These ‘nuclear bros’ say they know how to solve climate change.
These ‘nuclear bros’ say they know how to solve climate change.
Meet the internet subculture obsessed with nuclear power — and proud of it.
The typical “nuclear bro” is lurking in the comments section of a clean energy YouTube video, wondering why the creator didn’t mention #nuclear.
He is marching in Central California to oppose the closing of the state’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. His Twitter name includes an emoji of an atom. He might even believe that 100 percent of the world’s electricity should come from nuclear power plants.
As a warming world searches for ever more abundant forms of clean energy, an increasingly loud internet
subculture has emerged to make the case for nuclear. They are often — but not always — men. They include grass-roots organizers and famous techno-optimists like Bill Gates and Elon Musk. And they are uniformly convinced that the world is sleeping on nuclear energy.
Nuclear advocates often meet each other on the internet — on large shared WhatsApp groups, sharing news on the subreddit r/nuclear, or on Twitter. The “nuclear bro” label …… — serves to cast nuclear supporters as all being of a particular type: young, White, millennial men with a singular focus on splitting atoms.
It alludes to a few factors of “bro culture” that can make interacting with some nuclear bros frustrating and bizarre. The criticism is that these types of bros mansplain, refuse to accept other arguments, or otherwise harass their interlocutors.
Washington Post 30th Sept 2022
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/30/nuclear-bros-power-activists/
End War in Ukraine” Say 66 Nations at UN General Assembly
Common Dreams, BY MEDEA BENJAMIN – NICOLAS J. S. DAVIES, 30 Sept 22,
We have spent much of the past week reading and listening to speeches by world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York. Most of them condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a violation of the UN Charter and a serious setback for the peaceful world order that is the UN’s founding and defining principle.
But what has not been reported in the United States is that leaders from 66 countries, mostly from the Global South, also used their General Assembly speeches to call urgently for diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine through peaceful negotiations, as the UN Charter requires. We have compiled excerpts from the speeches of all 66 countries to show the breadth and depth of their appeals, and we highlight a few of them here.
African leaders echoed one of the first speakers, Macky Sall, the president of Senegal, who also spoke in his capacity as the current chairman of the African Union when he said, “We call for de-escalation and a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, as well as for a negotiated solution, to avoid the catastrophic risk of a potentially global conflict.”
The 66 nations that called for peace in Ukraine make up more than a third of the countries in the world, and they represent most of the Earth’s population, including India, China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Brazil and Mexico.
While NATO and EU countries have rejected peace negotiations, and U.S. and U.K. leaders have actively undermined them, the leaders of five European countries – Hungary, Malta, Portugal, San Marino and the Vatican – joined the calls for peace at the General Assembly.
The peace caucus also includes many of the small countries that have the most to lose from the breakdown of the UN system that recent wars in Ukraine and the Greater Middle East represent, and who have the most to gain by strengthening the UN and enforcing the UN Charter to protect the weak and restrain the powerful.
Philip Pierre, the Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, a small island state in the Caribbean, told the General Assembly,
“Articles 2 and 33 of the UN Charter are unambiguous in binding Member States to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state and to negotiate and settle all international disputes by peaceful means.…We therefore call upon all parties involved to immediately end the conflict in Ukraine, by undertaking immediate negotiations to permanently settle all disputes in accordance with the principles of the United Nations.”
Global South leaders lamented the failure of the UN system, not just in the war in Ukraine but throughout decades of war and economic coercion by the United States and its allies. President Jose Ramos-Horta of Timor-Leste directly challenged the West’s double standards, telling Western countries,
“They should pause for a moment to reflect on the glaring contrast in their response to the wars elsewhere where women and children have died by the thousands from wars and starvation. The response to our beloved Secretary-General’s cries for help in these situations have not met with equal compassion. As countries in the Global South, we see double standards. Our public opinion does not see the Ukraine war the same way it is seen in the North.”
Many leaders called urgently for an end to the war in Ukraine before it escalates into a nuclear war that would kill billions of people and end human civilization as we know it. The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, warned,
“…the war in Ukraine not only undermines the nuclear non-proliferation regime, but also presents us with the danger of nuclear devastation, either through escalation or accident. … To avoid a nuclear disaster, it is vital that there be serious engagement to find a peaceful outcome to the conflict.”
