Comments dandykins has made

  • Let nuclear pay for itself...

    ...and see how far it gets.

    I agree with the above post.  I would just add... and I'm sure most folks on here know this... the American taxpayer actually insures nuclear power plants, via the Price-Anderson act.  Why?  Because the private insurance industry, which makes its business the judgement of risk, refuses to insure the things.  When the private market won't even take on a power plant, it must be REALLY bad!

    Get the nuclear power industry to persuade an insurer (besides the US taxpayer) to assume the risk of nuclear power plant operation and storage, and THEN we'll talk.  Until then, let's get nuke plants off the public dole and make them live up to the "free market" rhetoric.On A salient point in the nuclear debate. posted 4 years, 5 months ago 3 Responses

  • More to be done...

    In November/Dec 2004, World Watch published an intriguing article entitled "A Challenge to Conservationists."  Its abstract is as follows:

    "As corporate and government money flow into the three big international organizations that domiante the world's conservation agenda, their programs have been marked by clear conflicts of interest--and by a disturbing neglect of the indigenous peoples whose land they are in the business to protect."

    (read it at http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/mag/2004/176/)

    The World Watch article specifically names World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, and the Nature Conservancy; Grandia adds to that list of major conservation orgs the Wildlife Conservation Society.  Still, the critiques in the World Watch article remain applicable.

    If these same conservation organizations do NOT take a position on CAFTA--which threatens not only their conservation policy agendas, but the well-being of human rights, social, economic and environmental justice as well--it's difficult to see how they can duck charges of blatent conflicts of interest and downright elitism and racism with any kind of integrity.  It's even more difficult to see how these groups can make common cause with working people and in communities of color.  And in this day and age, these alliances are critical, both to creating political power and winning, and to the conservation movement's accountability to the people and communities who are affected by their work.  (For more on this, check out Action Media's excellent analysis exploring who speaks for the environment: "Defining We," at http://www.actionmedia.org/Defining%20We.htm .) This, of course, is to say nothing of the vulnerability to the charge that conservation organizations value, say, spotted owls over people.  

    It seems this is exactly the kind of dynamic that the environmental justice movement has been fighting for some thirty years: elite, largely white middle and upper class group defines environment as soley "wilderness," and fail to take into account the environmental concerns of those who are not white, upper and middle class, Western, etc.  It's frustrating to see that we have apparently not gotten farther than this...On Are corporations hog-tying conservation groups in CAFTA fight? posted 4 years, 5 months ago 4 Responses