Former Oilman Aims To Overturn WWF's Anti-Nuclear Policy

Submitted by Bob Burton on

Greg Bourne, the former president of BP Australia and current head of WWF Australia (formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund), last week argued that Australian environmentalists should learn to live with uranium mining. "The key issues are if we're going to be a nation exporting uranium, we have to know absolutely it's only being used for peaceful purposes and waste products are being stored safely," he said. This week, Bourne is in London at WWF International's global energy taskforce, where he wants to overturn the group's stance that "WWF does not believe that nuclear power is the solution to global warming. In fact, WWF has a vision for the future which phases out the use of fossil fuel and nuclear in the share of energy use across the globe." The Australian reports that in March, Bourne apparently "ordered the organisation's global anti-nuclear policy be removed from WWF Australia's website."

Main Source: 
The Australian, May 9, 2006

Comments

gyoung replied on

Hi. I work for WWF-Australia and as such have been following this and similar articles in The Australian with great interest.

I just thought it worth mentioning that the claims made in the article you quote are quite misleading, and mischaracterise Greg's comments significantly.

WWF-Australia responded to this article with a press release clearly re-iterating that WWF-Australia does not support nuclear power as solution to climate change. You can find this release at:
http://wwf.org.au/news/wwf-says-nuclear-no-answer-to-climate-change/

In addition, I've posted my personal views on this article, and subsequent articles, on my personal weblog at:

http://www.synapsechronicles.com/archives/2006/05/

See the posts:
* Media beat-ups (May 4)
* Nuclear is no answer to climate change - WWF (May 5)
* What's going on? (May 9)

Lastly, Greg posted a Letter to the Editor in response to a further article Amanda Hodge wrote on May 9. This letter has not (yet) been published by The Australian, but I've posted the text on my weblog here:
http://www.synapsechronicles.com/archives/2006/05/ scroll down to Letter to the editor (May 10)

I hope that this helps to clarify WWF's position and to demonstrate some of the misleading comments made in the article you reference.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

Regards, Grant

Bob Burton replied on

Hi Grant,

1. Those links you originally included in the above post weren't working (over several days) so I substituted the generic link to your blog and added the post titles and dates so readers can find what you were pointing to.

2. As to the subtantive point of WWF Australia's & Greg Bourne's views on nuclear power and uranium mining, in response to another posting I have listed a number of queries on the SourceWatch page https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Talk:Greg_Bourne

cheers, bob

gyoung replied on

Hi Bob - sorry for taking so long to respond. The broken links were caused by my weblog software completely crapping out shortly after I posted here. The original links will now work, but your summary is fine.

My apologies for any confusion.

Regards, Grant

Bob Burton replied on

Since it is now approximately a week since I posted a response to Grant above and on the SourceWatch talk page I posted a note to the relevant article on his blog. Hopefully he'll respond soon. Bob