CULTURE AGAINST NUCLEAR POWER
There is no energy crisis. There is only an immeasurable waste of energy. Does nature have an energy crisis, do the birds, the trees, the beetles have an energy crisis? Only man deludes himself into thinking that there is an energy crisis, because he has gone insane. Man today is the most dangerous vermin to ever populate the Earth. Man must be returned to his ecological boundaries. In order for the Earth to regenerate. Vast amounts of energy, time and money are used to persuade people that they want unnecessary things. This creates frustration, murder and violence, since it is not possible for everyone to have everything.
We seemingly live in material happiness, but actually in spiritual unhappiness. In order to be happy, man does not need external riches, but internal riches of the soul. In order to be happy, man does not need mechanical energy, but internal creative energy. Man’s insane, groundless use of energy should correspond to a responsible and creative intelligence. But this is not the case.
Man remains a stupid gregarious animal, which suddenly has insane amounts of energy, toxins and other murderous means available to him, which he squanders wildly and ruthlessly, and uses to destroy the environment and his own brothers. And greedily, this man, this stupid gregarious animal, demands even more energy, even more toxins and even more murderous means. Consumption is not a universal remedy. We produce in a panic, consume like crazy, waste blindly, and man is degraded to a consumption machine. Nuclear energy is probably meant to reinforce this most dangerous of all enslavements.
Whoever propagates nuclear energy is either extremely short-sighted, tendentiously informed, or consciously criminal. It is the government’s responsibility to inform the population about the dangers of nuclear energy.
It is a mystery to me. Austria does everything for safety. At the work place, for young people at school, one builds railings, inoculates and examines, in order to be prepared for the dangers of accident and illness. But government does nothing to protect the population from our greatest danger, nuclear energy. Where are the emergency plans for protection against catastrophes of foreign reactors beyond our borders? No evacuation drills, no emergency measures are carried out. They even want to bring the evil inside our own country.
The dangerous thing about the nuclear toxin is its creeping character. One cannot see it, hear it or smell it. It kills us slowly. Our senses cannot warn us. There is no medicine for it. Do we know where the Incas, the Carthaginians, buried things? And that was only 2,000 years ago. Do we know where our grandmother hid her gold coins? And that was only fifty years ago. But nuclear materials remain lethally dangerous for 500,000 years to all forms of life. When the danger overshadows the investment, when it turns out that the by-product is death, does the government not have the duty to recognise things that were started, or finished, wrong as bad investments and terminate them.
It is self-evident. It is outrageous that only a huge catastrophe in a neighbouring country or in our own country would be able to provide food for thought, when it is already too late. Nuclear energy is not only an ecological, but also a gigantic economic catastrophe.
Costs of nuclear energy:
1. Construction.
2. Research.
3. Uranium purchase.
4. Brain-washing and indoctrination in the media (television, school).
5. Transportation, including for reprocessing and permanent disposal.
6. Specialised protective devices against radioactivity.
7. Permanent disposal.
8. Medical observation of workers and population (radioactivity).
9. Larger police force. Protection from the inside against sabotage and terrorism for generations to come.
10. Protection from the outside. Increased national defence. Peaceful use of nuclear energy cannot be separated from nuclear weapons. They are two sides of a coin.
11. Earth quake surveillance (control, maintenance, repairs).
12. Drills (evacuation practice) in case of emergency.
13. Dismantling and removal of the radioactive plant within thirty years.
14. Costs of an emergency.
15. The government must bear costs of damage (so far, no insurance company was willing to insure the liabilities of such gigantic damage). If nuclear energy is so safe, why can one not be insured against damage from it?
16. Illness now (accidents, cancer).
17. Illness in the coming generations (genetic mutations, cancer).
18. Illness in animals and plants (mutations, epidemics).
19. Payment and aiding and abetting and bribery of neighbouring residents.
20. Loss of jobs through automation.
21. Ossification of the out-dated system, postponed change of ideas. Consumer society, growth at all costs, waste of energy, and throwaway society are immortalised.
22. Loss of human dignity to new slavery, dependency on technocracy.
23. Costs of energy loss due to energy transfer within the power supply system.
24. Gigantic energy loss: two thirds of energy are lost to cooling.
25. Doubled costs in case of malfunction due to loss of working hours and repair.
26. Generally large administrative machinery for special permits (e.g. transportation of nuclear waste).
27. Thermal burden on rivers and subsequent costs for man and beast (warmer river is more susceptible to environmental damage).
