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Harvey Wasserman

This Earth Day, beat King CONG & sign up for Solartopia!
April 17, 2007

"Solartopia has made me what I previously thought impossible, optimistic." -Kurt Vonnegut

"Isms are wasms." -Abbie Hoffman

Solartopia is our planet when, as Kurt Vonnegut might have said, we finally decide to like it here.

It is the prosperous, do-able, and absolutely necessary green-powered Earth of A.D. 2030. It is essential to our survival---economically, biologically and spiritually.

Solartopia rests on four simple pillars:

1. Total renunciation of all fossil and nuclear fuels. There is no place for them in a sustainable, survivable world. They are neither green nor clean.

2. All-out conversion to renewable energy, led by the Solartopian Trinity of wind, solar and bio-fuels. Mother Earth gives us the natural power we need.

3. Complete commitment to increased efficiency, including revived and solarized mass transit and inter-city passenger rail systems.

4. No more production of anything that cannot be re-used or recycled. Zero tolerance of any waste makes Solartopia a post-pollution world.

In addition to wind, solar and bio-fuels, Solartopian energy comes from the waves, currents and tides; from the geothermal heat beneath the earth's crust; and from the temperature differentials between solar-heated water at the oceans' surface and that deeper down.

The efficiency revolution is meant to drive Solartopian energy consumption levels to a pittance. Compact fluorescent bulbs will be transcended by Light Emitting Diodes and a whole army of efficiency devices, many of them invented in backyards as the green power revolution advances.

A hyper-powered internet fuels both the pure democracy of instant grassroots organizing and an endless grassroots stream of Solartopian innovations that produce and save energy.

Hydrogen and electricity are the chief power carriers, but they are always produced by green means.

The safe energy revolution will spawn millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in decentralized wealth. With homes, buildings, communities and farms controlling their own energy supplies, prosperity is widespread.

Thus Solartopia is diverse, tolerant and fair. Solartopians are argumentative, opinionated, liberated. The rich are plentiful, the poor are less poor, and have their dignity. Nobody starves in Solartopia. Everyone has a right to an education.

Paper ballots guarantee actual democracy. Women are empowered, erudite and equally paid, so the birth rate has stabilized.

Corporations still exist. But Solartopia demands they serve society rather than vice versa. Their charters require that they balance the profit motive with social service. They are restricted in the types of business they do and where they can do it. Ultimately, they worship at a new altar: accountability.

After so many thousands of corporations "Enronized" in toxic clouds of overextension and greed, Solartopia decided that capitalism may be one thing, but cannibalism quite another.

The switch to renewables has defunded global terrorism. Shutting all nuclear plants has eliminated these pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction, and relieved us of the on-going fear of melt-downs.

The money not wasted on this failed atomic technology has accelerated the switch to true green energy.

Murderous coal mines with their lethal air pollution are as long gone as oil spills and gas shortages.

Solartopians still painfully howl at the absurd idea that atomic power was once hyped as "green" or that coal was sold as "clean."

With organic farming, food production has revived and thrived, bursting past the devastating catastrophes of chemical pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and genetically modified seeds.

Synergistic reefs under large off-shore wind towers have helped revive the ocean ecology. Against all odds, the "Apollo 13 Laws" banning any form of pollution have made Solartopia's water and air fit to drink and breath.

Feisty and diverse, Solartopia has no firm consensus on personal beliefs about reproduction, meat eating (the Vegetopians are always feuding with the carnivores) or a thousand other enjoyably combative issues.

But the bottom line is this: the absurd old hype about "green" nukes or fossil fuels is remembered in Solartopia as a silly joke. When push came to shove, King CONG---Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas---could not cut it. Our hyper-efficient Solartopia runs totally, gratefully and without compromise on Mother Nature's sun.

Every year, Earth Day requires a choice: paint a new coat of greenwash on old fossil/nuke dinosaurs…or work for a genuinely sustainable future based on zero tolerance for obsolete technologies, unnecessary waste or corporate domination.

Kurt Vonnegut saw the Solartopian vision and it made him "optimistic." It is what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., calls "the good, brave renewable world of sustainability, dignity, prosperity and freedom."

Solartopia is the diverse, green-powered, organic place we must go to survive and thrive. The alternatives are moral collapse, financial bankruptcy and biological extinction.

So this Earth Day, lets beat King CONG and sign up for Solartopia!

--
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, with an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is at www.solartopia.org and www.freepress.org.




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Don't forget to check out articles from 2007 and 2008

Harvey Wasserman

"Bringing Leonard Peltier to Iowa and New Hampshire"
  December 30, 2007

"Will Congress plunge us (again) into the nuke power abyss?"
  December 14, 2007

"Two critical (but tentative) green victories hang in the balance"
  December 11, 2007

"Will Congress make taxpayers fund terror-target nuke reactors?"
  November 29, 2007

"People were killed by Three Mile Island & other nuclear disasters"
  November 18, 2007

"Nukes are back and so are we"
  October 18, 2007

"The genius doctor who diagnosed Nuke Power's deadly disease"
  September 7, 2007

"Astonishing tower collapse screams "No New Nukes!!""
  August 27, 2007

""Nuke Nuggets" glow for the Senate's radioactive rip-off"
  August 20, 2007

"Do the neo-cons need Karl Rove when they can count on the Democrats?"
  August 15, 2007

"Radioactive "bailout-in-advance" opens fierce new war over nuke reactors"
  August 9, 2007

"Nuke PR flacks do the Kashiwazaki quake dance"
  July 23, 2007

"The earthquake that screamed "NO NUKES!!!" "
  July 19, 2007

"King CONG in California declares total "New Nukes" war against Solartopia"
  July 16, 2007

"Mother Earth can't live without a Solartopian vision"
  July 9, 2007

"The patriotic service of Leonard Peltier versus the treason of Scooter Libby"
  July 6, 2007

"TOTALLY boom/doom Solartopian green by 2030"
  June 26, 2007

"The honor of being called a "jerk" by pro-nuker Patrick Moore"
  June 12, 2007

"To save the Earth, are YOU a Solartopian?"
  May 29, 2007

"Bush, Rudy and Whitman to New York: Drop Dead"
  May 22, 2007

"Can BLUE GRIT win in 2008?"
  May 16, 2007

"How creative mass non-violence beat a nuke and launched the global green power movement"
  May 13, 2007

"Chernobyl reminds us that nukes are NOT green"
  April 28, 2007

"This Earth Day, the need for corporate accountability is the Inconvenient Truth"
  April 22, 2007

"Is "Green" Tom Friedman the new eco-Orwell of Solartopia?"
  April 19, 2007

"This Earth Day, beat King CONG & sign up for Solartopia!"
  April 17, 2007

"Peace be with you, Kurt Vonnegut"
  April 13, 2007

"Why must nuke-powered lemmings flock back to the radioactive sea?"
  April 10, 2007

"Will Al Gore get us to Solartopia? "
  March 27, 2007

"The sham of nuke power & Patrick Moore"
  February 28, 2007

"We love you, Molly"
  January 29, 2007




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