Environment
So Soon We Forget
I offer these thoughts because I'm told by many that people, especially young folks, have little to no memory or knowledge of these essential learnings from Chernobyl and Fukushima. Understanding these hard lessons allows us to see through the demonic joke of ‘clean and green' nuclear power supposedly saving us from climate change.
Chernobyl
April 26, 2024, was the 38th anniversary of Chernobyl, which is still considered by some to be the worst nuclear accident in history. That disaster exposed millions of people all over the planet to harmful ionizing radiation and its long-lasting humanitarian effects and severe social and political impacts contributed heavily to the collapse of the Soviet empire.
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is about 81 miles north of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and about 12 miles south of the border with Belarus. The disaster site, still intensely radioactive, is now in the Ukrainian war zone, compounding the risks.
They explore the absurd $15 billion scam to bilk state and federal taxpayers and ratepayers to pay for re-starting Michigan’s Palisades reactor.
The plant is 50 years old and was shut two years ago for safety reasons.
Critical parts have already been stripped out.
The company designated to restart the reactor—Holtec—has never operated a reactor.
Roger and Kevin give us a complete tour of this atomic catastrophe in the making.
WENDI LEDERMAN reports on the attacks on women’s health care in Florida, Arizona and elsewhere.
The legendary CAMILLA REES then convenes a world-class panel on the impacts of Electro-Magnetic Frequencies.
Sam Randazzo was once the Chair of the Ohio Public Utilities Commission.
Now, at 74, he’s dead by apparent suicide.
As is the “Nuclear Renaissance.”
Dating back many years, we often encountered Sam at energy hearings in Columbus. He was always personable and friendly as we exchanged handshakes and smiles.
That we were totally on opposite sides of the issues was like an inside joke between us.
But he was there to lobby for the fossil/nuclear industry while we were demanding Ohio get its energy from wind and solar—which it could be doing today except for Sam and his corporate bankrollers’ highly effective back channel arm twisting.
Randazzo was always highly paid…TOO well paid, which is what led to his death in a Columbus warehouse owned by a shell company he controlled.
Apparently it was a suicide, though one can never be entirely sure when there are millions of bucks flying around in bribes.
Because unbeknownst to us and even some of those paying him, Sam played both sides of the fence.
Climate advocates on Monday asked the California Supreme Court to reverse a new rooftop solar panel policy in the state that the groups say has proven "irony is alive and well," as the policy is impeding the expansion of renewable energy in California just as regulators are calling for a solution to the state's energy crisis.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a new solar policy last year at the urging of the state's three investor-owned utilities, led by Pacific Gas & Electric. The new rules slashed a solar power incentive for homeowners by about 75%, sharply reducing the amount utilities pay people with solar panels when they sell surplus power to the grid.
Sustainable ecological value monetized will have profound four-fold global benefits. Creating sustainable ecological value is the easiest path toward quickly mitigating climate change, expanding ecological global economic growth, pursuing a radical reduction in pollution depletion and ecological damage, and sharply reducing rampant global inequality. It is the basis for the pursuit of the New Wealth of Nations.
Including ecological value in global market dynamics is the missing piece needed to enable the price system and the pursuit of profit to help radically diminish the attraction of externalities by making the market send price signals realistically valuing and rewarding sustainable conduct to increase profit. Regulatory schemes and taxes on polluters have not stopped the global march toward ecological catastrophe. Monetizing ecological value is both a recognition of the inescapable importance of the global ecosphere under catastrophic assault, and a crucial improvement in the incentives of the price system embracing ecological sanity in the name of profit as well as survival and justice.
Todays presentation features the great AMORY LOVINS in a monumental recorded conversation on the rise of a renewable/efficiency-based economy.
This discussion was presented at a Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection zoom (#157, Part 2) on November 13, 2023.
In 1975, Amory gave a pioneer talk at the TOWARD TOMORROW FAIR in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Amory's landmark vision introduced the world to the coming realities of a totally green-powered Earth.
In his later Road Not Taken, published by Foreign Affairs Magazine, Amorys breakthrough insights have helped lay the foundation for one of humankinds most critical technological revolutions"and one of it biggest industries, with revenues reaching into the multi-trillions, and job-creating in the multi-millions.
Amory later personally delivered the basic memorandum to Jimmy Carter, helping to birth (among other things) the establishment of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
“U.S. leads coalition to triple nuclear power by 2050 in effort to address climate change,” was the headline of a December 4th CNBC article on activity at the UN conference called COP28 being held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on the climate crisis.
COP stands for Conference of the Parties, annual gatherings under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The 28 is for this being the 28th session. It began on November 30th and is to end on December 12.
When it started, there was a stir over the conference president being Sultan Al Jaber who just happens to head the UAE’s state-owned oil company, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, (ADNOC). Time magazine splashed a photo of Al Jaber on its cover with the caption: “Oil executive Sultan Al Jaber is at the center of a global climate fight. MAN IN THE MIDDLE.”
