Solutions Award Presentation by Karl Grossman
Nuclear-Free Future Awards Ceremony
Nobel Institute Oslo, Norway September 24, 2005
In a building about a person who invented dynamite – and attempted to turn that into something good with his Nobel Prizes – we honor people who are challenging nuclear dynamite. And working to end the world's deadly experience with atomic technology and do something good with energy: a transition to safe, clean, renewable energy.
The costs of the use of nuclear and fossil fuel power continue to mount.
We meet as another name for global warming – giant Hurricane Rita – pounds my country, the United States.
That follows by just two weeks a second manifestation, also largely a result of global warming, the giant Hurricane Katrina – devastating my nation.
Maybe, just maybe, the impacts of fossil fuel use and consequent global warming on our planet's weather will spur my nation, at long last, to turn to the safe, sustainable energy technologies now available.
But there is huge resistance – from the oil, gas and coal industries imtimately tied into the Bush administration.
Oil, gas and coal have continued to be unceasingly promoted by the Bush administration at the cost of implementing solar, wind and the many clean, safe energy technologies that are ready and available today.
And in the U.S. and in a number of other countries in the world, misdirected governments like the Bush administration, and public agencies, push nuclear power.
They squander the peoples' treasuries, divert action in bringing safe energy online, and they lie.
Nuclear power kills.
But don't tell that to the International Atomic Energy Agency – established in the 1950s as an international counterpart of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
The U.S. AEC was eliminated in the 1970s for being no more than a tool of the nuclear industry – but the IAEA, the biggest entity under the United Nations umbrella, remains, pushing atomic technology and lying about it.
Most recently, the IAEA and its brother UN entity, the World Health Organization – which must, by written agreement, allow the IAEA to review any of its research on radioactivity – blatantly lied about the Chernobyl accident. A report released by the Chernobyl Forum, of which the IAEA and WHO are two leading members, claimed that as of this year only 50 persons in all have died as a result of the radioactivity released when that nuclear plant exploded.
The IAEA – and the Bush administration – and other public and corporate entities around the world are now pushing for a "revival" of nuclear power.
In the wake of the Three Mile Island accident, Chernobyl disaster – the effects of which, I might note, have been deeply felt here in Scandinavia – the insoluble problem of nuclear waste, how any nuclear plant gives a nation the atomic material and trained personnel for atomic bombs, and nuclear plants being sitting ducks for terrorists, people have been saying NO to nuclear power.
But the IAEA, the Bush administration, Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy, the General Electric Co. and others keep pushing and not telling the truth.
Today here at the Nobel Institute we honor a person who is a model for the world in working for the good energy way.
Preben Maegaard says "the challenge of our generation is to develop the necessary skills to bring the abundance of clean energy into the service of humankind."
As president of the World Wind Energy Association, chairperson of the World Council for Renewable Energy, director of the Nordic Folk Center for Renewable Energy, vice president of Eurosolar, he has been a global leader in moving for the world to get all its energy from the sun, wind, biomass, the waves and other clean, free, safe sources.
He says: "Every building façade and roof is a potential power plant. Let agriculture deliver energy parallel to food. Let a windmill stand on every hill or other windy sites. In the valleys, hydropower. The ocean's energy also is waiting to become harnessed."
And he labors to make that real.
And he is realistic about the forces that push us toward atomic destruction.
He is a leader in the effort to create within the framework of the United Nations an Agency for Renewable Energy.
With great respect, the 2005 Nuclear – Free Future Award for Solultions is given to Preben Maegaard who is showing the world that our energy future is in safe, clean, renewable power.
Karl Grossman, jury member of The Nuclear-Free Future Award, is author of
"The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat To Our Planet,"
and writer and narrator of the award-winning TV documentary
"Nukes In Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens."
He is professor of journalism at the State University of New York
and hosts the nationally broadcast TV program "Enviro Close-Up."
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