Help Save Our Clean Energy Future! #nonukes :: Don't Let #DirtyEnergy Trump the #Climate

Don't Let #DirtyEnergy Trump the #Climate 

Stop the $100+ Billion Nuclear and Coal Bailout

The Trump administration is planning radical actions to advance a dirty energy agenda. Pulling America out of the Global Climate Agreement and ditching the Clean Power Plan are not enough for President Trump. He and his administration want to promote fossil fuels and nuclear power—and to block solar, wind, and the clean energy revolution Americans want and need. 

The Department of Energy wants to expand coal and nuclear power, keeping us tied to two of the dirtiest and most poisonous energy sources ever created. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has issued a report absurdly stating that nuclear and coal are vital to national security. President Trump and Secretary Perry are pushing for a massive coal and nuclear bailout as part of a new policy for “Energy Dominance”. 

This would be a farce if they weren’t serious about it. For decades, dirty energy promoters have tried to sell their poison power under the banner of “energy independence”. But we can’t get more truly independent than generating power from the free sun shining on our rooftops and winds blowing through the fields—not to mention the vast amount of free “negawatts” we never use with smart energy efficiency and conservation.

No—President Trump’s plan is to make Americans pay more for dirty, dangerous coal and nuclear power plants. A nuclear and coal bailout will likely cost hundreds of billions of dollars—dollars that could be used to create a 100% clean energy transition. President Trump refuses to spend a fraction of that amount to support global climate action, but he can’t wait to give mountains of our hard-earned cash to dirty energy executives who have created global warming and nuclear waste.

We have to stop it!

The 2016 election was not a referendum for climate denial and dirty energy. Americans want good jobs and clean air and water and healthy food and communities. 

If the president really wants to revive our economy, create jobs, revitalize local communities, and boost small businesses—then clean energy is the only way to go. Our green energy economy can create millions more jobs than dirty energy could ever provide again. Solar and wind are already creating ten times as many jobs as coal and nuclear for the amount of energy generated. 

The time is now to stop Trump’s dirty energy agenda. Please join us—sign the petition opposing the nuclear and coal bailout. 

And after that, pass it on to your friends and to your contacts on facebook, twitter, Instagram, etc.

Stay tuned for more actions to take as we build this campaign to save our 100% Clean Energy Future!

SIGN NOW

www.NIRS.org
www.facebook.com/nirsnet
www.twitter.com/nirsnet

8.21 NYC Rally: No War With North Korea!

RALLY OUTSIDE OF SENATOR SCHUMER AND SENATOR GILLIBRAND'S OFFICES
Hosted by Peace Action New York State

Tell Senators Schumer and Gillibrand:
NO WAR WITH NORTH KOREA
NO MORE WAR
NO MORE NUCLEAR WEAPONS
TAKES NUKES AWAY FROM TRUMP

Starting this Monday, August 21 until August 31, U.S. and South Korean forces will kick off the Ulchi Freedom Guardian joint military drills, highly provocative and threatening rehearsals for war involving tens of thousands of soldiers simulating surgical strikes on North Korea.

Pyongyang revoked its threat against Guam - and said it would wait to see what the United States would do! We cannot risk the safety of our allies, troops abroad, Guam residents, North Korean families and U.S. citizens because this Administration refuses to even acknowledge that there are diplomatic solutions on the table.

A proposal on the table to avert war and start talks is “freeze for freeze” in which North Korea suspends its nuclear and missile testing in exchange for halting or scaling back massive US-South Korean military exercises. A growing number of American officials are calling for this “freeze for freeze,” which has also been proposed by North Korea, China and Russia.

In an August 14, 2017 poll, 76% of Americans said they want diplomacy to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis. We call for an end to dangerous brinkmanship and the start of talks!

We demand:

1.) Stop reckless brinkmanship; Start Talks Now! Suspend US-ROK military rehearsals for war in exchange for North Korea’s halting of nuclear and missile testing.
2.) De-escalate tensions and build mutual trust by reuniting Korean Americans with their families in North Korea, and repatriating the remains of US servicemen still in North Korea.
3.) Start the peace process towards signing a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War.
4.) Senators Schumer and Gillibrand must support SJR 200 for a U.S. No First Strike Policy and take these weapons AWAY from the impulsive actions of 45!

