If You Love This Planet

Dr. Helen Caldicott is one of the most renowned individuals in the world. She founded Physicians for Social Responsibility to protest nuclear weapons. We've loosely heard about the risks of nuclear war as well as the potential effects of nuclear fallout. But you can't understand the sheer horror of it until you hear Caldicott describe it. The main thing that she makes clear in the Academy Award-winning "If You Love This Planet" is that there would be no winner in a nuclear war, just a dead planet and people slowly dying of radiation poisoning. She noted that there was the chance that we weren't going to make it to 1990 due to the high number of nuclear weapons in existence.

While we made it past that year, and both the US and post-Soviet Russia have decreased their stockpiles, other countries have developed nuclear weapons. I recently saw a photograph of an anti-nuclear protest at which people held up signs saying NUCLEAR-ARMED -- BE ALARMED, showing the faces of Donald Trump (United States), Theresa May (United Kingdom), Emmanuel Macron (France), Vladimir Putin (Russia), Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel), Nawaz Sharif (Pakistan), Narendra Modi (India), Xi Jinping (China) and Kim Jong-un (North Korea).* These countries have the means to bring about the end of civilization as we know it. Indeed, a recent alert in Hawaii mistakenly said that there was about to be a nuclear attack.

Everyone should see this documentary. One thing that I would like to see would be a debate between Helen Caldicott and climatologist James Hansen, whose studies the Bush administration censored. They have taken opposing positions on whether nuclear energy contributes to global warming - she says yes, he says no - so I'd like to hear a debate between them.

*For the record, the only country that developed a nuclear weapons program but then abolished it entirely is South Africa, in which the apartheid government developed nuclear weapons but the post-apartheid government dismantled them.

It must be understood that this film was released in a particular historical context with a particular objective. It was part of a world-wide campaign to prevent NATO from deploying medium range nuclear missiles in Europe. The Soviet Union had deployed similar missiles in Eastern Europe in the 1970's and this was perceived as a danger to the people of Western Europe against which the missiles were directed. NATO then decided to deploy similar missiles in Western Europe directed at Eastern Europe.

At the time thousands of people were organized to try to prevent this. There were riots in West Berlin. There was a months-long campaign to try to prevent the deployment of Cruise Missiles in Britain. IN the Netherlands the parliament agonized over whether to go ahead with deployment. Cities world-wide declared themselves nuclear free zones. This film was released right into the middle of this uproar. Its purpose was clear.

When the missiles were ultimately deployed anyway the whole anti-nuclear campaign folded up its tents and disappeared. My opinion is that the Soviet funding evaporated once it was clear that NATO was not going to be deterred from countering the Soviet deployment by domestic political pressure. Today the same Helen Caldecott defends the Iranians' right to develop Uranium enrichment technology.

I would like to believe that the people responsible for this film were, like so many others at that time, unwitting dupes of the Soviet Union rather than actually being their paid agents. This was never about protecting humanity from nuclear weapons. None of these people ever complained about Soviet weapons. It was part of an effort to shift the balance of world power in favor of the Soviet Union. Fortunately it failed and even more fortunately the Soviet Union is no more.

The film is a good example of effective propaganda. It will frighten an uninformed viewer. As a more informed viewer, I was outraged by it rather than spurred to action, because I saw that the antinuclear campaign was only directed at missiles in the free world and not at those in the Soviet Union.

Watch it as a cautionary experience of the power of propaganda.

David in Ottawa

Made amidst the first term of Ronald Reagan's US Presidency, this short documentary uses some clips of his wartime propaganda feature "Jap Zero" (1943) along with some devastatingly effective archive to illustrate a lecture from Dr. Helen Caldicott. She's an Australian paediatrician who is using her time at the podium to warn of the dangers of nuclear proliferation by pointing out some of the medical issues any use of these weapons might cause. The death toll in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is proof of the sheer destructive capability of these devices that can wipe out huge swathes of living things whilst leaving any survivors severely burned and unlikely to receive adequate medical attention from an equally decimated profession now devoid of staff and facilities. The imagery is potent but her accompanying diatribe is much less so. She really does lecture her, admittedly captivated, audience. Not that this is exactly a laughing matter, but she does rather pontificate at us rather than carry us along with her. She frequently cites her reference sources and recent surveys selected, it seemed, to support her position rather than promote any discussion of the political and military realities that prevailed at the height of the Cold War. It's the imagery on screen that we see that pulls no punches. Her tones are at times rather patronising and her school-mistress style of handing-down the gospel according to Dr. Caldicott did start to grate as she continued for just a bit too long. Yes it's a serious issue, none more so, but to engage an audience you have to make them feel invested in your ideals, your language, and your personality - a bit of charisma never goes amiss. I just didn't feel she did that here and there are way more striking demonstrations of the horror of atomic warfare to be found in cinema than this.

I definitely agree with the comment posted above. A good description of the film. Yes, Caldicott does explain the absolute worst case scenario of nuclear-war, from the environmental consequences, the biological outcomes and the absolute physical destruction that would arise. She does not hold back and shares all of the gruesome and realistic details in the outcome of a nuclear war. However, we need to remember that this was shot in 1982, at the height of the cold war. The outcomes she discusses are all factual and possible outcomes of nuclear war. This movie touched me, even though I was not even born at the time. It instilled a feeling of shock and dismay over nuclear-armament.

This documentary, an Oscar-winning production of the National Film Board of Canada, is an extremely good, if clearly biased, look at the dismal prospects of nuclear arms. Let me state here that, while I share those biases, I think that it is necessary to admit that, throughout, worst-case scenarios are discussed, even though 1) they weren't most likely scenarios and 2) even most likely scenarios are scary. The effects of a bomb blast will be catastrophic. This was like gilding a lily! I personally think that they didn't have to engage in the overkill they went to here. But I salute their efforts nonetheless and may we never see a mushroom cloud outside of a piece of film ever again!