Beyond Nuclear - Climate Change What's New

Given the international youth-led climate strikes, and Extinction Rebellion city shutdowns, in the U.S. and around the world, nuclear power as a false "solution" for the climate crisis is a Year 2019 highlight of anti-nuclear activism.

Unfortunately, Andrew Yang hasn't gotte the message. He advocated thorium power (as opposed to uranium power) on the most recent Democratic Party presidential debate. Due to the nuclear weapons proliferation risk alone, Yang's position is untenable.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists rebutted Yang's deeply flawed position.

Certain highlights of the past year in anti-nuclear/pro-climate activism deserve special mention:

In August, the passing of the torch -- represented by 100 year old Frances Crowe's passing on, to 16 year old Greta Thunberg's arrival on Turtle Island -- was commented on by Democracy Now! An important juncture of anti-nuclear activism meeting climate activism.

In early September, Mustafa Ali pushed back on Cory Booker's pro-nuclear position by pointing out the EJ violations (namely, Mobile Chernobyl, but the list goes on). Again, Democracy Now! marked the moment.

In late September, Greta Thunberg took nuclear power as a climate solution down a notch.

New nuclear costs too much and takes too long. But old nuclear costs too much, and is too dangerous to operate in a climate chaos world. Even Elizabeth Warren didn't get this, unfortunately, in the last Democratic president debate of 2019, when she stated that she'd keep some old reactors online.

Nuclear power also has its own "insurmountable risks": nuclear weapons proliferation risks; reactor meltdown risks like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima; the unsolved and perhaps unsolvable dilemma of high-level radioactive waste management; the routine releases of hazardous chemical toxins, and radioactive pollution, inevitably associated with the entire uranium (and thorium for that matter!) nuclear fuel chains.

The mid-December release of a "10 Point Plan" on the climate emergency for the next president's first 10 days marked a very important development. Entitled "THE #CLIMATEPRESIDENT ACTION PLAN: 10 STEPS FOR THE NEXT ADMINISTRATION'S FIRST 10 DAYS, HOW PRESIDENTIAL ACTION MUST ADDRESS THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY," the statement contains this anti-nuclear section:

"Commit to reject and to veto all other false solutions proposed by the polluters that have created and perpetuated the climate crisis including:

...nuclear power, which creates severe safety, health, proliferation, and waste disposal issues and is far more expen-sive than new clean and renewable energy. These corporate schemes all share the common characteristic that they place corporate profits over com-munity well-being and perpetuate the many systemic injustices that have led to the climate emergency."

That Beyond Nuclear and 499 additional groups, including 350.org, have endorsed this, shows significant progress in uniting anti-nuclear and pro-climate activism.