Rally: No War With North Korea! (Facebook event page)

Peace Action New York State | Peace Demands Action

SCE&G Withdraws V.C. Summer Abandonment Proposal | WJBF-TV

SCE&G Withdraws V.C. Summer Abandonment Proposal | WJBF-TV

No Climate Money for Nuclear Power - NIRS

August 8, 2017

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Tim Judson, NIRS
+1 212-729-1169 (mobile)
TimJ@nirs.org

Peer de Rijk, WISE-International
+ 31 20 6126368
Director@wiseinternational.org

Gedelitz, Germany – An international coalition lead by organizations from nine countries launched a new campaign today–“Don’t Nuke the Climate”–to ensure nuclear power and other false climate solutions do not derail global efforts to reduce the extent of global warming. The coalition is mobilizing for the COP 23 global climate conference in November, where the nations of the world are meeting to make critical decisions on how to solve the problem of climate change. Specifically, the fate of $100 billion per year of investment is at stake the Green Climate Fund. Nuclear power companies are attempting to gain access to the fund to finance uneconomic power projects, which their own governments and the private sector will not or cannot fund.

The coalition’s website and petition can be found on the website: http://www.dont-nuke-the-climate.org

The Paris Climate Agreement, signed by 195 countries, established a global consensus for the goal of limiting global warming to at most 2.0 C (3.8 F), with an ambition to go no higher than 1.5 C (2.7 F). The Paris Agreement’s targets are not arbitrary: a global average temperature rise of 1.5-2.0 C will still have enormous human, economic, and environmental impacts: sea-level rise, severe storms, drought and food shortages, resource conflicts, refugee crises, etc. Achieving these goals is literally a matter of life and death, but there is much uncertainty about the global community’s ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly enough to meet those goals.

The Don’t Nuke the Climate coalition is mobilizing for Bonn with the simple message: we can and must meet the goals of Paris–real, viable climate solutions are at hand–but not if we waste time and money on false solutions like nuclear power. The coalition mobilized in 2015 for the COP 21 climate conference in Paris, and grew to a total of 500 organizations worldwide supporting the “Don’t Nuke the Climate” call.

“We urgently need to tackle climate change. But we have to do this in a just way,” said Peer de Rijk, director of WISE-International. “This means we must actively exclude false solutions like nuclear power, as we otherwise will be thrown back in time and  increase the environmental crisis.”

“Nuclear power is a serial human rights violator and its promotion will worsen the very climate justice problems the Green Climate Fund is supposed to solve,” said Tim Judson, executive director the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, based in the U.S.A. “Nuclear corporations target First Nations and Global South countries are for radioactive contamination and resource destruction, radiation has a disparate impact on women and girls, and these persistent pollutants are hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years, creating indiscriminate impacts on future generations. The Green Climate Fund must never be used to finance such violations of human rights and principles of climate justice,” Judson concluded.

The coalition is opposing intensified efforts by the nuclear power industry to gain access to financing for nuclear power projects through the Green Climate Fund (GCF). The GCF was founded through global climate talks in 2009, and the 2015 Global Climate Agreement set a target of $100 billion per year in financing to Global South countries for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (labeled “mitigation” measures) and infrastructure to withstand the impacts of climate change (labeled “adaptation” measures).

“South-Africa is in urgent need for robust climate action,” said Makoma Lekalakala That means money for adaptation but also clean, affordable, safe new energy for everyone. A choice for nuclear would only increase the financial burden put upon millions of South-Africans.”

“The Indian state often blocks international negotiations on climate citing the needs of its poor,” said Kumar Sundaram, director of Dianuke in India. “But that in reality is nothing more than the Indian elite and industries demanding for the right to be equally irresponsible with the climate. Domestically, the government policies are only widening the energy access gap and imposing nuclear, coal and big dam projects that threaten to destroy fragile ecologies and most vulnerable communities. It’s unfortunate that the Indian government’s climate policy reinforces the myth of nuclear power being safe and clean. India is standing on the wrong side of history in the post-Fukushima world – setting up world’s biggest, costliest and most unsafe imported nuclear plants by undermining safety and environmental clearance norms and brutalizing massive but peaceful grassroots. India cannot be allowed to be a liability-free market where the declining global nuclear lobby rehabilitates itself.”