Others described the economic impacts already depriving their people of food and basic necessities, and called on all sides, including Ukraine’s Western backers, to return to the negotiating table before the war’s impacts escalate into multiple humanitarian disasters across the Global South…………………………………………………
At the end of the debate on September 26, Csaba Korosi, the president of the General Assembly, acknowledged in his closing statement that ending the war in Ukraine was one of the main messages “reverberating through the Hall” at this year’s General Assembly.
You can read here Korosi’s closing statement and all the calls for peace he was referring to.
And if you want to learn more about the “legions working together in solidarity… to impose the unconditional option of peace on the war lobbies,” as Jean-Claude Gakosso said, you can find out more at https://www.peaceinukraine.org/. https://qoshe.com/common-dreams/medea-benjamin/-end-war-in-ukraine-say-66-nations-at-un-general-assembly/147104931
The world in denial about the climate crisis
Climate breakdown is far more intense in 2022 than even many scientists
expected, yet the world still isn’t treating this like a crisis. I
underestimated the depth and intransigence of society’s collective
climate denial. Despite climate breakdown being far more intense by 2022
than I thought it would be – it all feels like a decade or two ahead of
schedule, somehow – the world still isn’t treating global heating like
the emergency it is.
To understand what an emergency we are now in, the
scale and variety of the climate damage we’ve already incurred, you only
need to look at a few of the most recent disasters. Hurricane Ian has just
pummeled Cuba and Florida. The full extent of the disaster will only be
revealed in the coming days and weeks, although first looks are shocking.
But we do know with certainty that Ian was supercharged by global heating
through several well-understood fundamental physics pathways.
Or consider the record extreme heat, fires, and drought that have hammered arid
subtropical regions such as California, Spain, China and elsewhere this
summer.
The planet has heated by about 1.3C on average since fossil fuel
burning began in earnest 150 years ago, and is now increasing by 0.1C every
five years. These mean values roughly double over the planet’s land
surfaces. That extra heat also supercharges heatwaves. In addition, global
heat is expanding the Hadley cell circulation and moving subtropical storms
poleward, causing a permanent increase in subtropical aridification.
All of this tends to dry out soils, kill trees and worsen wildfires. Or consider
the biblical flooding in Pakistan from a few weeks ago. Or the “doomsday
glacier” in Antarctica which promises “big changes over small
timescales”. Or record melt of the Greenland ice sheet. Or the crazy and
deadly disintegration of glaciers in Europe. In short, it has been a summer
of climate insanity.
But even so, this will be, on average, the coolest
summer with the least climate chaos for the rest of your life. That is just
the nature of trends. It should be terrifying.
Guardian 1st Oct 2022
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/01/climate-emergency-hurricane-ian-crisis
King Charles abandoned plans to speak at Cop27 climate summit, now will not attend, on instruction from Prime Minister Liz Truss.
Liz Truss advised King Charles to stay away from Cop27 climate summit. The
King, a passionate environmental campaigner, has abandoned plans to attend
next month’s Cop27 climate change summit after Liz Truss told him to stay
away. He had intended to deliver a speech at the meeting of world leaders
in Egypt. Truss, who is also unlikely to attend the Sharm el-Sheikh
gathering, objected to the King’s plans during a personal audience at
Buckingham Palace last month.
Times 1st Oct 2022
King Charles III has reportedly abandoned plans to attend and deliver a
speech at the Cop27 climate change summit on the advice of Liz Truss. The
monarch, a veteran campaigner on environmental issues, had been invited to
the 27th UN climate change conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, next
month. But the prime minister is understood to have raised objections
during a personal audience at Buckingham Palace last month, according to
the Sunday Times. Buckingham Palace has confirmed King Charles III will not
attend the summit.
Guardian 1st Oct 2022
Going for “green gold:” WA mine taps solar, wind and battery to reach 100 pct renewables — RenewEconomy
Bellevue Gold inks solar, wind and battery deal in bid to become Australia’s first publicly-listed gold miner to generate net-zero emissions. The post Going for “green gold:” WA mine taps solar, wind and battery to reach 100 pct renewables appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Going for “green gold:” WA mine taps solar, wind and battery to reach 100 pct renewables — RenewEconomy
Energy windfall tax offers much better economic relief than petrol excise, study finds — RenewEconomy
New study finds a tax on the super profits of oil and gas companies would deliver much more effective economic relief than the discount on petrol prices. The post Energy windfall tax offers much better economic relief than petrol excise, study finds appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Energy windfall tax offers much better economic relief than petrol excise, study finds — RenewEconomy
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 