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No Nukes
Editorial Letter to Middletown Times-Record |
Dear Record Editors,
As your “Closing Indian Point” editorial on June 11 noted, the recent National Academy of Sciences report concluded that no technical obstacles exist to closing the Indian Point nuclear plants.
The real obstacle is the lack of political will to develop, as your editorial put it, “a comprehensive, reliable, environmentally sound energy plan to meet the future power needs of the region.”
Here’s the outline of the plan I advocate.
The federal government should convert $300 billion in military expenditures into public works and investments to rewire the planet with renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, biofuels, and geothermal heating and cooling.
Out of total world military expenditures of about $975 billion a year, the US military is spending over $600 billion a year for a global resource war and military occupation for oil in Iraq and the Middle East, the Caspian Basin, Southeast Asia, West Africa, and Latin America. This global war for oil undermines US national security by inevitably breeding anti-colonial resistance (“terrorism”).
A $300 billion-a-year Clean Energy Transition Program would spread good will toward the US instead of resentment and resistance. It would ignite a global engine of job creation and sustainable economic development to dig our economy out of the federal, trade, household, and environmental deficits that now threaten it.
In New York, it would generate hundreds of thousands of new jobs retrofitting our buildings, industries, and infrastructure for the efficient use of renewable energy. And it would render the Indian Point plants obsolete and unnecessary.
Howie Hawkins,
US Senate candidate, Green Party
Syracuse NY
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 *Website by David Doonan, Labor Donated to Hawkins for Senate Campaign* |
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