Nuclear power’s economic failures are worsening, with major firms such as Westinghouse and Areva going bankrupt, reactors being shut down, and new reactors canceled due to excessive costs, chronic construction delays, and aging infrastructure. Without access to massive amounts of public dollars such as the GCF, the industry faces inevitable decline, and cannot compete against true climate solutions, such as solar, wind, and energy efficiency and conservation.

As a result of, the industry has intensified its lobbying effort since Paris, and now includes industry trade associations, such as Foratom; the International Atomic Energy Agency; major nuclear corporations, including Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear corporation, which is targeting developing nations for nuclear development; and nuclear professional organizations and front groups, including the World Nuclear Society and Nuclear for Climate.

“Nuclear is dying – without taxpayer subsidies,” said Reinhard Uhrig, Head of Campaigns for Global 2000, the Austrian affiliate of Friends of the Earth International. “It now promotes itself as ‘green’, carbon-free electricity (which it is not) to get at public money such as in the climate funds established to combat global warming in particular in the global south. We cannot let the nuclear lobby get away with this – no subsidies for nuclear!”

“Nuclear is too expensive and takes too long to build, and we need real climate solutions today,” said Vladimir Sliviak, executive director of Ecodefense, based in Russia. “The effective approach is developing renewable energy and energy efficiency. We don’t have money or time to spend on false solutions.”

The coalition is urging nations participating in the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) to prohibit the use of the Green Climate Fund on technologies that make the societal and environmental impacts of climate change worse, like nuclear power, so-called “clean” coal, large-scale hydro-power, hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and oil, food- and forest-based biomass, and REDD+ — which are broadly considered false solutions and frequently entail human rights violations.

“There is no acceptable solution worldwide for high level radioactive waste, the only consequence is to stop nuclear power right now,” said Kerstin Rudek from Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberg, based in Germany.

“It’s a shame that Germany failed to include the uranium enrichment facility in Gronau and the fuel element factory in Lingen in its nuclear phaseout policy. Both facilities export to nuclear power plant in Belgium and in France. Germany needs a complete nuclear phaseout and has to start immediately with phasing out coal as well.”

Organizations leading the “Don’t Nuke the Climate” coalition represent nine nations spanning four continents:

Global/International

World Information Service on Energy – International

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

Africa

Earthlife (South Africa)

Asia

Dia-Nuke (India)

Ecodefense (Russia)

KFEM (South Korea)

Europe

Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberg (Germany)

Global 2000 (Friends of the Earth – Austria)

North America

Nuclear Information and Resource Service (U.S.A.)

Download press release.

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No Climate Money for Nuclear Power - NIRS

ATOMIC LEGACY ART - Women Eco Artists Dialog

WELCOME TO THE ISSUE ABOUT THE ISSUE THAT WON’T GO AWAY "ATOMIC LEGACY ART" WEAD--WOMEN ECO ARTISTS DIALOG ONLINE MAGAZINE ISSUE #5: Dedicated to the Future. INTRODUCTION by Susan Leibovitz Steinman https://directory.weadartists.org/atomic-art
ATOMIC LEGACY ARTISTS:


• Feature Artist Helene Aylon created her Earth Ambulance in 1982. For ten+ years she drove the Ambulance across the United States to Strategic Air Command bases, gathering people to collectively “rescue earth”—from the United Nations Plaza, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. https://directory.weadartists.org/the-earth-ambulance


• Writing about post-Fukushima Japan, writer/publisher HIROKO SHIMIZU brings a sampler of anti-
nuclear activist artists, followed by a long interview with charismatic philosopher-artist ICHI IKEDA. Ikeda works with small rural communities creating large visions of clean water and collective action. https://directory.weadartists.org/japanese-anti-nuclear-art...


• German artist Insa Winkler traveled to Chernobyl with an activist artists’ collective who work with the “forgotten” people living there. She brings back the stories of people still living there, and the projects they worked on. https://directory.weadartists.org/missing-landscape-reflexion-chernobyl


• Working in New York and New Mexico, artist Eve Andrée Laramée creates complex installations and videos about radioactive damage to people and land by resident nuclear industries. https://directory.weadartists.org/tracking-our-atomic-legacy


• Long time anti-nuclear activist artist Beverly Naidus’ experiences are deeply personal and close to heart. Having suffered from serious environmental illnesses in the past, her work confronts the nuclear industry as a tool for healing and power. https://directory.weadartists.org/nuked-notes-journey


• ANN T. ROSENTHAL has been combining anti-nuclear activism and art since 1982. She shares her “atomic pilgrimage” from Guam to Japan to New Mexico to Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation. https://directory.weadartists.org/infinity-city

