Jackson Browne Backs Off Support for Pro-Nuke Obama
On Capitol Hill today, there was a press conference.
Three members of Congress - Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), John Hall (D-New York), and Shelley Berkley (D-Nevada) - were there.
Activists like Harvey Wasserman and David Fenton - were there.
And musicians including Hall, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Graham Nash - who were among the organizers, with Wasserman, of the 1979 No Nukes Concerts in Madison Square Garden, which played a prominent role in galvanizing citizen energy against nuclear power - were there.
Environmental leaders from NRDC, Greenpeace, U.S. PIRG, Public Citzen, Sierra Club, the Environmental Working Group, the League of Conservation Voters, among others - were there.
They made arguments against pending legislation that will grant massive loan guarantees to nuclear power companies to build new reactors.
They made statements about how nuclear power is uneconomical, poses big fat targets for terrorists, and produces thousands of tons of high-level radioactive waste.
Wasserman and the musicians have put up a sleek web site - nukefree.org.
But when push comes to shove, we are talking Democrats here.
And so when the group of them were asked - well, what if the Democrats nominate a pro-nuclear Presidential candidate like Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York) or Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois) - will you bolt the party, withhold support, endorse an anti-nuke third party candidate? - no one said yes.
Wasserman didn’t say anything.
Fenton didn’t say anything.
The environmental leaders didn’t say anything.
Markey was quiet.
Berkley was gone.
Hall gave a disingenuous answer.
“I don’t believe that Senator Clinton or Senator Obama are hard and fast pro-nuke candidates,” Hall said. “I think they are both are considering the options and need to have all of the information. They certainly have plenty of information. But they are persuadable. This is an educational experiment.”
Jackson Browne was more forthcoming.
Browne said that he initially came out in support of Obama, but then learned of Obama’s support for nuclear power.
At a recent presidential debate, Edwards came out strongly opposed to nuclear power.
At the same debate, Obama said “we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix.”
“It gave me pause to reconsider my support for him,” Browne said. “I’m hoping to talk to him about it. I know that (John) Edwards came out against it. And that interested me a great deal.”
Browne said he does believe that the nuclear power issue will have an impact on how people vote next year.
At a campaign event in South Carolina earlier this year, Clinton also endorsed nuclear power.
“I think nuclear power has to be part of our energy solution,” Clinton said. “I don’t have any preconceived opposition. I just want to be sure we do it right. . . Obviously, it is a tremendous source of energy. We get about 20 percent of our energy from nuclear power in our country. A lot of people don’t realize that. Other countries like France get much, much more. We do have to look at it, because it doesn’t put greenhouse gas emissions into the air. But we have to make sure it is done as safely as possible.”
The organizers of nukefree.org are seeking to defeat legislation that would, as Markey put it, hijack clean energy legislation “and turn it into an Automatic Teller Machine for an industry that is supposed to be standing on its own.”
“The nuclear industry thinks the problem of global warming is an opportunity to skip the normal process of seeking investors and instead seek out the Federal Treasury,” Markey said.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com.
© 2007 Corporate Crime Reporter
HEY! CELEBRITIES! Ever even CONSIDERED this guy??? You know, the one who stands for what you say you want?!
http://www.dennis4president.com/home/
Wake up!!!
celebrity, you’re right. what’s up with this? certainly these people know better. very strange.
Now that Dennis is talkin about Impeaching Bush/Cheney, The Hollywood folks may get more courage too.
All the more reason to support DK!
Turning uranium into nuclear fuel requires tons of fossil fuels, and nuclear power creates waste that lasts for MILLIONS of years, yet this is supposed to be “clean”?
Imagine if the generations before us left us with millions of years of radioactive waste?
Who says we have the RIGHT to put that burden on future generations?
I like DK too, but don’t all rational decisions come down to our subjective assessments of likelihoods?
Bush and Cheney claim that their actions will benefit virtually all Americans, and they might think that is a possibility, though Cheney certainly knows it is highly unlikely and CD commenters also know this. We disapprove of certain politicians because their policies are unlikely to achieve our goals, for ourselves or the nation or the planet, and we ignore other politicians because we believe it is unlikely they will ever attain the power to achieve such goals (e.g. a local city councilperson who is great on the issues but deluded in considering running for president).
So the rational voter/activist must always weigh the likelihoods regarding whether a candidate’s policies would achieve important goals and whether the candidate can achieve the power to implement such policies.
Whom to support in the primaries and in the general election is not the “slam-dunk” for progressives, on any side of the debate, that so many at CD appear to argue.
Reminds me of the Green party. Issues are a fashion statement not neccessarily applied to the real world.
Gotta admire Willie Nelson though. He is right there backing Kucinich and Cindy while the 60’s radicals hem and haw.
Folks, Kucinich is the “right” candidate, which is why he won’t get the nomination even if every reader here votes accordingly. He won’t play ball with most aspects of the tooled system which props up most other candidates. That is also why celebs won’t endorse; they’d get black-balled, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Jackson Browne steps out of that mold. He’s among sincere celebrities.
