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This Earth Day, Beat King CONG & Sign Up For Solartopia!
"Solartopia has made me what I previously thought impossible, optimistic." -Kurt Vonnegut
"Isms are wasms." -Abbie Hoffman
Solartopia is our planet when, as Kurt Vonnegut might have said, we finally decide to like it here.
It is the prosperous, do-able, and absolutely necessary green-powered Earth of A.D. 2030. It is essential to our survival---economically, biologically and spiritually.
Solartopia rests on four simple pillars:
Apr 17, 2007
"Solartopia has made me what I previously thought impossible, optimistic." -Kurt Vonnegut
"Isms are wasms." -Abbie Hoffman
Solartopia is our planet when, as Kurt Vonnegut might have said, we finally decide to like it here.
It is the prosperous, do-able, and absolutely necessary green-powered Earth of A.D. 2030. It is essential to our survival---economically, biologically and spiritually.
Solartopia rests on four simple pillars:
1. Total renunciation of all fossil and nuclear fuels. There is no place for them in a sustainable, survivable world. They are neither green nor clean.
2. All-out conversion to renewable energy, led by the Solartopian Trinity
of wind, solar and bio-fuels. Mother Earth gives us the natural power we need.
3. Complete commitment to increased efficiency, including revived and solarized mass transit and inter-city passenger rail systems.
4. No more production of anything that cannot be re-used or recycled. Zero tolerance of any waste makes Solartopia a post-pollution world.
In addition to wind, solar and bio-fuels, Solartopian energy comes from the waves, currents and tides; from the geothermal heat beneath the earth's crust; and from the temperature differentials between solar-heated water at the oceans' surface and that deeper down.
The efficiency revolution is meant to drive Solartopian energy consumption levels to a pittance. Compact fluorescent bulbs will be transcended by Light Emitting Diodes and a whole army of efficiency devices, many of them invented in backyards as the green power revolution advances.
A hyper-powered internet fuels both the pure democracy of instant grassroots organizing and an endless grassroots stream of Solartopian innovations that produce and save energy.
Hydrogen and electricity are the chief power carriers, but they are always produced by green means.
The safe energy revolution will spawn millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in decentralized wealth. With homes, buildings, communities and farms controlling their own energy supplies, prosperity is widespread.
Thus Solartopia is diverse, tolerant and fair. Solartopians are argumentative, opinionated, liberated. The rich are plentiful, the poor are less poor, and have their dignity. Nobody starves in Solartopia. Everyone has a right to an education.
Paper ballots guarantee actual democracy. Women are empowered, erudite and equally paid, so the birth rate has stabilized.
Corporations still exist. But Solartopia demands they serve society rather than vice versa. Their charters require that they balance the profit motive with social service. They are restricted in the types of business they do and where they can do it. Ultimately, the worship at a new alter: accountability.
After so many thousands of corporations "Enronized" in toxic clouds of overextension and greed, Solartopia decided that capitalism may be one thing, but cannibalism quite another.
The switch to renewables has defunded global terrorism. Shutting all nuclear plants has eliminated their pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction, and relieved us of the on-going fear of melt-downs.
The money not wasted on this failed atomic technology has accelerated the switch to true green energy.
Murderous coal mines with their lethal air pollution are as long gone as oil spills and gas shortages.
Solartopians still painfully howl at the absurd idea that atomic power was once hyped as "green" or that coal was sold as "clean."
With organic farming, food production has revived and thrived, bursting past the devastating catastrophes of chemical pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and genetically modified seeds.
Synergistic reefs under large off-shore wind towers have helped revive the ocean ecology. Against all odds, the "Apollo 13 Laws" banning any form of pollution has made Solartopia's water and air fit to drink and breath.
Feisty and diverse, Solartopia has no firm consensus on personal beliefs about reproduction, meat eating (the Vegetopians are always feuding with the carnivores) or a thousand other enjoyably combative issues.
But the bottom line is this: the absurd old hype about "green" nukes or fossil fuels is remembered in Solartopia as a silly joke. When push came to shove, King CONG---Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas---could not cut it. Our hyper-efficient Solartopia runs totally, gratefully and without compromise on Mother Nature's sun.
Every year, Earth Day requires a choice: paint a new coat of greenwash on old fossil/nuke dinosaursAC/a,!A|or work for a genuinely sustainable future based on zero tolerance for obsolete technologies, unnecessary waste or corporate domination.
Kurt Vonnegut saw the Solartopian vision and it made him "optimistic." It is what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., calls "the good, brave renwable world of sustainability, dignity, prosperity and freedom."
