Hansen temidden van het Clinton Kerncentrale personeel

James Hansen te midden van het Clinton Kerncentrale personeel

Wie had ooit gedacht dat de harde kern van het klimaatalarmisme, de groep rond activistisch professor James Hansen (de Amerikaanse Jan Rotmans zeg maar) bovenstaande boodschap de wereld in zou sturen?!
Gelukkig hadden ze zich ook al stevig uitgesproken op COP21 in Parijs: “This conference is a fraude!” De enige manier om echt het fossiele aandeel te verminderen is volgens deze groep namelijk het grootschalig inzetten op nucleair. Daarbij heeft de vierde generatie hun voorkeur, met name de thorium MSR, maar ook het in bedrijf houden van oude kerncentrales wordt door hen toegejuicht.

En zo valt de aartsvijand van alle sceptici zomaar opeens toch de eer te beurt om hier een platform te krijgen!

Together, we can end discrimination against nuclear energy

Dear Friends,

Our effort to end the discrimination against nuclear energy is picking up steam. Campaigns have been launched in California and Illinois — New York is next — and they are already having a big impact.
We can win this — but not without your help. We need volunteers and donations to support this urgent and critical work.

Already dozens of pro-nuclear environmentalists are stepping forward as volunteers. We now have people in Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Germany, California, the UK, Sweden, France — and the list keeps growing every day. But it’s not enough. We need your help. We need volunteers prepared to do a variety of tasks, from organizing events to handling administrative task to energy analysis to writing.

The situation is dire. In the U.S., utilities have either closed or announced premature closures of seven plants in three years. At least eight more are at risk of early closure in the next two years. Every plant closure results in the instant spiking of pollution. In terms of carbon dioxide, every plant closure is the equivalent of putting 1.5 million more cars on the road. See for yourself the stunning graphs for California and Illinois.

We can’t wait. With California bracing for a summer of brown-outs due to our over-reliance on natural gas, we have a new opportunity to persuade PG&E and Governor Jerry Brown to save Diablo Canyon. With Illinois facing the loss of nuclear plants, we have an opportunity to pass legislation that would treat all forms of clean energy — from solar, wind and nuclear — fairly and equally.

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Climate scientist James Hansen has made this a top priority. Last week he flew to Illinois and joined us in meeting with the workers at the Clinton nuclear plant (see photo above).

If you can’t help us directly by volunteering, please donate. We are a grassroots effort independent of all interests. We will not accept funding from any corporate or economic interest with a stake in the future of these plants. We are committed to objectivity and protecting the public interest.

You can read about our effort in Illinois at Mid-West Energy News and Forbes; you can read about our California effort in Mother Jones; and you can read Hansen’s strong public statement defending New York’s Indian Point against the fear-mongers. Everywhere we are discovering a pent-up demand from policymakers and the public for solutions that are both ethical and practical. The answer is treating nuclear equally — and ending the policy discrimination against it.

To be sure, nuclear has also been hurt in the U.S. by low natural gas prices.  But if nuclear were subsidized at the same levels as solar and wind, or allowed to contribute to state renewable portfolio standards, nuclear plants would continue to be highly economical. Proof of this fact is that wind and solar have boomed — even as natural gas prices have crashed to historic lows. And when wind and solar subsidies are withdrawn, whether in the U.S. or Europe, installation of wind and solar declines dramatically.

What happens in the US matters to the world. Against the hype about solar and wind’s rapid growth, the decline of zero-carbon energy shows that they do not make up for loss of nuclear.  Zero-carbon power as a percentage of global electricity declined from 37 to 31 percent between 1993 and 2014.

For 20 years environmental leaders have said they want a level playing field for clean energy — now’s their chance to get it. From New York to Illinois to California, we must end the policy discrimination against nuclear and include nuclear plants in clean energy subsidies and mandates.
Nothing ever comes easy when it comes to policy reform.  But the urgency provided by the loss of nuclear plants, combined with a focus on energy fairness as our true north, will give us the power we need to reverse nuclear’s decline.

Will you join us?

Yours,

Michael Shellenberger
Environmental Progress