What ever happened to the proposal to shuttle nuclear waste to the sun? Does anyone know if that has ever been revisited as viable considering the modern NASA shuttle program?
Great! Use nuclear power as a wedge issue to split the progressive vote! Karl Rove couldn’t have come up with a better idea.
At a time when many thoughtful people have come to the conclusion that it’s time to give this issue a second look, given the crisis posed by global warming, making nuclear a litmus test of progressive purity is going to be terribly destructive.
The ugly fact facing us is that the choices available today for new baseload electrical generating capacity come down in most cases to coal, gas, and nuclear. Gas is limited in supply, is valuable as a home heating and relatively green transportation fuel, and is increasingly expensive. So it’s really a choice between coal and nuclear. Even if Americans can do a lot with conservation and in some cases wind and solar, for fast-growing economies like India and China, the choices are coal vs. nuclear.
China is building new coal-fired power plants at a rate that will have them surpassing the US as the world’s No. 1 greenhouse gas source in a few years. The reality today is that “No Nukes” means “Go Coal” and that means you can forget about slowing CO2 emissions, best buy land in the hills.
So, making this a matter of orthodoxy instead of examining and debating the issues carefully is not just bad politics, it is mindbogglingly irresponsible environmental policy.
Personally, I have some reservations about Obama, but I trust his values, sincerity, thoughtfulness and perspective as an African-American more than I trust Edwards’s oily posturing as a champion of the Left. Edwards’s record in the Senate does not match his rhetoric today. In any case, US policy on energy and nuclear power is not going to be determined by the comments made by politicians seeking support from niche constituencies while on the primary campaign trail.
This issue is not about nuclear power. This particular piece is about government subsidies of same. If we want energy efficiency we should not subsidize any business plan. This is an area where free markets should be allowed to work. Stop all oil, gas, ethanol, biodiesel, wind and nuclear subsidies including loan guarantees, insurance coverage, and oil depletion allowances/”S” partnerships, etc. Would we really be worried about nuclear power if the government hadn’t made a commitment to take care of the waste and had, instead, said all businesses must properly dispose of their own wastes/pollutants.
If we’d done this decades ago, energy would have cost more (reflecting true costs) but alternatives would have been far more competitive.
kivals,
Voting isn’t predicting how your neighbors are likely to vote, and adjusting accordingly. Rather, it’s voting one’s own conscience.
If Kucinich or Nader are on my ballot, one or the other will get my vote. If I’m stuck with pro-nuke corporate candidates for the presidential ticket, I probably won’t vote in that race. Why should I give a stamp of approval to something I vehemently disagree with?
jsc -
If you let “free markets” do the work of setting energy policy, we will not fund solar technology development and invest in pilot projects, we will not invest in wind, and we will build lots more coal fired power plants.
A reasonable energy policy would impose a hefty carbon tax, heavily fund research, especially in solar and efficiency, provide incentives for renewables including wind, and probably not subsidize, but not impede new nuclear projects.
I would join those opposing nuclear subsidies if we had a big enough carbon tax to shift the balance toward all carbon-free alternatives on the basis of cost. But we absolutely need public support for basic research and subsidies to jump-start a big effort in conservation and rollout of solar and other renewable energy sources.
Hillary Clinton claimed that she didn’t know the facts about Iraq when she voted to give Bush the authority to invade. I knew the facts at that time and I was not privy to as much information as Hillary was. Hillary is either dumber than I am or a liar.
For her to now say “nuclear doesn’t put greenhouse gas in the air” shows that she is again either dumber than I am or she continues to be a liar.
Mining, processing, transporting and disposing of uranium creates large quantities of greenhouse gas. Nuclear power generation is not possible without all of those activities taking place on an ongoing basis. Vapor from the plants crates greenhouse gas.
If Democrats are going to support somebody who is dumber than I am or lies to the degree that Hillary lies, I want nothing to do with the Democratic Party.
Obama is absolutely pro-nuke. His second highest corporate campaign contributor is Exelon, a nuclear power company which contaminated the Des Plaines river here in Illinois. All Obama did about it was suggest a law to force companies like Exelon to warn us that they had released toxic waste into rivers in the future. Naturally, Exelon loves the guy!
alanak:
It’s an astounding feat of the MSM’s ability to propagandize — promoting TV persona, personality, etc. over substance.
Americans need to be weaned off the MSM teat if they’re ever to turn their country from the edge of the precipice.
Ask them on Iraq, Iran, single-payer, shorter work week (a genuine working-class/middle-class issue), longer vacations, nuclear power, etc. And you get someone like Kucinich or Nader.
But once the MSM wraps its apparatus around politicians and issues, Americans are steered outside of their own class interests. I can’t help it if my neighbor likes to be stabbed in the back on a regular basis — but I’d prefer it if they’d leave mine alone.
