Environment

Should we save the planet or kill the enemy? 

Perhaps no question more succinctly separates the past from the future, or so it occurred to me after I read Rebecca Solnit’s stunning observation in a recent essay: that the mass murders in Christchurch, N.Z. on March 15 occurred on the same day, and in the same general area, as the climate strike young activists were holding in Christchurch as part of a global action, with rallies in well over a hundred countries involving tens of thousands of people.

This juxtaposition was “also a perfectly coherent one, a clash of opposing ideologies,” Solnit wrote. “Behind the urgency of climate action is the understanding that everything is connected; behind white supremacy is an ideology of separation.”

Eight years ago this week apocalyptic radiation clouds began pouring out of Fukushima.  

They haven’t stopped.

Nor have the huckster holocaust deniers peddling still more of these monsters of mass destruction. Some even deny the health impacts from Fukushima fallout that’s already more than 100 times greater than Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s.

Many push fake “new generation” reactors already priced out of by renewables.

But far more deadly is their demand to operate the old, crumbling reactors that daily grow more dangerous.

Here are some inconvenient truths: 

U.S. military spending eight years ago was at $1.2 trillion per year, when one added in the nukes in the Energy Department, the Homeland Security Department, the CIA, interest on debt, veterans’ care, etc.

s the bankrupt federal felon Pacific Gas & Electric desperately hiding something very deadly at its Diablo Canyon Power Plant? Will we know by March 7, when the company wants to restart Unit One, which is currently shut for refueling? Will YOU sign our petition asking Governor Gavin Newsom and other officials to inspect that reactor before it can restart?

In 2010, PG&E blew up a neighborhood in San Bruno, killing eight people.

In 2018, it helped burn down much of northern California, killing more than eighty people. The company has now admitted its culpability in starting that infamous Camp Fire and has questioned its own ability to continue to operate.

On February 6, it incinerated five buildings in San Francisco.

The company is bankrupt. It has been convicted of numerous federal felonies. It actually has a probation officer.

But the real terror comes at its Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors, nine miles west of San Luis Obispo on the central California coast.

"In modern times, an increase in chemical production has led to widespread environmental chemical contamination that can affect normal hormone function in those exposed, particularly in vulnerable populations, such as children and pregnant women. Many of these identified endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which include pesticides and substances used in manufacturing a multitude of products, have been reported to interfere with thyroid hormone function, yet public health policy does not fully address the risks to vulnerable populations."

Brain disorders in children linked to common environmental toxin exposures https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180324103152.htm

Psychosexual outcome of gender-dysphoric children https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18981931

Ask Gov. Newsom to Fully Inspect Aged Diablo Canyon Nuclear Unit One Before it Re-Fuels

Contact: Mimi Kennedy (315) 246-7333; Harvey Wasserman (614) 738-3646 – solartopia@gmail.com; Myla Reson (310) 663-7660  – myla.reson@gmail.com

Dear Gov. Newsom,

We join hundreds of other Californians, including Sen. Ben Allen and San Luis Obispo Mayor Heidi Harmon, who are calling, writing, faxing and e-mailing, asking that you take action at Diablo Canyon to protect our safety and economic future. Under PG&E’s current bankruptcy and criminal proceedings, your position gives you wide ranging powers to act.

With a launch of the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign on the near horizon, efforts to block his trajectory to the Democratic presidential nomination are intensifying. The lines of attack are already aggressive -- and often contradictory.

One media meme says that Bernie has made so much headway in moving the Democratic Party leftward that he’s no longer anything special. We’re supposed to believe that candidates who’ve adjusted their sails to the latest political wind are just as good as the candidate who generated the wind in the first place.

Bloomberg News supplied the typical spin in a Feb. 8 article headlined “Sanders Risks Getting Crowded Out in 2020 Field of Progressives.” The piece laid out the narrative: “Sanders may find himself a victim of his own success in driving the party to the left with his 2016 run. The field of Democratic presidential hopefuls includes at least a half-dozen candidates who’ve adopted in whole or in part the platform that helped Sanders build a loyal following . . .”

Unit One is now SHUT!!!
 PG&E is BANKRUPT!!!

 GOV. NEWSOM MUST TEST FOR:

 EMBRITTLEMENT, CRACKING, DEFERRED MAINTENANCE
 HOLD HEARINGS ON EARTHQUAKES, WASTE,
 PG&E'S COMPETENCE, NEED FOR POWER

 BEFORE UNIT ONE REFUELS

 write him at Capitol, Sacramento  95814
 call him: (916)445-2841; fax 558-3160
 sign: https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/gov-newsom-test-diablo

he Green New Deal’s demand to make our energy system 100% renewable has become central to the new American Dream. It’s essential to our survival, both economically and ecologically.

But the original New Deal, whose Godmother was Eleanor Roosevelt, embraced a broad vision of remaking society as a whole. It aimed to end poverty, win social justice, promote the arts, and much, much more.

So here’s a partial list of New Deal-style changes to create a fair, decent, sustainable world. We welcome your own suggestions at www.solartopia.org.

Donald Trump and his base — the leftover scraps of Jim Crow, the broken shards of racist hatred that once were the American mainstream and made the country seem “great” to those who weren’t its victims — have, it appears, a crucial role to play in our future.

President Trump is the increasingly naked truth. He’s what we have wound up with: a raw, uncensored scapegoating and fear-mongering that’s too much for most of the American public. And thus the political center, the military-industrial-media consensus that has ruled the country for the past four and a half decades, pushing progressive values to the margins of American politics, is unraveling. Centrist compromise, which birthed the Trump presidency, can’t mask the truth anymore.

It’s time to evolve.

If we don’t, we’re stuck in the mire of racism, exploitation, empire and war. We’re stuck in the dead past, which has given us the current state of Planet Earth: a planet at war with itself in multiple ways. We’re stuck in a dead past and a dying future.