Climate Tipping Point & Yucca Mountain

Can we slam the brakes on climate change?

This is the Environment Report. I’m Lester Graham.


Two new studies in the journal Nature look at what we’d have to do to keep global temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius… to avoid a climate catastrophe.

Rebecca Williams has been reading the papers – so what they say?

RW: Basically, they’re saying we’ve to really cut bak on burning fossil fuels. So for the U.S. that means cutting back greenhouse gas emissions by more than 90-percent by 2050.

At the rate we’re burning up coal and oil now… we’ll be past that climate tipping point in less than 15 years.


LG: And… I guess if all those predictions and computer models are right… we’ll see those extreme climate events… rising sea levels…all the bad stuff we’ve been hearing about could happen… ???

RW: If the models are right.

THANXZ
We hear about global warming or climate change on the news just about everyday… and that got us to thinking about what to call it. Depending on which group is writing it could be called greenhouse effect, global climate crisis, catastrophic climate change… Al Gore likes to call it “climate crisis.” In English language news media in Asia… they call it climate chaos.

Barry Rabe is a professor at the University of Michigan who studies science and policy on “that issue”-- what do you science types like to call it.

You almost get the feeling that climate change needs some smark marketing firm to come up with a term… to give it proper resonance…

What do you think we’ll end up calling this…

((((sting)))


This is The Environment Report.

Politically speaking, America's nuclear waste storage policy is a mess.

Hazardous spent nuclear fuel SOMEDAY is supposed to be buried under Nevada's Yucca mountain,

Shawn Allee met a who helped put nuclear waste at Nevada's doorstep.. and now he regrets it.

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Robert Halstead started his career in nuclear policy in Wisconsin.

He says the federal government wanted states' help in storing nuclear waste deep underground.

In 1982 Congress came to a consensus about how to select sites.

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There was a clear statement that safety was not enough and economic efficiency was not enough. You also had to deal with regional equity.
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The gist was that there'd be one repository in the West - another in the East.

But after a bit, Eastern politicians lost faith in the nuclear waste siting process - and so did Halstead.

He helped them cut legislative deals to stop the law he'd supported just a few years earlier.

It worked.

In 1987, Congress ended the government's search for a nuclear waste dump .

Nevada's Yucca Mountain would be the only candidate.

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This law was written very carefully to ensure that Nevada got screwed. And you know what, it chilled my blood.
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Halstead says he considered getting out of nuclear policy work for good, but then he got a call.

It was from a chief nuclear official in Nevada.

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He said aren't you ashamed of yourself? I would really like you to come out here and help us.
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But Halstead took the job as part of a team that's argued against the government's Yucca programs.

I asked him why.

Sometimes says guilt. Sometimes, regret. Sometimes, he says he wanted a job.

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President Obama's come out against the Yucca Mountain project, so it's future still isn't clear.

I ask Robert Halstead whether the country can ever come to a political consensus on nuclear waste.

He says it could be tough.

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If nuclear waste disposal in a repository were safe and profitable, someone would have taken it away from Nevada years ago, so there won't be an amicable ending to this story.
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