Ok, if you vote Democrat, please don’t be surprised when you find they are supporting building new nuclear plants. And don’t be surprised when your tax dollars go to subsidize and insure these new nuclear plants. Don’t be whining about the Democrats caved or sold out or surrendered.
Just like everything else, the Democrats have told you exactly what they’ll do if they are elected. They support nuclear power. They are well funded by the nuclear industry, especially Obama (and I think the company is named entergy.)
Its an amazing process. Before the last election, the Democrats clearly said that they would not impeach Bush. Yet many people went and voted Democrat somehow believing this would lead to impeachment. Now they whine all the time about the fact that the Democrats aren’t impeaching Bush. Yet, the Democrats clearly said they wouldn’t impeach.
The Democrats have clearly said that no matter which Dem is elected (kucinich won’t be nominated, no matter how many votes he gets) will not withdraw our troops from Iraq by 2013. Yet, I’m sure many people will vote Democrat thinking it means we’ll get out of Iraq when the Dems have clearly said that’s not so.
So, back to nuclear power, pay close attention to the Democrats saying that they support nuclear power. If you are opposed to a nuclear power plant in your community, that means that if the Democrats get elected, then you’ll be fighting them a couple of years from now trying to keep that nuclear plant out of your backyard.
Don’t be talking about betrayal or selling out or any of this. The Democrats tell you exactly what they are going to do if you listen closely. If you don’t want that nuke plant in your backyard, then DO NOT VOTE DEMOCRAT!
Small windmills and solar panels on every roof hooked up to the grid would run our electric meter backwards when we produce more energy than we need and run it forwards when we need more. Solar water heaters are a must.
These technologies has been around for many years. Small windmills were used on rooftops during WWII and many cruising boats are energy independent, though they need batteries for storage where we would not.
Electric cars could be charged by home energy production. Conservation, high speed trains, bicycle lanes, environmentally sound urban planning and other ways to save energy are barely, if ever discussed.
Our generation has no right to condemn future generations forever to cancer from nuclear waste, accidents and detonations. I congratulate Edwards for taking an active stand against nukes when the other candidates are playing politics with their positions and accepting nuke industry payoffs. Now if he would only take a position against the WOD…
I don’t blame organizers of No Nukes from the ’70s for distancing from any candidate who seems likely to support nuke anything. The rest of us have a multipliciy of priorities, though, and Obama would be a very good all-around choice for change in our nation.
We must remember that Obama is certainly not more pro-nuke than Giuliani, Romney or Thompson, one of whom you could very well get even while supporting Kucinich.
It seems that for a lot of people this is a purity issue.
Ideological purity, as in “Don’t vote Democrat, vote to lose,” as if there was some crystal clear ideal out there that tells us what is right and wrong (or left and wrong) on every issue without ambiguity, and as if there was some candidate or party out there that could plausibly claim to be absolutely correct and in line with that left ideal on absolutely every issue.
Or purity as in the argument that “Mining, processing, transporting and disposing of uranium creates large quantities of greenhouse gas.” A lot of people harp on this one. Yet there can be no reasonable debate about the fact that burning coal for electricity generation, the major alternative to nuclear power for the near future, releases vast quantities of CO2, so much that it is absurd to compare this with the trivial amounts involved in operations associated with nuclear power, to say nothing of the vast amounts of toxic soot, heavy metals and radioactive substances spewed into the air by coal fired power plants.
Purity is stupidity.
You don’t have to choose between coal and nuclear. There is a third choice and it’s called INDUSTRIAL HEMP which pretty much replaces those two 100%. No petroleum is required unlike coal,nuclear and most biofuels especially corn based ethanol, it’s environmentally friendly, and it does NOT deplete the planet.
http://www.hemp4fuel.com
By the way, Willie Nelson, Dennis Kucinich, and believe it or not Ron Paul support the fight to LEGALIZE INDUSTRIAL HEMP. Will the environmentalists join forces or are they continue to keep playing FAKE ?
COMarc: “DO NOT VOTE DEMOCRAT!”
Fine, I’ll vote Repub. That satisfy your group hate of a “PARTY” instead of being intelligent enough to look at stances instead of “Team Colors”?
I won’t be stupid enough, as you keep babbling about, to waste a vote on a third party candidate when there is none viable at this time in history.
Spread the word about Dennis Kucinich. His energy policy starts with the people, not the power monopolies.
It is the best way for us to begin to climb out of this mess…
M Abram, one problem with nuclear waste, unlike fossil, is that it lasts forever and cannot be cleaned up, passing cancers on to future generations. Someone said “launch (thousands of tons of it?) into the sun”. Another here rightly replied, “remember the Challenger disaster”?
Fossil/nuclear industries are highly dangerous levers of capitalist power/control over people.
Fossil/nuclear industries enrich despots and contribute heavily to geopolitical instability.
