Demanding a Renewable Energy Revolution

By Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News

ur Earth is being destroyed by fracking and nukes.

These two vampire technologies suck the energy out of our planet while permanently poisoning our air, water, food and livelihoods.

The human movements fighting them have been largely separate over the years.

No more.

In the wake of Fukushima, the global campaign to bury atomic power has gained enormous strength. All Japan’s 54 reactors remain shut. Germany is amping up its renewable energy generation with a goal of 80 percent or more by 2050. Four U.S. reactors under construction are far over budget and behind schedule. Five old ones have closed in the last two years.

In New England and elsewhere, as the old nukes go down, safe energy activists shift their attention to the deadly realities of fossil fuel extraction.

The issues are familiar. Fracking in particular poisons our water and spews out huge quantities of lethal radiation. Ironically, in Ohio and elsewhere, the seismic instability it creates threatens atomic reactors still in operation.

In California, the burgeoning movement to shut the two remaining nukes at Diablo Canyon has run parallel with the powerful grassroots opposition to fracking. In both cases, water issues in this drought-plagued state have moved front and center.

Now the gap is being bridged. In a passionate hour-long dialog on saving our Earth, long-time anti-fracking activist David Braun speaks with Linda Seeley of the San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, the legendary grassroots group that has fought Diablo Canyon for more than four decades.

In their Solartopian radio conversation, and in a call to convene this coming spring, we see the seeds of an intertwined alliance that can help save our Earth: http://prn.fm/solartopia-green-power-wellness-hour-02-03-15/

COMMENTS:

-43 # brycenuc 2015-02-08 11:39

Anything that actually produces energy on demand is demonized. We can't maintain our civilization on renewable energy. And renewable energy cannot be sustained without significant taxpayer subsidies. I hope the public and the politicians soon wake up to the realities of where our energy really comes from

+28 # Peakspecies 2015-02-08 12:23

We can't maintain our civilization on the business as usual approach, one which is based on quarterly earning reports and a few decades to pay off loaned funds, rather a deep look into our children's futures. Billions of people are stuck with this which has become almost a religion. Wake up. Nothing can sustain a population that insists on having it all, including all the children that they have always craved and a human population that could skyrocket above today's 7.24-billion. Humans can't prevail on a dead planet even if the human ego tells us that we can overcome even that.

+15 # Seadog 2015-02-08 15:11

Wrong on all pts. Using existing renewable energy sources to power our society is doable. What's lacking is the political will to do it. If the existing carbon and radioactive elements based energy producers had to compete on a true level playing field they'd all be closed up.

+4 # REDPILLED 2015-02-08 16:45

Leave fossil fuels buried to prevent climate change, study urges | Environment | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/07/much-worlds-fossil-fuel-reserve-must-stay-buried-prevent-climate-change-study-says?CMP=ema_565

Our Renewable Future Post Carbon Institute
http://www.postcarbon.org/our-renewable-future-essay/

0 # pbbrodie 2015-02-09 10:20

brycenuc wrote:
"We can't maintain our civilization on renewable energy. And renewable energy cannot be sustained without significant taxpayer subsidies."
On what do you base these absurd assumptions? You are notorious for making unsubstantiated comments like these. You apparently just make up BS and write it as comments here.
If you are expected to be taken the least bit seriously, how about explain where you came up with your claims?

0 # bmiluski 2015-02-09 11:30

You do understand... brycenuc... that oil and coal will run out in other words in NONRENEWABLE? Which means it will run out. And then what?
Your statement that we can't maintain our civilization on renewable energy is oxymoronic.

+13 # jlg 2015-02-08 14:49

Fracking and Nukes are just two of the unholy trio of legal planet-poisoner s - the third is pesticide spraying, on farms (especially with GMO crops of course), forests (where nice mixtures of poisons are applied) and roads - ALL FOR WEED CONTROL... cheap for corporations, OTT expensive for US.

+12 # Seadog 2015-02-08 15:14

The extraction and chemical Industries are causing criminal havoc on this planet. The day of reckoning has arrived for Earth's life forms. The facts are that the present system we have created is unsustainable and deadly.

+3 # Vgwitmer 2015-02-09 07:39

Support organizations that work to ban fracking. Write your congresspeople to rein in or eliminate oil company subsidies, adopt instead of bearing children. There is hope to avoid the loss of most humans, but it will require hard work and sacrifice. Are we strong enough to accept that? To think strong but shrinking economy instead of perpetual growth?

+2 # NAVYVET 2015-02-09 10:57

I'm a veteran of the late 60s-1970s "first renewable energy revolution" -- which was wrecked by Reagan and his cronies. I'll be 79 in a few weeks, and I'm still working for solar, wind, tidal and other natural power sources. I would love to see fossil fuels (including anti-life extraction procedures like fracking) and all nuclear reactors out of business before I die. YOU who are young must work for this! Please! I have grandchildren I want them to have a world to live in.