Save Amazon With Nuke Waste, Says Environmentalist
In desperate times, people look at desperate measures.
James Lovelock – - who is one of the leading environmentalists on the planet has made a startling proposal: that the best way to save the Amazon from being destroyed is to turn it into a repository for nuclear waste.
He argues in “The Revenge of Gaia” that animals and plants don’t perceive radioactivity as a danger. What is far more threatening to ecosystems are people — who create extensive farming or mining and construction sites. So to keep humans out of valuable ecosystems, we could dump our nuclear waste there.
That will keep people out.
Oddly, both plants and animals have increased around the areas of Belarus that were heavily radiated after the accident at Chernobyl, although radiation reduces their lifespan.
The lack of human intervention may make nuclear wildlife refuges more beneficial overall:
“The preference of wildlife for nuclear-waste sites suggests that the best sites for its disposal are the tropical forests and other habitats in need of a reliable guardian against their destruction by hungry farmers and developers.”
If we are to preserve the lungs of the planet, maybe making them radioactive is the best chance we have.
What else does Lovelock suggest? He also recommends enjoying life now.
“Because”, as Lovelock says, “if you’re lucky it’s going to be 20 years before it hits the fan.”
Image from Harvard’s Belfer Center
Via Treehugger
Evidently this man has NEVER seen Godzilla.
That is not cool. People live there.
I hope this idea is presented tongue in cheek. It certainly is true that having a nuclear dump site would keep most people away, but the zone of consequence would be too small to be of much help for the vast rain forests of the Amazon.
More importantly, Lovelock is incorrect if he asserts that numbers of plants and animals are higher within the Chernobyl-affected regions of Ukraine and Belarus – all scientific evidence suggests that most organisms that have been surveyed are negatively affected with lower abundances and biodiversity. See recent scientific publications by Anders Moller and Timothy Mousseau for some information on birds and insects. There is a very limited amount of data that directly demonstrates shortened lifespans. I have only seen such data for barn swallows, also published by Moller and Mousseau et al. But perhaps the best data in support of shortened life spans comes from the life expectancies observed by humans in these areas published by WHO.
Thus the proposition of creating a nuclear dump site in the Amazon must be completely tongue in cheek as it is fallacious on all fronts.
Thinking out side the box is great! some one figured out the problem and found a solution to it. None of this wishy washy political BS.
Just like almost every environmentalist, you are completely misguided about nuclear energy.
The quantity of radioactive waste from nuclear plants is very very very little. According to wiki a large plant makes about 2 square meters of waste per year, so in order to fill just your room with nuclear waste, a plant would need more than 20 years. I don’t see how this could scale to the size of the amazon.
On the other hand, all nuclear waste is safely contained in concrete so nothing gets contaminated. To spill it out in the open would be completely irresponsible and very dangerous.