Fossil/nuclear energy are completely UNNECESSARY. We have to increase energy conservation and efficiency, then we get by easily with renewable energy. Local small-scale renewable energy industry minimizes environmental damage and maximizes economic opportunity and political self-determination.
Currently meat production is driven by fossil fuels and is therefore unsustainable. Reducing meat consumption is part of the energy conservation and efficiency that makes renewable energy feasible, and helps improve the environment and human health.
Reigning in capitalist influence/control over the US government is an important part of the solution, since the channels through which it wreaks its destruction are numerous. The whole progressive agenda becomes easier.
“The nuclear industry thinks the problem of global warming is an opportunity to skip the normal process of seeking investors and instead seek out the Federal Treasury,” Markey said.
Ed Markey is a no bullshit guy and hit the mark once again with that comment.
If investors don’t want to put up the money, they shouldn’t be the ones to gain the profit from yet another f-king government scam. Secondly, I’m not a fan of Clinton or Obama but it may be necessary to look at the possibilities of “much” safer nuclear energy plants and of course the recycling of nuclear waste.
Sometimes, reality sucks!
Mark Abrams is a DLC plant if ever there was one.
As I’m sure most of the people who frequent this site already know there really are people paid to go around on the internet and spread disinformation. That’s the world we live in…
Maybe he works some PR firm and is paid to hang around on left-leaning forums and spread the obtuse propaganda spoonfed to him by his corporate masters. I read his post on organic food and read it was like watching Dan Qualye participate in a spelling bee. He doesn’t know anything about science…or formulating a cogent argument but he does have a thesaurus handy.
Zionist Mark needs to go back and go back and read more of Edward Bernays work…
Oh, I love it, PERSONAL ATTACKS. “DLC plant if there ever was one”… “paid to go around on the internet and spread disinformation” …and, oh boy, “Zionist”.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, mr. nihilist. I am none of the above. No, I am nothing less than
SATAN DIABLO BELIAL BEELZEBUB
and nobody’s paying me to deceive and disinform, cuz I’m the Great Deceiver himself.
So, don’t be fooled by words of reason, don’t question your assumptions and fixed ideas, don’t recheck your facts or read around a bit, No, because that way lies TEMPTATION and DEVIATIONISM and the CAPITALIST ROAD and blah, blah,
Oh, Man, you’re funny. You know somebody’s going to pay me for posting a bit of sense up on this blog? I don’t care if it’s the DLC or LockheedMartin or Karl Rove, connect me up, I’ll take their money. I’m just saying what I think, dude. Pardon me.
how about an energy future that doesn’t include NUCLEAR OR COAL?? one where we don’t need to generate huge baseloads of energy because we don’t use as much?
no central power plants that have to generate extra electricity because half of it is lost as its transmitted over miles and miles of power lines that cause cancer to people who can’t afford to live anywhere else but underneath them.
a future where power is generated locally using sustainable options would be more efficient, less prone to security threats and just make more sense.
“how about an energy future that doesn’t include NUCLEAR OR COAL?? one where we don’t need to generate huge baseloads of energy because we don’t use as much?”
Great idea. Tell the Chinese and Indians about it, and see what they say to you. Then see what the real Third World has to say.
Conservation is a good idea for the US, which is already powered up and still pretty wasteful. But the US, although historically the single largest greenhouse gas emitter, is not the biggest part of the looming catastrophe. All talk about us reducing our carbon footprints is meaningless when you look at what is happening right now in India and China and what is going to happen worldwide over the next decades. There is no way we are going to control CO2 below the IPCC’s very optimistic but very grim projections if coal-fired plants keep being built at current rates, let alone the expected increase.
Solar may be the ultimate answer, but right now the only way to provide these growing economies with the power they need, even assuming they build more efficiently and consume way below American and even European levels, is to build lots of new nuclear power plants. You try telling them “No coal, no nukes.” I don’t need to tell you what they’ll say.
Personally, I have no reservations about Obama, he’s manufactured creation, designed to be all things to all people, and as such, he could never have my support. For those Hollywood celebrities to have jumped on his bandwagon so quickly is a testament to his political machine. It’s like children being attracted to a shiny new toy. Once people find out that Obama’s rhetoric doesn’t match his actions, or in his case, inactions since he’s missed so many votes on important issues such as the Iran vote and the moveon.org ad censuring, they will have to take a look at other candidates. (It’s already happening) The only two Democrats who are against nuclear energy and coal energy are John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich.
I think that Obama needs to expand his platform beyond “I had the sense to speak out against the Iraq War in 2002.” I think the question that should be asked of him is ‘what have you done for your constituents lately?’ He criticizes his fellow Senators for voting to give Bush the authorization to go into Iraq, but when given the opportunity to stop the next phase of Bush’s insane war, he chose not to leave a so called paper trail for public record. We know how Clinton, Dodd and Biden voted, but Obama chose to miss that important vote on Sept. 27 to go to his pep rally in NYC. Talk is cheap, Obama supporters.
