My first thought upon reading the letter and the accompanying survey was that the “Citizens Against the Shutdown of Vermont Yankee” is a Vermont Yankee front group. And I was right.

Vermont Yankee has always presented its side of the nuclear story with vigor. They have a public relations staff trained to do that job. So why the front group? Why the transparently ridiculous attempt to show grassroots support?

Alas, Vermont Yankee’s ploy is becoming commonplace. More and more, corporate America is hiding behind phony citizens groups that disguise what it is up to. Corporate lobbyists routinely buy mailing lists and claim that the names represent the support of the public. During elections they bombarded us with expensive issue ads purporting to represent the views of grassroots America. But many of these ads - and the phony letterhead organizations that sponsor them -- are financed out of corporate budgets.

One of the arguments that corporations use to defend these efforts is that the environmental and anti-nuclear movements are well-funded. But according to The Center for Responsive Politics , a foundation-backed, non-partisan research organization that tracks political money, environmental organizations spent a total of $4.7 million in lobbying Congress in 1998, the last year for which figures are available. During that same year, the lobbying expenditures of industrial groups combined were $11.2 billion.

Campaign contributions are easier to track but the same imbalance holds. Entergy, the corporation that wants to buy Vermont Yankee, is in the big leagues of political giving. Of the top contributors in the energy and natural resources field for the upcoming 2002 congressional elections, Entergy ranks twelfth, with $250,659 in contributions, 65% to Republicans. (Enron ranks seventh with $353,884, 94% to Republicans).

To follow the money is to understand why the nuclear, oil, gas, and coal industries get huge federal subsidies while the alternative energy industry gets virtually nothing. In the four-year cycle leading up to the 2000 elections, the nuclear, gas, oil and coal industries made more than $105 million in federal political contributions. By contrast, alternative energy industry giving barely broke $1 million.

That’s the stacked deck that anti-nuclear activists and alternative energy proponents are up against. In the local area, some anti-nuclear groups get foundation money. But the group that put together the Town Meeting referendum was a local, grassroots, volunteer effort.

By contrast, Vermont Yankee paid consultants in Boston and Portland $35,000 for advertising, a letter, and a poll so subjective it would make anyone suspicious. Vermont Yankee is running scared, and well it should be.

I was one of the no-nukers who took part in the nonviolent occupation of the proposed Seabrook nuclear power plant in the late 1970s. I wish I could say that my five-days on a New Hampshire prison farm was a factor in the industry’s collapse. But it was finances, not protests, that stopped the industry. The financial markets simply lost confidence in nuclear investments.

Federal support for alternative energy dried up as well. As a result the clean and safe energy sources that could replace nuclear, coal, and oil are not immediately available, a failure of public policy with horrendous consequences in terms of global warming and national security.

Significantly, the debate about Vermont Yankee is no longer about nuclear power. At a candidates forum for the Brattleboro select board, all the candidates said that they opposed the anti-nuclear referendum. But no one spoke in favor of nuclear power. What concerned them was the cost of a shutdown in terms of jobs and the local economy. The debate over nuclear power has been transformed into one of local economics; the anti-nuclear movement has won the health, safety, technological and scientific arguments.

Alternative energy sources exist; they just need adequate funding. The loss of jobs is a serious issue. But many of these jobs will be lost when Vermont Yankee’s operating license expires; these jobs were never permanent. Be that as it may, the public and private sector should mobilize to create new ones. But there is also a double-standard involved. When a dozen out-of-staters on a corporate board of directors close a plant and throw hundreds of workers out of work, as happens often in Vermont, the attitude is “tough! the free market will benefit all.” But when the public itself votes that a plant is too dangerous and to costly to keep in operation, those jobs are exploited as a political issue.

For myself, I wonder why the owners of Vermont Yankee are so anxious to sell their property. The company has always told us how well-run the plant is and how efficient its operation. I also wonder about the price. When Yankee was first offered the plant for sale, the price was $23.5 million. Anti-nuclear opposition forced a delay and, as a result, the Public Service Board ordered a public auction. Entergy won the bidding with a $180 million offer. True, the terms of the sale are not identical, but, still, the Yankee owners made quite a killing thanks to the anti-nuclear intervention.

Instead of attacking anti-nuclear activists, Vermont Yankee shareholders ought to thank them. And the public might ponder: which side of the controversy has shown economic prudence and financial wisdom.

Marty Jezer writes from Brattleboro, Vermont and welcomes comments at mjez@sover.net

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