While the death of young men in war is unfortunate, it is no more serious than the touching of mountains and wilderness areas by humankind.
At that time a senator who was on the Joint Committee of Atomic Energy said rather quietly, 'You know, we're having a little problem with waste these days.' I didn't know what he meant then, but I know now.
The Peninsula is what we have and there is no more where it came from.
Apollo 13, as you may remember, gave us a reactor that is bubbling away right now somewhere in the Pacific. It's supposed to be bubbling away on the moon, but it's in the Pacific Ocean instead.
For how many people do you think might yet stand on this planet before the sun grows cold? That's the responsibility we hold in our hands.
Even if you build the perfect reactor, you're still saddled with a people problem and an equipment problem.
It's like turning the space program over to the Long Island Railroad.
I began working with the John Muir Institute and then started helping found Friends of the Earth organizations here and there in other countries. That pretty well brings us up to the present.
Until four years ago, in fact, I was absolutely in love with the atom.
Perhaps we'll realize that each of us has not one vote but ten thousand or a million.
Once we open the door to the plutonium economy, we expose ourselves to absolutely terrible, horrifying risks from these people.
The risk presented by these lethal wastes is like no other risk, and we should not be expected to accept it or to project it into the future in order for manufacturers and utilities to make a dollar killing now.
Understanding how DNA transmits all it knows about cancer, physics, dreaming and love will keep man searching for some time.
People have alleged that I have inspired many young people over the years, but I say, it was just the opposite.
Yet another proposal would have us rocket the waste into the sun, but, as you're probably aware, about one in ten of our space shots doesn't quite make it out of the earth's gravitational field.
I don't think we have very good records about what they were thinking except, as I pointed out earlier today, that they did invent our political system.
The Sierra Club is a very good and a very powerful force for conservation and, as a matter of fact, has grown faster since I left than it was growing while I was there! It must be doing something right.