He certainly isn’t showing much ‘audacity’ to lead in the Senate as promised. Think he’ll miss the next vote on war funding?
the only way for america to be the “best country in the world” is to lead by example.
we need to implement clean, sustainable energy here while at the same time providing third world and developing countries with the technology to do the same. i believe the term is “leapfrogging”, meaning bypassing the traditional fossil fuel escalator and getting these countries new, clean energy technology to jumpstart their economies.
if we put money into areas like this instead of making bombs, then we might get somewhere. and people might not hate us so much
To Mark Abram,
They call me a paid Dem shill all the time too for supporting Democrats as the (far) lesser evil. It’s the price of having an alternate opinion here.
Hang in there.
Daniel David
Mark,
Nuclear accounts for only about 15% of US power. The US consumes so much energy that we should be able to enact sensible conservation programs to easily decrease our energy requirements by that 15% — making nuclear (and then some) totally unnecessary.
Nuclear is an inherently autocratically administered form of energy, usurping any local destiny/control.
And the TCO for nuclear power must be measured not in fiscal quarters, years or even centuries. But milennia — for storage costs, real estate on that storage, security, monitoring, etc. You getting money from that industry by any chance?
Frankly, I put nuclear in the same category as torture in terms of a progressive litmus test. It is that much of an abomination to future generations, and a catastrophic risk to our own.
Mark Abram,
Don’t really see how nuclear energy could be a wedge issue for progressives for a very simple reason: progressives have always opposed it. Dems who support the use of nuclear energy are not progressives. I’m pleased to hear John Edwards opposing it, but Kucinich is the only true progressive in this race. What that means is he can be relied upon to apply a progressive (enlightened) world view to all issues. That’s where progressive support belongs. The only way big change has ever been achieved is by people getting behind what they believe, not by playing the odds.
Obama, Clinton and most of the Republican candidates are only talking to their constituency, the ruling elite and wealthy corporate owners.
If you want change, you will not find it at the ballot box, those traditional places are compromized by uncheckable electronic manipulation. In short, the fair, representative government is defunct.
as part of AMUSE and NCCRER in Raleigh in 70’s 80’s, only Mr Kucinich for the USA
thanks GOD i get to go back EL SALVADOR where there are no nukes
ask the fools why here in Horry County, Myrtle Beach, has highest leukemia rate for kids, well 70 miles from Southport nuke plant, where rods are stored outside duh?
‘
Viva La Revolucion read ‘Monkey Wrench Gang’ and ‘Term Limits’ by Flynn
time for it, the signal comes, 12 million Hispanic, in 2nd grade all Mexican kids learn oh 1847 and millions of American Indians
1776 needs to be bloody revolution remove with force the current status quo
yea right! you cannot get the worthless usa kids off their cell phones, tv’s,my space and vid games
you here have serious problems
wake up ’sheeple’
One would have thought all along Jackson would be for Edwards. Wake up, Mr. Browne.
Also, Obama is for merit pay for teachers. Talk about wanting to divide schools and staff and destroy teaching morale: I give you Barack Obama. With all the research demonstrating what Alfie Kohn, the top writer on the topic, calls the Folly of Merit Pay, you have this supposedly intellectually polished man proposing a scheme that has already been a proven failure dozens of times over.
Daniel David October 24th, 2007 10:19 pm
“To Mark Abram,
They call me a paid Dem shill all the time too for supporting Democrats as the (far) lesser evil. It’s the price of having an alternate opinion here.
Hang in there.”
89% think that the Democratically controlled Congress is doing a bad job. But instead of doing or advocating doing something to change the way the currently elected Democrats are running things, you’re here trying to convince people to vote for them anyway. Is it any real surprise that people disagree with you and wonder about your motives?
Lobo Gris
I wouldn’t vote for ANY Democrat. Not when to do so only reinforces the sense of the party leaders that they can sell out their base while pandering to conservatives without risking their status as the majority party. We have been digging ourselves a deeper and deeper hole for decades by playing along with that sort of thinking. If more progressives and liberals had voted for Nader (or simply withheld their votes for Democrats) in 2000, we might have actually seen some Democrats, including that coward (and long time sell out on nuclear power projects, to say nothing of the false justifications for invading Iraq itself), Al Gore, standing up to the Republicans over stolen elections, illegal invasions, gutting the Bill of Rights, tax cuts for the wealthy paid for by the increasingly poor, off shoring of good jobs while promoting lower paying and less satisfying work, etc.
Instead, the Democrats have become all too comfortable going along to get along with Bush and his cronies in Congress. And since that is what the party has come to stand for, one would do well to question the integrity and intentions of seemingly well intentioned progressives, such as Kucinich, when the maintain allegiance to and support of such a corrupt and backwards party. I’ve had enough, myself. If they won’t break free and stand with or create a party that actually backs their values and policies when push comes to shove, they are not worthy of my vote.
