James Lovelock

NEEDS REFS

James Lovelock is seen as one of the "gurus" of the environmental movement. However the myth that the media has built up around him as some green father figure is built on misconceptions. He has always been at odds with the green movement over nuclear power, as well as his suport for Shell, and more recently his support for GM and high pesticide-use farming.

Lovelock has long been a supporter of nuclear power and worked for the old CEGB and worked with the US nuclear industry. He has long been skeptical about the risks posed by nuclear power. AND SAID HE IS HAPPY TO HAVE NUCLEAR WASTE IN HIS GARDEN SHED - NEED REFS

In his autobiography Homage To Gaia, he writes about the October 1957 reactor fire at Windscale – the world’s first serious reactor incident. “This incident exposed the people of England to what some would now consider a dangerous level of radioactive contamination. I wonder why we have heard nothing of an epidemic of thyroid and other cancers over the years that followed?� He also writes of his “strong support for nuclear energy� and the “beneficence of nuclear power�.

He also worked with Shell for some 30 years, a company that has been complicit in human rights abuses in Nigeria, and whose operations are a major contributor to global warming. He argues that “I know of no other human agency that plans as far ahead or considers the environment more closely,� than Shell and dismisses environmentalists’ criticisms about the company. He also worked for the security services in both the UK and USA.

He is a patron of SONE and an honorary member of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy and a personal friend of its founder Bruno Comby. Lovelock wrote the introduction to Comby’s book “Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy� and his website feeds off Comby’s site and is designed by Comby. (REf?)

However his article in May 2004 where he argued that “Nuclear power is the only green solution� to climate change certainly caused eruptions within the green movement, as it was portrayed as something new. In fact it was not. Lovelock originally offered a draft of this article to Resurgence Magazine who said they would only run it if an anti-nuclear article could be run alongside. Lovelock refused so he was told to take it elsewhere.

Lovelock has also been ostracised by certain former green colleagues.

Lovelock’s Links to other anti-Greens / right-wing think tanks

Lovelock is also one of the original signatories of the “Declaration in Support of Protecting Nature With High-yield Farming and Forestry.� Other signatories are Patrick Moore, ex-Greenpeace founder and now Greenpeace’s bete noir, Dennis Avery of the Centre for Global Food Issues which is affiliated to the right-wing Hudson Institute and Eugene Lapointe one of the leaders of the international “Wise Use Movement� and World Conservation Trust /IWMC and Norman Boulag, a rabidly pro-GM scientist.

Dennis Avery is one of the main people behind many of the attacks on organic food and author of the inspirationally-titled Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental Triumph of High-Yield Farming, Avery sees himself as a missionary, promoting the high-tech farming industries: pesticides, irradiation, factory farming, and the newcomer: biotechnology.

Avery is behind misleading claims that organic food is dangerous and is the originator of the 'E. Coli myth' – that people eating organic foods are at a significantly higher risk of food poisoning. He calls organic food a “gigantic marketing lie�. Avery believes that ‘Genetically modified foods are significantly safer than organic and natural foods. Over the last decade, consumers have eaten millions of pounds of genetically altered foods, and millions of tons of feed corn and soybean meal have been used to produce our meat and milk. So far, not even a skin rash has been linked to these new-tech foods’.

Avery was also a contributor to the book called “Fearing Food - Risk, Health and Environment�, edited by Julian Morris and Roger Bate, at the time from the right-wing think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. Other contributors included Lynn Scarlett then from the Reason Foundation and Bruce Ames, the controversial cancer scientist on the board of SEPP and a Director of the George C Marshall Institute and academic advisor to the Reason Foundation . Although Avery’s focus is meant to be agriculture, he is also a signatory to many of the Competitive Enterprise Institute letters on climate

Lapointe has a history of working with Magnus Gudmundsson, and Norwegian whaler Georg Blichfeldt – both bete noirs of Greenpeace. Lapointe runs the organisation the International Wildlife Management Consortium, a coalition of international hunting, shooting, whaling, right-wing and wise use organisations.

Other signatories include Bruce Ames, the controversial cancer scientist on the board of Fred Singer’s SEPP and a Director of the George C Marshall Institute and academic advisor to the Reason Foundation, and Klauss Ammann, a vehemently pro-GM scientist.