Antinuclear

Above all, the worldwide People’s Climate March on Sept. 21 must bury King C.O.N.G.: Coal, Oil, Nukes and Gas.

Which also means abolishing corporate personhood and saving the internet.

The fossil/nuclear corporations have been given human rights but no human responsibilities. They’re about to gut our most crucial means of communication.

They’re programmed to do just one thing: make money. If they can profit from killing us all, they will.

Ironically, we now have the technological power to get to Solartopia—a socially just, green-powered planet.

But our political, economic and industrial institutions answer to Big Money, not to us or the Earth.

On Sept. 21 some of us will carry to the UN a petition with more than 150,000 signatures, demanding that Fukushima be turned over to a global authority.

This petition was personally delivered to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon last Nov. 7. We’ve never gotten a response.

Meanwhile, Tokyo Electric Power makes huge profits from the “clean-up” at Fukushima.  It’s turned much of the labor force over to organized crime.  And more than 300 tons of radioactive liquid still pour into the Pacific every day, while downwind children suffer a 40-times-normal thyroid cancer rate.

A powerful new insider report says another Fukushima could easily occur at California’s Diablo Canyon, surrounded by FIVE known earthquake faults. Similar dangers plague other reactors worldwide.

Nuclear power makes global warming worse.

So do coal, oil and gas.

March organizer Bill McKibben says fracked gas is just as bad for global warming as coal. Oil is even worse.

But we’re in the midst of a great revolution. Solartopian technologies—solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, ocean thermal, sustainable bio-fuels, mass transit, increased efficiency—are all plunging in price and soaring in efficiency. They can completely green-power our Earth. They can allow individuals and communities to control our energy supply, democratizing our society.

But they can’t come without transforming the corporation.

As long as our chief economic engine has no mandate but to make money, dominates our political system, claims legal personhood and is not held accountable for the damage it does, our species is doomed.

Congress is now debating a constitutional amendment to strip corporations of their illegitimate, illegal personhood. This must happen to save our democracy and our eco-systems.

But the debate appears virtually nowhere in the corporate media …

…Except for the internet, which the Federal Communications Commission may soon gut by killing net neutrality.

Without a free and open internet, and without ending corporate personhood, our efforts to stop King C.O.N.G. and save our ability to live on this planet will go nowhere.

So as we march to stop climate chaos, as we contemplate divestiture campaigns, as we demand a global take-over at Fukushima, as we work to win a Solartopian future … we must see the whole picture.

The corporate beast that’s killing us all draws its power from a lethal mutation with no basis in law or sanity.

Without a free and open internet to bring it down, our struggle to survive is in serious jeopardy.

We can win.

But to do so we must preserve net neutrality, transform the corporation and bury King C.O.N.G. in the Solartopian compost heap.

Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org and wrote SOLARTOPIA!  Our Green-Powered Earth, where King C.O.N.G. made its literary debut, at last brought to visual life by Gail 

As the scale of Chinese manufacturing has grown — in our article we note that production of solar cells has expanded about 100-fold since 2005 — the costs of renewable-energy devices have plummeted. Countries such as Germany and South Korea, like China, are boosting their national renewable-energy industries and markets.

But others, including the United States, seem yet to notice this shift and are pursuing ineffective energy policies, including considering alternative fossil-fuels sources like coal-seam gas and putting trade tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels. Indeed oil addiction in the US appears to be worse than ever.

There are clear implications for Australia too. The current wave of anti-renewables rhetoric and negative reaction by the Australian government is out of step with the rest of world, and in particular with China and India, (and Germany) all of which countries see renewables as an important and growing element of their energy mix.

And there is a second clear implication: as they build their renewables industries, these countries will come to depend less and less on fossil fuels – and (China in particular), less and less on imports of Australian fossil fuels……..

In terms of electric power generation, China generated over 1,000 terawatt hours of electricity from water, wind and solar sources in 2013, which is comparable to the entire power generation combined of France and Germany.

But it is the rate of expansion that is so remarkable. China is rapidly expanding its renewable energy industries and its use of renewable devices to generate electric power.

Its latest target is that renewables will have a capacity of 550 gigawatts — over half a trillion watts — by the year 2017. We calculate that this will exert a major impact in China — enhancing energy security; reducing emissions pollution; and reducing carbon emissions.

But the primary impact will be on energy security. China became a net importer of oil in 1993; of natural gas in 2007; and of coal in 2011. If it can reach its 2017 target of 550 GW renewables, we calculate that this would translate into a saving of 45% on current imports of coal, oil and natural gas.

China is leading the way to a world of decarbonized energy, by placing the emphasis of its policy on growing the markets for renewables and building the industries to supply wind turbines, solar cells, batteries and other devices.

In this way it is driving down costs, through the learning curve, and making renewables more accessible to all countries. This is good for China, and for the world.http://theconversation.com/china-shows-theres-more-to-renewable-energy-than-fighting-climate-change-31471

And Mr Rudd has proposed a “transformation” of the US-China relationship, arguing the two should co-lead a “new strategic deal” aimed at resolving tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Mr Rudd said while it was a “very hard call” for China to curb its emissions the “mathematics and science” of the planet demanded action and warned of huge consequences, including extreme weather events and the loss of arable land, if there is no change.

Mr Rudd made the comments appearing alongside former US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson to discuss “Asia and the World Order” at a forum in New York.

“Climate change threatens all of us, it threatens China, it threatens America and it threatens Australia,” he warned.

The former Labor leader – who in 2007 declared climate change “the greatest moral challenge of our generation” – told the audience that if the concentration of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere exceeded 450ppm (parts per million), “four thousand humourless guys in white coats” have concluded that we run a “huge risk of irreversible climate change”.

He outlined the former Labor government’s success in introducing a carbon tax but said the conservatives were about to repeal it in Australia.  Prime Minister Tony Abbott successfully unwound Labor’s carbon price in July.

Mr Rudd said the Chinese view that the Western economies had unfairly been allowed to grow its economies until they were “drunk” on “energy and cheap carbon” was legitimate. But he said “mathematics dictates” there is a “finite quantum” of greenhouse gases humans can pump into the air.

“Based on that, our friends in China need to work on what ultimately becomes China’s own carbon ceiling, now that’s hard stuff, because China is late in the development curve,” he said.

“But if China gets this right, then the planet’s got a reasonable future, if it doesn’t get this right, I don’t think we’ve begun to think through the broad implications for the planet and the world about going past 450ppm,” he said.

He warned that drifting pollution from China across Japan, Korea and the United States would open up new foreign policy challenges………

Mr Rudd envisioned the package comprising the removal of nuclear weapons from the north, a form of “political coexistence between the two sides of the peninsula” and an American troop withdrawal from the Chinese border.

“You might say that’s all too hard, three of four years ago it was too hard but I think smart people in both capitals begin to think about this,” he said.

Mr Rudd said while he understood Washington’s “preoccupation with the Middle East” the world should not underestimate the significance of a non-English speaking and non-democratic economy set to overtake America’s as the world’s biggest.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/kevin-rudd-warns-of-climate-change-consequences-at-us-forum-20140912-10fy66.html#ixzz3DEvbrgfx