• Raised a “downwinder” (living near a reactor), Southern California political artist Laura Lynch charts a history of nuclear industry over seven decades and its negative environmental impact. In her ART OF PROTEST she calls on humans to regain “consciousness” to face the real costs of nuclear power. https://directory.weadartists.org/the-art-of-protest


COMMENTARIES:


• ON MY MIND: Art critic and EcoArt South Florida founder Mary Jo Aagerstoun asks Can Anti-Nuke Activist Art Be A Form Of EcoArt? while critiquing Florida’s arsenal of aging failing nuclear plant dangers. https://directory.weadartists.org/anti-nuke-ecoart


• JAMES LERAGER presents a photographer’s atomic legacy portfolio https://directory.weadartists.org/a-photo-essay-nuclear-history-nuclear-destiny


• Cecile Pineda shares part of her recent book Devil’s Tango. 
https://directory.weadartists.org/by-invitation-only


• JL MALBROOK reports on a feminist conference at the The New School for Design in NYC on April 5, 2012. https://directory.weadartists.org/shifting-terrain

ATOMIC LEGACY ART - Women Eco Artists Dialog

Tell the NRC--No Nuclear Waste Trafficking with Canada or Any Other Countries!!!

Last week, we told you about the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's (CNSC) plan to amend the licenses for twelve Canadian nuclear power reactors on Lake Ontario to allow them to export their nuclear waste to the United States and other countries.  Now, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is seeking to amend export license XW008/05 that would allow a US company, Diversified Scientific Services, Inc. (DSSI) that burns mixed radioactive and hazardous waste in an industrial boiler, to  transport back to Canada the refuse from Canadian radioactive oils, solvents, grease, paint chips and resins (laden with radioactivity). 

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has already given blanket approval via a “General License” to importers of foreign radioactive wastes to secretly bring those wastes into the U.S. without revealing their origin or characteristics,  without public notification or input - and with no opportunity for a public hearing to either investigate or challenge these dangerous radioactive wastes from entering our communities, workplaces, and consumer products. 

Tell the NRC to reject this license amendment that allows international nuclear waste trafficking. Comments due August 10th by 11:59 pm.

SIGN NOW

New U.S. reactor construction collapses because it's “prohibitively expensive”: the fight for justice continues | Beyond Nuclear

South Carolina electric utilities have scrapped finishing construction for two half-built Westinghouse reactors admitting that nuclear power is “prohibitively expensive.” The abandonment of the V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3 in Jenkinsville, SC comes with an estimated $11 billion in sunk costs and still projected six years from completion. The cancellation adds to the growing number of tombstones for once championed “milestones” in an atomic power revival. The inability to control the “cost-of-completion” and “time-to-completion” is the fundamental economic failure behind this recent collapse of the nuclear industry. In fact, these same reasons were featured in a 1985 Forbes magazine cover story “Nuclear Follies” describing the development of commercial atomic power as “the largest managerial disaster in U.S. business history where only the blind and the biased can say the money was well spent.”

There is not one nuclear power project in the United States that has ever been built on budget and on time, only more or less grossly out of proportion. The country is littered with the abandoned hulks of the 20^th Century’s "nuclear error” including Seabrook Unit 2 in New Hampshire, Shoreham in New York, Midland in Michigan, the “Whoops” reactors in Washington, Bellefonte in Alabama, Marble Hill in Indiana and Zimmer in Ohio. These sites stand as monuments to nearly 100 more cancelled construction projects.   

The recent collapse of V.C. Summer 2 &3 now weighs heavier on the only remaining new reactor construction in the U.S. at Vogtle units 3 and 4 in Waynesboro, Georgia. With the bankruptcy of Westinghouse Electric and still mounting financial trouble for its Japan-based parent company Toshiba, Southern Company and Georgia Power were handed the dubious oversight and management of construction by the U.S. Department of Energy for the two Westinghouse reactors still being built there. The fate of the Vogtle boondoogle is still uncertain even with Toshiba giving $3.7 billion to Southern Company to contractually cut loose of the project and spread the cost out over more owners. Just how much and how long it will take to complete the untested design remain inescapable questions.  Southern Company's new projected cost-of-completion for Vogtle has balloned to $25 billion.  Southern is under pressure to tell the Georgia Public Service Commission by end of 2017 whether it plans to go forward with completion of the Vogtle expansion.  The decision could come as early as the end of August 2017.

