How George Monbiot Made Me Start Worrying About the Power of Denial

by C. L. Cook

Renowned British journalist, George Monbiot recently squared off with anti-nuke champion, Dr. Helen Caldicott on Democracy Now to debate nuclear power in the context of Fukushima and climate change.

 

Monbiot has come out as a supporter of nuclear power, (sort of) and a proponent of next-gen power plants.

 

He seems to feel thorium reactors a theoretically advantageous way to both generate nuclear power "safely," and a handy way to dispose of depleted uranium waste from current reactors, (other than weaponizing it and dropping it on the Arab world).

 

How these two things can be compatible is a mystery to me.

 

In a recent article, 'Seven Double Standards,' Monbiot writes of the ongoing Fukushima disaster;

 

"Nor is the Fukushima crisis anything other than horrible: dangerous, traumatic and disruptive. I’m urging perspective, not complacency. "

 

This follows the tone of both his discussion with Caldicott, (punctuated with sarcasm, veiled ad hominem attack, and a generally, in my view, unappealing smarminess), and his previous article, 'Why Fukushima Made me Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Power.'

 

Monbiot is a clever guy, famous for his Climate Change tome, 'Heat,' but it strikes me he is, as he charges people who disagree with the thesis of his book, deeply mired in denial. 

 

Fukushima is indeed something other than "horrible: dangerous, traumatic and disruptive," it is an ongoing disaster. But George, and many others in government and media world-wide seem unable to grasp the simple fact; we have a multiple reactor meltdown scenario unfolding that no-one seems able to stop.

 

After a month of spewing plutonium into the atmosphere, all George, and his few fellows in media still bothering to speak of this continuing horror, seems able to come up with is a clarion call that we keep a proper "perspective" on the issue.

 

It all makes me think of "denier syndrome." You know: as those who question the Holocaust narrative are Holocaust Deniers, and now those questioning Climate Change are Climate Change Deniers, I think George Monbiot and the rest trying to downplay the danger of Fukushima, (and the nuclear industry generally) should too be given the Denier mantle; this time as Disaster Deniers.

 

One of the more dismissive claims Monbiot makes during his contretemp with Caldicott is to claim no-one has died in the Fukushima disaster; but what he refuses to acknowledge is: many of the workers bravely trying to bring the meltdown under control are dead men walking.

 

Equally, in his defense of the nuclear industry's continuation, George fails to concede not only that these workers cannot go home to their families without wondering what contamination they carry with them, but also what the full measure of effects the persistent genetic contamination means for the people and biosphere.

 

But then, that's really the point: No-one knows, or can know what those effects will be down the thousands, and millions, of years that contamination will be both with us, and remain long after homo sapiens.