David Lowry, 2001 Nuclear-Free Future Special Recognition Award Recipient
How can a person convince politicians and business experts from the
energy sector that the present set of energy policies are dead-end
doomed? By writing, that's what David Lowry teaches us. He is no chief
editor, no best-selling author, belongs to no political party, and remains in
the shadows of power: living on a shoestring budget as a gutsy journalist
stringer and self-employed environmental policy consultant, his most
valuable asset is his wealth of information. David Lowry is an activist
researcher with a cause.
Radicalised by the accident at Three Mile Island which took place while he
was employed as a teaching assistant at the State University of New York
at Stony Brook, David learned, as he puts it, "very quickly how the nuclear
industry could distort the truth and lie thorough the media, putting public
relations before public information or safety." He continues, "I have since
worked with various dissidents, and felt strengthened by the experience of
standing up for the importance of telling - and revealing - the atomic truth.
I think it is fair to say that the drive of my research, publishing, and
academic education career has been framed by this belief."
Since 1980, David Lowry has published an immense number of specialist
and populist articles, as well as letters to the editor, in the local, national
and international print media. His writing has appeared in Science, Nature,
New Scientist, Economist, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Times Higher
Education Supplement, Futures, Public Administration, New Statesman,
Africa Now, Third World Quarterly, and even Penthouse, as well as in such newspapers as Observer, Sunday Times, The Times, Financial Times, Independent, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, International Herald Tribune, San Francisco Examiner, and The New York Times. His engagement in concerns such
as the Sellafield quality control falsification issue, a scandal spurred to light
in part by his questions to politicians and letters to editors, provides one of
the most recent examples of David's long-term critical research.
Mycle Schneider, director of WISE-Paris and a recipient of the Right
Livelihood Award, remarks of his friend David: "The activity which certainly
finds him a historical place in the European Parliamentary systems is his
outstanding record of tabling what he calls "carefully crafted Parliamentary
questions". One has to imagine that the UK government (plus the European
Commission and the European Council) had actually to answer over 3,000
of his questions essentially on nuclear issues asked by various MPs and
MEPs! David must be the most hated -- but maybe respected too! -- man in the
UK nuclear administration, which has to handle these questions. This
insisting and pertinent questioning of the Government led to significant
results in some areas, and in particular on the plutonium issue. Bit by bit
the Government had to admit a certain number of disturbing facts."
If the day should ever arrive when UK energy policy makers break with the
past and come up with some environmentally responsible energy
decisions, one can assume that David Lowry's writer's hand was again at
work. After all, he did work as a researcher with the current British
environment minister, but before the election...
David Lowry's Acceptance Speech
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