Well done Jackson Browne. Many of us are disgusted with Obama, after initially wanting to support him. 2013???????? There are Lives in the Balance.
Vote Democrat: Vote to ensure continual supply of anti-radiation meds.
Vote Republican: Vote cancer. Vote deformity. Vote cool new ICBMs. Vote infinite DU ammo.
www.pointfocus.com
Its sad that this country is so stupid that they will not go for a candidate which believes and is promoting everything that they want. Kucinich will never become the President or even get the Democratic nomination because lets face it - Dems are just another shade of the Republican Party.
But until the nomination is made we should spread the word about Kucinich as much as possible!
Rune: “I wouldn’t vote for ANY Democrat.”
DENNIS KUCINICH ISN’T ‘ANY’ DEMOCRAT! Try selective-thinking instead of collective thinking! Too many on this and other sites are collective-thinkers and pigeon-holing all into one classification. THIS is part of the reason a TRUE PATRIOTIC PROGRESSIVE–Yes, Democrat–isn’t at the top of the polls right now!
WAKE UP!
Spartanladkenny,
The question is who/what makes both the Dems and Repubs so entirely disconnected from the class interests of the great majority of Americans. The disconnect would be impossible if it weren’t for the mainstream media (MSM) and the system that rewards huges sums of money with more air-time, softball interviews, etc.
* The wealthy elite toss money at candidates who best represent their interests, even playing both sides.
* The MSM is a for-profit enterprise (also run by the wealthy) and are all too happy to relieve the wealthiest candidates of their campaign funds in exchange for more extensive/favorable air-time.
* The public are naturally drawn to whoever has the best haircut, tailor, TV persona, etc.
* The politicians who come out of this dynamic must offer substance to the wealthy interests who put them there, and soothsaying to the middle/working-class to pique their interest. The great delicate dance, they become practitioners of illusion.
It isn’t just the Dems who’ve been hoodwinked — it’s the Republicans also. There are arguably multiple good approaches to representing the needs of the majority of working Americans. But our present system cannot possibly promote such a person. Just soothsayers trying to cause the (former) middle-class and working-classes to deviate from their own interests. Reagan is no longer with us, and trickle-down never trickled down after all.
dolkar
“progressives have always opposed it. Dems who support the use of nuclear energy are not progressives.”
Who do you think you are to tell me what “progressives have always opposed” and to determine who can claim to be progressive?
“The only way big change has ever been achieved is by people getting behind what they believe, not by playing the odds.”
The first part of that sentence suggests that what you “believe” is more important than what is actually true, i.e. that you should never bother to question what you believe or may have believed, rethink or learn anything new. The second part of that sentence suggests that making losing bets is a good way to bring about positive change. It isn’t.
So, I type out a thoughtful comment and have it deleted.
I’ll have to try again but be more brief.
Mr. Bramscher, I consider your likening a support for nuclear power to support for torture to be an insult. I consider accusations of nuclear power supporters all being industry or DLC shills, or that one must be opposed to nuclear power to be a “progressive” to likewise be insulting.
I respect the hard work of Mokhiber, Nader and others - I voted for Nader twice. But I have yet to meet or know of an opponent to nuclear power who has working technical knowlege of the issues involved. The fact is that burning coal releases far more harmful materials into the atmosphere and biosphere than even a much expanded nuclear power program. The threat of climate catastrophe is too great to take nuclear off the table. It must be considered as a medium term mix of no-and low carbon energy sources until hydrogen fusion can be developed - which, no doubt, will have it’s opponents too.
BTW, has it occurred to anybody else here that maybe the real “DLC shills” are Jackson Browne, Harvey Wasserman, et al.?
Oh, I know, these guys hate the DLC as much as I do, but why then are they doing such a nice favor for Lady Hillary?
Obama is the most likely candidate to slay the dragon lady. But he’s running towards the center, because he can’t win running to the left. Edwards is running to the left because otherwise he’d be out of the race. Why are so many progressives playing the fool for this smileyfaced ambulance chaser, who looks like he belongs on the God Channel, with his solid DLC voting record, instead of getting behind Obama, who may not be any kind of radical leftist but is genuinely smart and progressive in his goals and values?
PJD: Come on.
* An autocratically administered form of energy. Must be regulated by federal and in some cases international bodies. Do you advocate that level of autocracy entering communities along other vectors also?
* TCO. Total cost of ownership — millenia. A management curse for many future generations.
* Natural terrorist target.
* Potential for gross catastrophic failure.
* Here in Minnesota we store spent fuel on the Mississippi flood plain: http://www.nawo.org/pic/index.html. In Idado they poisoned the Snake River acquifer.
Suggesting that you need to be a nuclear physicist in order to oppose nuclear power is like suggesting you must be a PhD in foreign policy or military science to oppose Bush’s war, torture, etc. Come on, man.
As for comparing the chemistry vs. coal, what not mention wind, solar, geothermal, conservation? All of which can easily reduce is beyond that 15% pittance of nuclear that we currently rely on.
