"By 2013 Australia will be the largest exporter of uranium in the world." Martin Ferguson, ALP shadow resources minister, repeated this statement three or four times, just in case anyone missed the message.
His message had nothing to do with uranium or nuclear power or the nuclear debate. He could just as easily have been saying, "By 2013 Australia will be the largest exporter of gold" (or diamonds, or nickel, or any other mining product).
This was Martin as Australia's resource minister-in-waiting, speaking to capital forums in the US, Japan and Europe, explaining why Australia is a good resource investment destination. No surprises here. The only surprise was that his June 5 address was to a public forum in Melbourne sponsored by the Socialist Alliance, and that he thought this argument was worth making to a 180-strong, overwhelmingly environmentally aware audience.
Twenty-five years ago, in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island disaster in the United States, some of the world's finest scientific thinkers had proven the dangers, of nuclear waste, of raising low-level background radiation, of depending on technological perfection, of the dirty processes underpinning nuclear power, of the close association with nuclear weapons. Have we really arrived at a time when the only issue now is how to maximise our return on sales of uranium ore?
I don't believe so. While the professional nuclear lobbyists have now come out of retirement and been greeted as experts in the popular press, their arguments remain weak.
A quarter of a century ago some environmentalists mistakenly thought that the way to stop runaway hydro development was to develop nuclear power. A few rounds of robust debate backed up by visible public opposition to both the dammers and the nuclear industry knocked that on the head. In the same way, the campaign against global warming can become aligned with a renewed campaign against nuclear power.
This leads us to the hard conversation we must have with anyone concerned about the environment: it isn't possible to protect the environment of the whole world in the long or short term using market mechanisms. Once people are dead it is too late to shift investment to more sustainable activities. We are facing the alternatives of the destruction of humanity from global warming and the destruction of the human gene pool through increased irradiation.
This choice is unsupportable from a technical, humanistic and environmental perspective. It only makes sense within certain narrow ideological views, or from the perspective of pure self-interest.
The Australian Labor Party is primarily a self-interest vehicle, so Ferguson's leadership on the nuclear issue is unsurprising. There is confusion among some environmentalists because the market isn't coping with global warming. If we had no perspective separate from trying to influence the market, then we would be confused as well.
History shows us that millions of people refuse to leave the issue of nuclear energy in the hands of policy experts. Because of the actions of those millions in the 1970s and 1980s, the nuclear industry has been marking time for the past 25 years. The last successful order for a US civilian reactor was placed in 1973.
The nuclear industry is hoping that China and India will make a major nuclear investment in the next few years, and restart the global industry. The nuclear industry is also desperate to get new construction started before consumers are hit with the close-down costs of the existing reactors.
We know this is the time for a new campaign against nuclear power. We know it has to be broad and activist. We know that it can win.
Greg Adamson
[Greg Adamson is the author of We All Live On Three Mile Island and a member of the Socialist Alliance in Melbourne.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 21 2006.
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