28. Constant spiritual damage from the powerlessness against the omnipotent Moloch.
29. The darkening of the future horizon. Young people see no meaning and purpose in the super-technocratic future. It is a theft of hope. Life is a misery because everything is poisoned for generations to come.
30. The mistrust. When the citizens’ fears are not acknowledged, divisions also develop within the families. This is a preparation for civil war.
31. Reprocessing.
This summary results in gigantic loss figures. So gigantic, trillions, that it becomes abstract. No private economy invests in nuclear energy anymore. Only the subservient population continues to pay. Had these loss figures been invested in research on solar energy in all its various forms in a timely manner, one would not have problems now. Yet, better use of existing energy and conservation can multiply well-being and quality of life.
I am not the only one saying such things. I stand at the end of an infinitely long line of Nobel prize-winners, experts in science, culture, economy and all areas of human knowledge, who say the same thing, in other words. A true avant-garde. And millions of people, an unbelievable movement of positive, joyful people – especially young people are part of it – want to research and experiment for themselves, with their own means, by their own efforts, in order to create a better future for all of us. Why is the government not backing them, but is on the side of the destroyers?
As a representative of Austrian culture, I have the duty to warn, and prevent that Austria, situated in the heartland of European culture, become implicated in a dangerous development, which, because of narrow-minded stupidity and false advantages, could result in the obliteration of our civilisation and our life as we know it.
The nuclear power plant is a dagger thrust into Austria’s heart, because Zwentendorf in the Tullnerfeld area is located exactly where Austria’s cradle stood, exactly where, more than 1,000 years ago, the tiny Ostmark, the small country of Ostarrichi, was born into the landscape of the Nibelungs. It appears as if they were trying to kill Austria just where it was born. It is the responsibility and duty of the small, yet intellectually large and free nation of Austria, to set an example for the surrounding countries and the world that true progress can be made without risking all of our futures. It is Austria’s responsibility to be a moral and cultural world power. Austria’s anti-nuclear position holds symbolic value for the entire world.
The more time passes, the more we recognise the consequences of these dangerous actions; new, unforeseen problems will make necessary ever more expensive and dangerous “antidotes”. The figures are yet too vague to fully comprehend these actions with all their consequences. It would be irresponsible to ignore that technicians, scientists and specialists are leading us into an incalculable world of problems, which they themselves will no longer be able to manage.
Austria does not need to surrender itself to the discretion of a handful of scientists, who blinded by progress, want to position themselves in the control centres of nuclear power. Police state security measures would mean the end of a previously tolerant and humane Austria and a danger for democracy, and will cost us dearly. With the help of centrally controlled energy, increased automation will make man even more superfluous. Unemployment, constant mortal danger, creeping epidemics, loss of human dignity, loss of home, weigh heavier than one percent of dangerous energy feeding ever more machines designed to destroy nature and man.
It is urgent that Austria’s intellectual elite raise their voices and declare their position for an Austria free of nuclear power. Austria’s cultural and thinking und creative elite cannot constantly endure dangerous machinations, be a willing tool and remain silent. On the contrary, it must take responsibility and follow its conscience to be a leading authority and warn and far-sightedly prevent evil for our country. I will publish a white paper entitled, “Culture against Nuclear Power”, in which distinguished Austrians will declare their positions.
Nuclear energy, too, this final aberration in the history of mankind, was only possible because the focus is only on the seemingly rational. Moral-aesthetic values are missing, and the link between man and creation, which is represented by art. Without art, without the creative, there is nothing.
Written in Vienna, on November 7, 1980.
Published in:
protokolle. Zeitschrift für Literatur und Kunst. ed. by Otto Breicha. Vienna/Munich: Jugend und Volk 3/1981, pp. 242-250 (Speech on occasion of being awarded the Austrian State Prize)
Catalogue „Peintures Récentes“, Artcurial, Paris, 1982, pp. 7-8 (French, abbreviated version, titled: Sur l’energie)
Schurian, Walter (ed.): Hundertwasser - Schöne Wege, Gedanken über Kunst und Leben. (Beautiful Paths - Thoughts on Art and Life) Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (dtv), 1983, pp. 148-153 and ed. 2004 (Munich: Langen Müller Verlag), pp. 188-193 (German)
Hundertwasser. New York: Parkstone Press International, 2008, pp. 203-207