The Sustainable Nation by Liam Leonard

Author:Liam Leonard [Leonard, Liam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Public Policy, Environmental Policy, Social Science, Sociology, General, Economic Policy, Nature, Natural Resources, Ecology
ISBN: 9781787434592
Google: x2w8DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Published: 2017-11-10T00:59:50+00:00

Moral Frame

The preface to A Nuclear Ireland? opens with a poem from Karol Wojtyla, otherwise known as Pope John Paul II, whose iconic status was confirmed by the hundreds of thousands who flocked to see him on his visit to Ireland in 1978. The poem entitled ‘The Armaments-Factory Worker’ makes a connection between the sin of war and the participation of workers who build armaments. At the time the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was at its zenith with thousands of nuclear missiles primed for catastrophic destruction if launched by either side. The use of Pope John Paul’s poem on the need for conscious responsibility on everyone’s behalf at a time when fears about possible nuclear war were heightened allowed the anti-nuclear campaign to grab the moral high ground.

This moral frame was underlined by the participation of the Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, Dr. James Kavanagh, as well as through the submission of Sr. Rosalie Bertell, who had a Doctorate in Biostatistics, from New York. Sr. Bertell presented some of the ethical problems posed by nuclear proliferation in her contribution to the symposium. She claimed to have been politicised after being intimidated by a utility company after publishing her findings on links between nuclear power and leukaemia. Her findings demonstrated that the ageing process was advanced by 1 year for each rad exposure experienced, which was the equivalent of the yearly exposure for a worker in the US nuclear industry. This damage also causes increased susceptibility to leukaemia tumours and heart disease (Carroll & Kelly, 1980, p. 162). For Sr. Bertell these side-affects, which were more pronounced for at-risk groups such as infants or the elderly, posed a series of moral and ethical problems. These included the following issues:

a shift from the father working to provide for his family to the father’s exposure to radiation threatening his family including the unborn child;

community exclusion from the nuclear industry’s decision-making process on workers’ health, community protection and family compensation;

increased secrecy from industry and the state over nuclear power;

the threat of nuclear pollution (ibid.).

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