Solartopia is the diverse, green-powered, organic place we must go to survive and thrive. The alternatives are moral collapse, financial bankruptcy and biological extinction.
So this Earth Day, lets beat King CONG and sign up for Solartopia!
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, with an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is at www.solartopia.org .
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Harvey Wasserman
Harvey Wasserman is an activist and author. His first book "Harvey Wasserman's History of the United States" was published in 1972. Harvey edits www.nukefree.org.
"Solartopia has made me what I previously thought impossible, optimistic." -Kurt Vonnegut
"Isms are wasms." -Abbie Hoffman
Solartopia is our planet when, as Kurt Vonnegut might have said, we finally decide to like it here.
It is the prosperous, do-able, and absolutely necessary green-powered Earth of A.D. 2030. It is essential to our survival---economically, biologically and spiritually.
Solartopia rests on four simple pillars:
1. Total renunciation of all fossil and nuclear fuels. There is no place for them in a sustainable, survivable world. They are neither green nor clean.
2. All-out conversion to renewable energy, led by the Solartopian Trinity
of wind, solar and bio-fuels. Mother Earth gives us the natural power we need.
3. Complete commitment to increased efficiency, including revived and solarized mass transit and inter-city passenger rail systems.
4. No more production of anything that cannot be re-used or recycled. Zero tolerance of any waste makes Solartopia a post-pollution world.
In addition to wind, solar and bio-fuels, Solartopian energy comes from the waves, currents and tides; from the geothermal heat beneath the earth's crust; and from the temperature differentials between solar-heated water at the oceans' surface and that deeper down.
The efficiency revolution is meant to drive Solartopian energy consumption levels to a pittance. Compact fluorescent bulbs will be transcended by Light Emitting Diodes and a whole army of efficiency devices, many of them invented in backyards as the green power revolution advances.
A hyper-powered internet fuels both the pure democracy of instant grassroots organizing and an endless grassroots stream of Solartopian innovations that produce and save energy.
Hydrogen and electricity are the chief power carriers, but they are always produced by green means.
The safe energy revolution will spawn millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in decentralized wealth. With homes, buildings, communities and farms controlling their own energy supplies, prosperity is widespread.
Thus Solartopia is diverse, tolerant and fair. Solartopians are argumentative, opinionated, liberated. The rich are plentiful, the poor are less poor, and have their dignity. Nobody starves in Solartopia. Everyone has a right to an education.
Paper ballots guarantee actual democracy. Women are empowered, erudite and equally paid, so the birth rate has stabilized.
Corporations still exist. But Solartopia demands they serve society rather than vice versa. Their charters require that they balance the profit motive with social service. They are restricted in the types of business they do and where they can do it. Ultimately, the worship at a new alter: accountability.
After so many thousands of corporations "Enronized" in toxic clouds of overextension and greed, Solartopia decided that capitalism may be one thing, but cannibalism quite another.
The switch to renewables has defunded global terrorism. Shutting all nuclear plants has eliminated their pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction, and relieved us of the on-going fear of melt-downs.
The money not wasted on this failed atomic technology has accelerated the switch to true green energy.
Murderous coal mines with their lethal air pollution are as long gone as oil spills and gas shortages.
Solartopians still painfully howl at the absurd idea that atomic power was once hyped as "green" or that coal was sold as "clean."
With organic farming, food production has revived and thrived, bursting past the devastating catastrophes of chemical pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and genetically modified seeds.
Synergistic reefs under large off-shore wind towers have helped revive the ocean ecology. Against all odds, the "Apollo 13 Laws" banning any form of pollution has made Solartopia's water and air fit to drink and breath.
Feisty and diverse, Solartopia has no firm consensus on personal beliefs about reproduction, meat eating (the Vegetopians are always feuding with the carnivores) or a thousand other enjoyably combative issues.
But the bottom line is this: the absurd old hype about "green" nukes or fossil fuels is remembered in Solartopia as a silly joke. When push came to shove, King CONG---Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas---could not cut it. Our hyper-efficient Solartopia runs totally, gratefully and without compromise on Mother Nature's sun.
Every year, Earth Day requires a choice: paint a new coat of greenwash on old fossil/nuke dinosaursAC/a,!A|or work for a genuinely sustainable future based on zero tolerance for obsolete technologies, unnecessary waste or corporate domination.
Kurt Vonnegut saw the Solartopian vision and it made him "optimistic." It is what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., calls "the good, brave renwable world of sustainability, dignity, prosperity and freedom."
Solartopia is the diverse, green-powered, organic place we must go to survive and thrive. The alternatives are moral collapse, financial bankruptcy and biological extinction.
