants all over the country for the next thirty years to Yuka Mountain mountain in Nevada, is that the spent fuel pools are very full of all the reactors here, and so the only way you can keep nuclear power running is as if you empty the fuel pools, just as you said. So that's why they want to transport nuclear waste all over the country through towns and cities, and there'll be 5 major accidents a year in all certainty. So things are really obscene. What we must do is close down nuclear power, like tomorrow, all of them, and eliminate all the nuclear weapons. And we can, and I do believe, and I think most of us realize the nuclear age is over, 80 percent of Americans believe in abolition of nuclear weapons. Now that’s the lot, isn't it.

Phillip Babich: Yeah, that's quite a few people.

Dr. Helen Caldicott: Yeah.

Phillip Babich: Lastly, can you talk about how the DOE and corporate interest intermesh. There's the exchange of research and knowledge but how deep does this relationship go, how much does it cost the US taxpayers and how is it benefiting companies like Westinghouse and GE.

Dr. Helen Caldicott: Well the DOE really is run, DOE Department of Energy, really is run by its contractors. They determine all the rules and regulations, and surprisingly I found out the other day the Nuclear Regulatory Treaty Commission is 95 percent funded by the utilities. I thought the NRC was an independent body, government agency, protecting us against the utilities and nuclear power, and regulating them. No, it's run by them. That's really scary. So the whole DOE is run by the corporations who make the bombs and who make nuclear power plants, and that's GE and Westinghouse, and then we get to all the rest, Hughes aircraft, Lockheed-Martin and Grant Northrup, on and on. All of them. So we're in a very dangerous position because we don't know what's going on behind our backs. And the Congress is totally distracted and allows anything to pass. Clinton is not a leader at all, he could have eliminated nuclear weapons and he still can if enough people rise up. So now it's up to us. We've done it once, we did it in the '80s, we helped to stop the Cold War. Now we're going to abolish nuclear weapons and we are going to close down all the nuclear power plants, certainly in this country.

Phillip Babich: Well we've been speaking with Dr. Helen Caldicott. She is a physician and a long-time anti-nuclear activist, and is the author of Nuclear Madness. Dr. Caldicott, thanks for joining us on Making Contact.

Dr. Helen Caldicott: That's my pleasure, and good luck to all you good people out there to protect the lives of your children and grandchildren.

Philip Babich: That's it for this edition of Making Contact, A look at global warming and corporate interests. Thanks for listening. This has been a co-production with CorpWatch radio, a feature of Corporate Watch. We have production assistance from Susan Celli. I'm Phillip Babich.