Climate Change
Nuclear power is counterproductive to efforts to address climate change effectively and in time. Funding diverted to new nuclear power plants deprives real climate change solutions like solar, wind and geothermal energy of essential resources.
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Thanks to an initiative launched by Beyond Nuclear in December 2008, the nuclear-free City of Takoma Park now truly lives up to its name. Long a nuclear weapons-free city, Takoma Park opted in June 2009 to purchase 100% wind power, dispensing with both nuclear and fossil fuel to create a truly carbon-free and nuclear-free city. Beyond Nuclear provides more details in its December 17, 2009 press release.
More than a dozen NGOs participating in the international “Don’t Nuke the Climate” campaign presented government delegates on Tuesday with a giant postcard and 50,000 signatures calling for a nuclear-free climate agreement. The NGOs were joined by prominent Green figures including two former Environment Ministers of France, Yves COCHET (French MP), and Corinne LEPAGE (MEP) ; MEP, International alter-globalization movement leader Jose BOVE , and MEP Yannick JADOT, Claude Turmes, Margrete Auken , Italian MP Angelo Bonelli, Roberto della Seta and Francesco Ferrante.
U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) has called upon youth climate protection leaders to not worry about nuclear power expansion provisions in his Senate climate legislation. He told them that market forces would favor renewables and efficiency. What he didn't tell them is that the impending $100 billion or more in taxpayer subsidies for new nuclear would undermine those very market forces about which he speaks. Beyond Nuclear has analyzed Kerry's words, and his contradictory actions, and suggested what can be done to head off a dead end nuclear power expansion, a false solution to the all too real climate crisis.
Go to Don't Nuke the Climate to sign the petition to be delivered to Copenhagen. Tell our leaders no inclusion of nuclear in any clean development mechanisms. Nuclear power does not belong in the climate change debate.
In his new report, Four Nuclear Myths, A commentary on Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline and on similar writings, Amory Lovins, president of the Rocky Mountain Institute, exposes the faulty foundations on which Brand's assertions are based.
December 21, 2009