So this Earth Day, lets beat King CONG and sign up for Solartopia!
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, with an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is at www.solartopia.org .
Harvey Wasserman
Harvey Wasserman is an activist and author. His first book "Harvey Wasserman's History of the United States" was published in 1972. Harvey edits www.nukefree.org.
"Solartopia has made me what I previously thought impossible, optimistic." -Kurt Vonnegut
"Isms are wasms." -Abbie Hoffman
Solartopia is our planet when, as Kurt Vonnegut might have said, we finally decide to like it here.
It is the prosperous, do-able, and absolutely necessary green-powered Earth of A.D. 2030. It is essential to our survival---economically, biologically and spiritually.
Solartopia rests on four simple pillars:
1. Total renunciation of all fossil and nuclear fuels. There is no place for them in a sustainable, survivable world. They are neither green nor clean.
2. All-out conversion to renewable energy, led by the Solartopian Trinity
of wind, solar and bio-fuels. Mother Earth gives us the natural power we need.
3. Complete commitment to increased efficiency, including revived and solarized mass transit and inter-city passenger rail systems.
4. No more production of anything that cannot be re-used or recycled. Zero tolerance of any waste makes Solartopia a post-pollution world.
In addition to wind, solar and bio-fuels, Solartopian energy comes from the waves, currents and tides; from the geothermal heat beneath the earth's crust; and from the temperature differentials between solar-heated water at the oceans' surface and that deeper down.
The efficiency revolution is meant to drive Solartopian energy consumption levels to a pittance. Compact fluorescent bulbs will be transcended by Light Emitting Diodes and a whole army of efficiency devices, many of them invented in backyards as the green power revolution advances.
A hyper-powered internet fuels both the pure democracy of instant grassroots organizing and an endless grassroots stream of Solartopian innovations that produce and save energy.
Hydrogen and electricity are the chief power carriers, but they are always produced by green means.
The safe energy revolution will spawn millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in decentralized wealth. With homes, buildings, communities and farms controlling their own energy supplies, prosperity is widespread.
Thus Solartopia is diverse, tolerant and fair. Solartopians are argumentative, opinionated, liberated. The rich are plentiful, the poor are less poor, and have their dignity. Nobody starves in Solartopia. Everyone has a right to an education.
Paper ballots guarantee actual democracy. Women are empowered, erudite and equally paid, so the birth rate has stabilized.
Corporations still exist. But Solartopia demands they serve society rather than vice versa. Their charters require that they balance the profit motive with social service. They are restricted in the types of business they do and where they can do it. Ultimately, the worship at a new alter: accountability.
After so many thousands of corporations "Enronized" in toxic clouds of overextension and greed, Solartopia decided that capitalism may be one thing, but cannibalism quite another.
The switch to renewables has defunded global terrorism. Shutting all nuclear plants has eliminated their pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction, and relieved us of the on-going fear of melt-downs.
The money not wasted on this failed atomic technology has accelerated the switch to true green energy.
Murderous coal mines with their lethal air pollution are as long gone as oil spills and gas shortages.
Solartopians still painfully howl at the absurd idea that atomic power was once hyped as "green" or that coal was sold as "clean."
With organic farming, food production has revived and thrived, bursting past the devastating catastrophes of chemical pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and genetically modified seeds.
Synergistic reefs under large off-shore wind towers have helped revive the ocean ecology. Against all odds, the "Apollo 13 Laws" banning any form of pollution has made Solartopia's water and air fit to drink and breath.
Feisty and diverse, Solartopia has no firm consensus on personal beliefs about reproduction, meat eating (the Vegetopians are always feuding with the carnivores) or a thousand other enjoyably combative issues.
But the bottom line is this: the absurd old hype about "green" nukes or fossil fuels is remembered in Solartopia as a silly joke. When push came to shove, King CONG---Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas---could not cut it. Our hyper-efficient Solartopia runs totally, gratefully and without compromise on Mother Nature's sun.
Every year, Earth Day requires a choice: paint a new coat of greenwash on old fossil/nuke dinosaursAC/a,!A|or work for a genuinely sustainable future based on zero tolerance for obsolete technologies, unnecessary waste or corporate domination.
Kurt Vonnegut saw the Solartopian vision and it made him "optimistic." It is what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., calls "the good, brave renwable world of sustainability, dignity, prosperity and freedom."
Solartopia is the diverse, green-powered, organic place we must go to survive and thrive. The alternatives are moral collapse, financial bankruptcy and biological extinction.
So this Earth Day, lets beat King CONG and sign up for Solartopia!
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, with an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is at www.solartopia.org .
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