The repeated and predictable economic failure of atomic power sends an ever direr warning of the shear folly in wasting billions more dollars and decades longer only to predictably fall short in the challenge to abate climate change. Again, nuclear power is exposed as an unreliable partner in any “energy mix” with renewable power from the wind and sun, energy efficiency and conservation. Nuclear power, new and old, only serves to divert and deplete necessary resources and squander the precious little time that remains.

The collapse of the nuclear industry further lay bare the economic and environmental justice struggles still ahead to hold corporations accountable to greed, fraud and desecration.

Accolades are much deserved to the environmental and consumer protection groups that have been involved from the beginning with the proposed Summer and Vogtle expansions. These same organizations are now demanding ratepayer restitution and protection from still more fleecing.

As Tom Clements, South Carolina’s advisor to Friends of the Earth (FoE) puts it, “The decision to abandon the V.C. Summer project is of monumental proportion and is a full admission that pursuit of the project was a fool’s mission right from the start.” According to Clements, the abandonment of construction now portends a fight for economic justice where, “Rather than applauding the decision this is a time for reflection and to prepare for formal proceedings before the PSC that will review how this debacle happened and how to refund ratepayers money due to a string of imprudent decisions.”

Sara Barczak with the Southern Alliance for Safe Energy (SACE) is wondering how much longer it will take Southern Company to pull the plug on Vogtle 3 and 4. Still she continues the call for “stopping the forced draining of customers’ wallets” there. Indeed, as Barazk observes for V.C. Summer, “A very costly door has closed on the so-called nuclear renaissance” and the awaited announced cancellation of Vogtle 3 and 4. 

Beyond Nuclear - Home - New U.S. reactor construction collapses because it's “prohibitively expensive”: the fight for justice continues

No red button. No nukes. Never again. Media Advisory for big upcoming action. Read all about it...

“March for Nuclear Abolition & Global Survival”

– Major Rally, March & Nonviolent Direct Action on Aug. 9 at Livermore Lab will commemorate the atomic bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki at the site where U.S. is designing new nuclear weapons; call on Trump Admin. to sign Ban Treaty & reduce, not escalate, U.S. and global nuclear dangers…

Media Advisory - for immediate release August 3, 2017

Contacts: Marylia Kelley, Tri-Valley CAREs, 925-443-7148; cell, 925-255-3589 Dr. Robert Gould, Physicians for Social Responsibility, SF Bay Area, cell 415-407-8972

“March for Nuclear Abolition & Global Survival”

www.trivalleycares.org/new/MediaAdvAug92017FNL.pdf

August 9, 2017 Action at Livermore Lab 8 AM

facebook.com/AugustAction/

facebook.com/events/302501973535810/

Tri-Valley CAREs

www.trivalleycares.org

DANIEL ELLSBERG, EMMA'S REVOLUTION & MORE!

Rally and Nonviolent Action @ Livermore Lab (where they develop nuclear weapons right here in the Bay Area) to commemorate the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to protest nukes! Peace Camp the night before.

August 9, 2017 Action at Livermore Lab 8 AM - Facebook event page

Tell the Canadian Government—No Nuclear Waste Trafficking to the US or Any Other Countries!

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is about to amend the licenses for TWELVE Canadian nuclear power reactors on Lake Ontario to allow them to export their nuclear waste to the United States and other countries.

NOW IS THE TIME: Send your comments to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission by August 3rd to oppose Canadian nuclear power license amendments that allow radioactive waste import and export between Canada and the U.S.!

Canada has already been sending some nuclear waste to the U.S. for “processing,” but the amendments would open the door to unlimited amounts especially as the reactors are generating more waste.  There are numerous nuclear waste ‘processors,’ licensed by state nuclear agencies including TN, IL, PA and WA, that burn, shred, melt, acid-etch, and launder radioactive materials. There are a few facilities that deliberately release radioactive waste to regular garbage dumps and commercial recycling streams--materials that are used to make everyday household items--without public notice!

Now Canada is ensuring continued and accelerated import to the U.S. of its waste —er— "materials" by adding amendments to the nuclear power licenses for export and import.

TAKE ACTION below and tell the CNSC to reject the license amendments that allow international nuclear waste trafficking!

SIGN NOW