Nuclear power is a poison on the landscape and on future generations. A sort of pharaonic curse come true. Indeed, the feds hired archaeologists to write inscriptsions in a variety of languages, readable millenia from now, to warn future societies about the dangers at Yucca (if it’s ever used).
So from a TCO perspective, community self-determination and owernship perspetive, future generation perspective, management and security perspective and several angles it’s clearly insane. Nobody wants a nuclear plant in his backyard. I say we put the matter to a vote. But alas it doesn’t work that way — as the most autocratic form of energy, the decisions about design, location, management, oversight, etc. are all top-down.
And our “only alternative” is coal. I shouldn’t think so.
Man, you’ve made some good progressive posts here in the past, but perhaps not on this topic.
Nuclear power is always federally/top-down administered, generally built by the top echelon of the m.i.c. (sometimes producing weapon’s grade tritium nonetheless).
I have an energy co-op in my area.
Nuclear is the energy solution equivalent of:
* Abolishing your local police force and replacing them with the army. Or Blackwater.
* Abolishing your local/independent radio station and replacing it with national solutions.
* Piping the nation’s food through narrow national pipelines, shutting down all local/independent farmer’s markets, co-ops, etc.
etc…
Nuclear power is just that: not exactly something to be managed by the locals. Would you advocate that autocracy in any other “progressive” agenda? Absolutely submit to the [insert federal agency here] or go to jail?
The general pattern is a loss of local autonomy/control/self-determination/management, etc. Indeed, I believe the efficiency of nuclear (if you discount the nasty little problem of mining, waste containment for millenia, security, subsidy, etc.) the efficiency is one of the least of the worries. I’d frankly rather take a less efficient alternative if it meant preserving local autonomy.
In any case, I had the pleasure of touring Prince Edward Island’s Atlantic Wind Test Site (http://www.weican.ca/) last summer. One of the additional points they drove home is the hydrogen economy pathway that we’re already on. Wind, geothermal, various forms of solar, hydrogen, etc. can all be locally owned, managed, operated, co-ops, even small businesses can get in on the game.
None of this takes a nuclear engineer to see how the whole model is incompatible with progressive stances on practically every other issue.
Mr. Bramsher,
I am all for large scale, centrally planned solutions when they are are the most efficient. Large scale power generation has efficency advantages.
And, you analogy compring nuclear power to soccial issues is off. Technical issues require technical knowlege to address those issues. The more proper analogy would be: the turning of bridge inspections over to untrained citizens groups from the state engineers that do them now.
How do you know to evaluate these claims regarding the safety of nuclear plants and waste unless you are knowlegable of the technical issues?
Are you aware that hdrogen for this “hydrogen economy” would be made from gas, oil and coal and be very dirty and greenhouse gas-producing? If the PEI wind people were referring to hydrogen from electrolysis using wind electricity, than this is not an energy source at all, just an inefficient form of energy storage. Better to use batteries, particularly once large-format lithium ion batteries become prevalent.
The above comment is an example of how one needs to know the technical aspect of a proposal to evaluate the proposal.
“Do you advocate that level of autocracy entering communities along other vectors also?”
Yes, I’m all for government regulation of business - and some of the nastiest businesses are these local boss-hogg tycoons (usually in RE, but in my area, Coal also) who consider themselves simple home-folk.
I find your concerns to be rathter Luddite in nature. Addressing global warming will require a globally coordinated solutions. Individual communities and their NIMBYism are a recipe for inaction and disaster. As far as wind power, “community activists” are already opposing it nearly everywhere it is being proposed.
PJD: I am a technologist at a Big-10 university. No luddite here.
I believe you are woefully offbase on a number of issues:
* The extreme centralization/autocracy of energy. To be built by the m.i.c. only, and managed by their stooges strictly at the federal level.
* The notion that only experts on X, Y, or Z are entitled to comment on the merits or demerits of something. Isn’t that a tad counter-democratic?
* Failure to analyze TCO/efficiency on the SCALE OF MILLENIA as it such be with nuclear energy. It’s probably the least efficient form of energy we’ve yet come up with. Add up real estate, security, storage, maintenance, etc. costs for a few millenia. Then come back and tell us that nuclear is so wonderful.
NIMBY is democracy. What’s the alternative? IYBY? A top down decree, by fiat, “In YOUR backyard.”
With an attitude like that, who needs Nazis? Why not eradicate all things local, if they aren’t as efficient. Again, why not get rid of the local police and replace them with the national army. Or perhaps Blackwater?
You’re right that I’m not religiously pro-technology though. I’m not in favor of GMO, nuclear weapons, land mines, human cloning, eugenics, warrantless spying/mining, plasma/pulse crowd-control weaponry, the asymmetry of the control of technology, certain arrogant/anti-democratic/plutocratic dynamics surrounding it, etc.
I’m also not particularly in favor of robotic mounted machine guns, chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the like.
