{"id":6926,"date":"2024-12-05T11:04:59","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T18:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/?p=6926"},"modified":"2025-06-26T01:31:50","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T07:31:50","slug":"bananas-smiles-and-atomic-bombs-attitudes-toward-nuclear-energy-at-cop29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/blockfeatures\/2024\/12\/05\/bananas-smiles-and-atomic-bombs-attitudes-toward-nuclear-energy-at-cop29\/","title":{"rendered":"Bananas, Smiles, and Atomic Bombs: Attitudes toward Nuclear Energy at COP29"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Ella Reese-Clauson ’26, International Political Economy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the first Friday of COP29, I entered the generally professional and sterile Blue Zone to the sight of a small line of business-clad delegates waiting to have their picture taken with a pair of attendees dressed in inflatable polar bear suits. One after another, the delegates excitedly posed with the polar bears, complying obediently when the photographer told them to \u201csay cheese for nuclear energy.\u201d One of the bears\u2019 peers\u2014dressed in a bright blue T-Shirt plastered with pro-nuclear energy slogans\u2014handed out bananas, smiling as he professed that living next to a nuclear power plant for a one year period exposed you to the same amount of radiation as a single banana. His thesis? If we\u2019re not scared of bananas, we shouldn\u2019t be afraid of nuclear energy. The man, a nuclear engineer from the UK, passed me a bruising brown banana that was perhaps not the happy, healthy image he was going for. When I asked him where I could find this report, he told me to look on the website of any power plant. Clearly, their sources were unbiased. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The organizers were affiliated with Nuclear for Climate<\/a>, an observing delegation linked to British, French, and American Nuclear Societies that had stood out all week in their signature blue T-shirts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u200b\u200bThe action was in the perfect location at the entrance hall to the Blue Zone. Every delegate who entered that day walked by, swarms and swarms of people headed to their morning constituency meetings and party office spaces. As I stood to the side of the now-dancing polar bears, furiously jotting down notes and checking my schedule to see when my first session was, I heard a man complain that the organizers were \u201cspreading all this health disinformation.\u201d The desperate ethnographer I am, I beelined for the man, introducing myself and making small talk before getting to the meat of my questions. His name is Tim Judson and he\u2019s the executive director of US-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service<\/a>. He furiously told me that this comparison of nuclear energy exposure to a banana\u2019s latent radiation was a recycled and debunked claim from the 1950\u2019s. He said that, in the 50\u2019s, nuclear energy companies wanted to dispel fears related to nuclear energy and detach it from nuclear weaponry in American minds, so they skewed some numbers to create the claim Nuclear for Climate was using today. My quick Google search later produced varying answers that could not confirm or deny his claims about the argument being debunked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nuclear For Climate members dressed as polar bears dance at their “Spreading Awareness with a Smile: The Banana Radiation Campaign,” December 15, 2024.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Danish woman joined our conversation briefly, complaining that \u201call these Africans and Asians are seeing this and thinking it\u2019s a good idea.\u201d She pointed back to the crowd, where a group of Chinese delegates posed with the polar bears, holding a pocket-sized Chinese flag and chiming \u201cChina for nuclear.\u201d She huffed away towards the meeting rooms and Judson continued his spiel, lamenting that Nuclear for Climate had somehow obtained the most highly sought-after “advocacy action” location at the most highly sought after time period every day of the coming week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some context into the bureaucratic nature of activism at COP, all actions have to be approved the day prior through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Chage (UNFCCC) secretariat. Even those approved actions are heavily regulated, with secretariat representatives deployed at all actions and members of the host country\u2019s law enforcement fencing organizers into designated action locations with retractable belt barriers. The secretariat offers limited times and spaces, necessitating an in-depth application and censoring certain words. Nuclear for Climate had clearly lucked out with their bids. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier in the week, I had been added to a group chat of nearly 550 young delegates dedicated to planning actions at COP29. The group chat is generally a friendly space where people plan movements, send relevant articles, send the day\u2019s schedule of approved actions, and occasionally coordinate evening social events and parties. That Friday night after Nuclear for Climate\u2019s action, however, the atmosphere became tense. The schedule for Saturday\u2019s planned actions dropped, this time with a disclaimer at the bottom stating that the list \u201cis not an endorsement of any actions.\u201d On the list was the sequel to the morning\u2019s polar bear photoshoot, an event entitled \u201cSpreading Awareness with a Smile: The Banana Radiation Campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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