Category Archives: Halving our lives with isotopes

Plenitude: The emerging new economy

Juliet Schor Northampton, MA July 28, 2008 available from Alternative Radio You can listen to Juliet Schor speak for herself here. Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. Before joining Boston College, she taught at Harvard in the Department of Economics. She is author of many… Continue reading →

Ecology and socialism

CHRIS WILLIAMS Interviewed by David Barsamian Santa Fe, New Mexico 20 March 2012 Chris Williams Interviewed by David Barsamian Santa Fe, NM March 20, 2012 available from Alternative Radio You can listen to Chris Williams speak for himself here. Chris Williams is a long-time environmental activist… Continue reading →

Hiroshima to Fukushima

by Helen Caldicott, speech delivered in Albequerque, NM 20 March 2011 available from Alternative Radio Helen Caldicott, an Australian-born pediatrician, is a world-renowned environmental activist. She was the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization which was… Continue reading →

Key players got nuclear ball rolling

How did earthquake-prone Japan, where two atomic bombs were dropped at the end of World War II creating a strong antinuclear weapons culture, come to embrace nuclear power just a few decades later? See Japan Times article by Eric Johnston. Continue reading →

Protesters urge rethink of child radiation limit

Here is from The Japan Times: “Four antinuclear groups demanded Monday that the government withdraw its decision to set the annual radiation limit at 20 millisieverts for schoolchildren in Fukushima Prefecture, saying the standard poses a health risk. “The four groups — Friends of the Earth Japan… Continue reading →

What is nature worth?

by Brendan Barrett in Our World 2.0. Nothing comes close to the degree of change happening in biodiversity, I find it stunning that until the next asteroid slams into this planet, it’s going to be humans more than any force in the universe .. dictating the future course of life, and it is stunning… Continue reading →

Culture of complicity tied to stricken nuclear plant

So you don’t think it can happen here? In The New York Times TOKYO — Given the fierce insularity of Japan’s nuclear industry, it was perhaps fitting that an outsider exposed the most serious safety cover-up in the history of Japanese nuclear power. It took place at Fukushima Daiichi, the plant that… Continue reading →

Chrnobyl’s silver anniversary

Check out what these experts, Dr. Jeff Patterson, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Dr. Janette Sherman, editor of the book Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and Nature, said on Democracy Now! Also look at the evacuation zone for your locality… Continue reading →

Earth Day assessments

Here are some interviews on Democracy Now! that offer some assessment of Earth Day 2011: Vandana Shiva and Maude Barlow on the rights of Mother Earth. “People are already joking: ‘Oh, you’re talking about rights for ticks and rights for rats.’ This is the right wing mocking what we’re doing. We’re… Continue reading →

The crime against the children

Do you have young children? Do you know what they are going to have to face in their lives? This is a crime, pure and simple. Boehner, Inhofe, and his climate-crank friends like to talk about the immorality of the debt, but what about the climate? This is a crime, and we need to hold the criminals… Continue reading →

Fukushima spews, and Vermont Yankee gets extended

So the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission extends Vermont Yankee’s nearly expired lease, trumping local Vermonters from closing the damn leaking Fukushima-modeled thing down. This from Democracy Now!. Here is a response from a friend, a Vermont native, to my post of this on Facebook: I’m not… Continue reading →

UN nuclear watchdog says it will continue to push for new nuclear power plants despite growing global nuclear concern

from Democracy Now! (please check out the 16-minute interview). Now watch me argue with my strawman: This, in spite of the current dirty-bomb event brought on by the quake/tsunami, in spite of the pollution involved in uranium mining. Consider, too, that the waste is dangerous for many times longer… Continue reading →

Prescription for survival: A debate between antinuke and anticoal

Please see this short debate on Democracy Now!. A plague on both your houses! Just put the emphasis, the scientific research, the funding toward solar and wind and other sustainable! Continue reading →

Obama loves nukes

by Mark Hertsgaard for The Nation: “If anything demonstrates the blind spots in Obama’s oft-stated support for clean energy—and the nation’s need for a bold alternative vision—it is his response to the Fukushima crisis, which at press time had made tap water in Tokyo, nearly 200 miles away, unsafe… Continue reading →

Radiation in Massachusetts rainwater likely from Japan

from Reuters: Trace amounts of radioactive iodine linked to Japan’s crippled nuclear power station have turned up in rainwater samples as far away as Massachusetts during the past week, state officials said on Sunday. The low level of radioiodine-131 detected in precipitation at a sample location in… Continue reading →

How the “peaceful atom” became a serial killer

by Chip Ward in Tomgram. Here is Tom Englehardt’s introduction: With the Fukushima nuclear complex still at the edge, the official response here is so bracingly… well, ho-hum. A top Nuclear Regulatory Commission official has just offered reassurance that nothing at Fukushima warrants “any immediate… Continue reading →

The NRC extended Vermont Yankee license 20 years

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has officially issued a new 20-year operating license to the Vermont Yankee nuclear power station, despite opposition from Vermont’s congressional delegation. The NRC voted on the license just before the Japanese nuclear crisis, but the commission delayed… Continue reading →

Radiation dose chart

Check out this radiation dose chart: Sleeping next to someone = 0.05 microSieverts [Item 1] X 2: Eating 1 banana = 0.10 microSieverts [Item 2] X 10: 1 arm X-ray, or using a CRT monitor for a year = 1 microSievert {Item 3] X 5: Dental or hand X-ray = 5 microSieverts [Item 4] X 2: Background dose… Continue reading →

Charting the human cost of different types of energy

by Nicholas Kusnetz and Marian Wang at ProPublica Since this time last year, we’ve seen a deadly mine disaster, the worst oil spill in U.S. history, and now a nuclear crisis in Japan. That got us wondering—how does one compare or quantify the human cost of different sources of energy? Check out the… Continue reading →

A warning from Japan

As reported in The Nation, the nuclear crisis in Japan is out of control: Three reactors are in partial meltdown, two are leaking radiation, at least one pool full of 80 tons of “spent” uranium fuel rods may be burning, two other such pools are getting very hot. Three major explosions have destroyed… Continue reading →