Hard to be a political progressive and a technology nazi at the same time. One must indeed be careful, wise, to pick-and-chose the pursuits which are socially beneficial, conducive to community and individual self-empowerment, and those with a totally contrary effect.
Paul B,
You seem to be conflating a whole lot of things that have nothing to do with each other. Advanced energy technologies have nothing to do with the horrible weapons you describe unless you are viewing things from a luddite perspective. In this case, we were screwed from when days of the first steam engine.
I’m all for appropriate technology. Electricity demand is simply going to be too great as liquid fossil fuels get phased out. We need masive development of wind, solar, and appropriate-scale hydro energy and the improved transmission technologies to move the electricity from the wind and solar producing areas. BUT, this also has to inclde nuclear on the short-to medium term (hopefully soon fusion), since the other generating methods won’t be adequate by themselves.
Invariably, local NIMBY opposition arises from such projects - including, and even especially lately, wind energy, we need, with as much tact as possible, handle it the same way we handled the similarly local, popular, support for racist Jim Crow - through appropriate federal intervention.
We should transform our cities too car-free living and abolish the automobile for all local transfortation except rural use.
Transcontinental passenger aviation will be phased out and replaced with high speed maglev technology. Fast ocean liners or even a high-tech variant of the clipper ship might make a comeback as there is no known technology that can replace liquid fossil-fueled aircraft engines aside from very short flights or glider soaring.
I am somewhat mystified by the anti-nuclear power perspective. I can’t find a single orgainzation from the IPCC, the UNEP (see story above), to Worldwatch Institute to even the Union of Concerned Scientists where nuclear power even appaars on their lists of urgent environmental threats.
as far as localism, I am quite wary of it. Why was Reagan and his right wing progeny so pro-devolution? Here in Pittsburgh local movements, led by local tycoons, are de-funding and dismantling public transit, public achools, and everything else public. Other local movements are pushing through racist anti-immigrant measures, and neglect of the poor in general. We can’t even get a poured-drink tax to fund public transit without a mass grassroots revolt - big fancy signs if front of every bar and restaurant, and waiters taking anti-tax petitions to your table. I’m not kidding.
Back in the 1960’s, was Jim Crow or even slavery itself ended by local movements, or by the federal government? It was the federal government. The locals would have kept the black man enslaved forever.
Localism may works in a country with a more enlightened populace, but not in the US.
PJD: Democracy is nothing without localism. If you have no say over what occurs in your community you have a non-democratic dynamic. Sure, local tyrants present a danger. As do distant ones.
Indeed — imagine even a fully democratic system in which the voters of California ran the government of New York, and vice-versa. Sure, everyone gets to vote. But nobody has any say over what happens in his own state, his own city. The federal/top-down/autocratic aspect of nuclear power is a totally contrarian notion to progressive ideals of self-determination, community ownership, etc. As soon as you introduce a single level of government which can overide local self-determination you’ve introduced a form of autocracy. Whether energy, law enforcement (there’s a reason the Posse Comitatus Act was written), etc.
You can have GE/Westinghouse/etc. own YOUR neck of the woods, store waste in your backyard, etc. if that’s your game. Indeed, they’re producing weapon’s grade tritium at civilian TVA plants now. But so long as I can vote, I’ll vote nuclear power, nukes and the m.i.c. out of my neighborhood. As for UCS, which I respect quite a bit, their focus is not on community self-determination, grassroots politics, local economics, bioregional politics, the Green TKV, etc. Those are progressive/policy/social issues for the most part, not scientific.
Out of curiosity, what are the other issues — other than electricity — for which you consider everything a candidate for top-down replacement if it’s more efficient to run in large-scale from a central (whether corporate or statist) approach? I’m still curious about your response on law enforcement, food chain, etc. How about politics itself? Might it not be more efficient to do away with local democracy altogether and replace it with a more efficient dictatorship?
Indeed, I’m still curious how you can possibly even consider nuclear power to be more efficient.
I’m trained in algorithmics, programming, software engineering, etc. (in addition to my work in anthropology and history). If I were to measure the TCO of any project, I’d need to look at its entire lifecycle.
I’d have to include cost of rent or real estate, security, containment, monitoring, etc. of nuclear waste for millenia in calculating the TCO of nuclear power. It’s probably the most expensive form of energy ever concieved.
While I’m at it here, I’ll make one last comment. I’ve also had the pleasure of touring EBR-1, the first atomic reactor that produced sustainable fission. Arco, Idaho, has the distinction of being the first atomic powered town.
It’s interesting to see how that dynamic evolved, autocratic energy management. They now sport nearby super-secure facilities like INL, a naval reactor, the Snake River acquifier is contaminated, most of the rivers have been dammed, and the city is now a decaying ghost town. It’s not exactly a shining example of progressive grassroots politics at work.
Again, with “progressive” energy management like nuclear, and distant politicians on-high who answer to nobody local, who needs Nazis?