FOE: "Fix or Ditch' Pro-Nuke Climate Change Bill

Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability

Safe energy vs. nuclear energy is something I know about. When I was a college student in the mid 1970s, I did a school paper on whether nuclear energy was safe. Though I came in with a more-or-less open mind, I was shocked and horrified by what I found. The more I researched, the worse it got.

Among the hundred or so good reasons NOT to use nukes:

  • Safe storage and disposal of deadly wastes must be maintained for approximately 250,000 years–in our disposable, throwaway society where most items don’t last ten years and almost no human-made objects exist from longer ago than 25,000 or 30,000 years. This is ten times as long!
    Safety of the plants themselves, both during normal operation (radiation releases) and during accidents or terrorist attacks
    Net consumption of energy: counting the entire fuel cycle of mining, milling, transporting, processing, transporting again, use, and waste handling, nukes actually consume more energy than they create–so all those other risks don’t even have a benefit
    Skewed laws such as the Price-Anderson Act, which insulates the nuclear industry from all but a tiny fraction of the potential liability, and massively subsidizes the premiums for even that minuscule level of insurance

    • True energy security involves renewable, nonpolluting, decentralized technologies such as solar wind, small-scale hydro, and geothermal–coupled with innovative engineering that slashes our energy consumption, of the sort Amory Lovins and his Rocky Mountain Institute have been proposing for 30 years. Even here in cloudy, cold New England, I have both solar hot water and solar electric (photovoltaic) systems on the room of my house, which was built in 1743. If we can do it here…

    So when I got a mailing from the respected environmental group Friends of the Earth saying that the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill is fatally flawed because it opens the door to new nukes, I wanted to share that message with you.

    Tell your Congressional representatives.

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    About

    A lifelong activist, profitability and marketing specialist Shel Horowitz’s mission is to fix crises like hunger, poverty, racism, war, and catastrophic climate change—by showing the business world how fixing them can make a profit. An author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker, his award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, lays out a blueprint for creating and MARKETING those profitable change-making products and services. He is happy to help you craft your messaging and develop profit strategies. Learn more (and download excerpts from the book) at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com