‘There’s too much pop environmentalism’

Dr Patrick Moore, one of the founding members of Greenpeace, led the campaign which stalled the development of nuclear energy in the US in the 1970s. He served for nine years as president of Greenpeace Canada and seven years as a director of Greenpeace International. He left Greenpeace in 1986 and in 1991, founded Greenspirit, a consultancy focused on environmental policy and communications in natural resources, biodiversity, energy and climate change. Since then, he tells R Krishna, there has been a turnaround in his stand on nuclear energy. Further, he says, green activism may end up harming the environment and our health.

What are your views on the phenomenon of Green Noise?
Green Noise just makes a situation confusing for people. Take the anti-nuclear movement, which is quite strong. My former colleague in Greenpeace Jim Rickio was quoted as saying, “To solve climate change with nuclear energy is to replace one evil with another.” I don’t think that was a very good comparison. If we build a nuclear plant instead of a coal-fired plant, we have a large reduction in CO2 emissions instantly.
Would you say the threat of climate change is as serious as it is made out to be?
I do not think the threat of climate change is as severe as people say. There is a risk and the best way to reduce the risk is by reducing fossil fuel consumption. And the reason I support reducing fossil fuel consumption is not just climate change. Burning fossil fuel for energy and transportation causes more damage to public health than anything else we do.

Do you feel vindicated that the greens’ opposition to nuclear energy is proving to be harmful to the environment?
I wouldn’t say vindicated as much as unfortunate that all of us — including me in the ’70s — who were leading the environmental movement made this mistake of being against nuclear energy. We were caught up in the anti-nuclear war movement and we made the mistake of thinking everything nuclear was bad. We didn’t make the distinction. Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, said if it was not for the environmental movement, there would be a lot fewer coal-fired plants in the world today and a lot more nuclear plants. We actually did something very negative back then.
It is one of the reasons I work so hard to change the perception because I think it was a serious error.

Why not replace coal with wind and solar energy instead of nuclear power?
Wind and solar by nature are intermittent and unreliable. Solar for example is good only 15 to 20 per cent of the time. Wind too is available only 35 per cent of the time.
Germany has poured billions — it’s a good thing they are so rich — into wind and solar, but they are increasing their coal consumption. That is because wind and solar simply cannot replace base load power. The green political movement is the strongest in German-speaking nations, and they are among the strongest anti-nuclear countries. So what should they make their electricity from? Coal? The greens point to Germany as a shining example, whereas it is next door in France that they are doing things right with 80 per cent from nuclear and 10 per cent from hydro.

Why did you leave Greenpeace?
One of the reasons I left Greenpeace was because they abandoned science and logic. You need science to get the facts, and then you need logic to put those facts up for informed policy decisions. I think Greenpeace turned political and gave up on the science. When I left Greenpeace in 1986, I was the one of the five international directors at the time and the only one with a background in science. All the others were political activists or entrepreneurs.

Do you still consider yourself to be an environmentalist?
Yes, I am an environmentalist. And I think I have developed a science-based and logical environmental policy platform. I think too much of what we hear from the greens is what I call pop environmentalism. It appeals to people who want simple answers and base much of their thinking on their emotional response — in particular their fear and guilt, such as when they’re told: You should be afraid of nuclear reactors, you should feel guilty about driving a car. You should in fact call them activists, not environmentalists.

How will the endless arguments on green issue be resolved?
I don’t think you can force a resolution on such strongly-held opinions. As Michael Crichton says in his famous speech in San Francisco to the Commonwealth Club, “The environmental movement has become a religion, and is now based more on beliefs than on facts.” And so the only answer I have for you is, time.