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"Green Music" by PhotoPort on flickr
Green Music Again Confronts Atomic Power
August 3, 2011
Amidst a life-and-death struggle to finally shut the nuclear energy industry, the power of green music flows again this Sunday.
It’s also pouring over the Internet, as the historic all-day MUSE2 gathering is staged at the Shoreline Amphitheatre south of San Francisco, re-uniting Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Crosby-Stills-Nash, the Doobie Brothers, John Hall, Sweet Honey in the Rock and many more who’ll sing to benefit victims of the Fukushima disaster and promote a green-powered Earth.
The concert runs from 3pm through the evening Pacific Time and comes as the nuclear power industry desperately seeks federal funding to build new reactors while fighting a tsunami of citizen opposition demanding the shut-down of aging radioactive power stations.
Music has been a unifying, empowering force for social movements for decades. The labor union movement used it during strikes and solidarity marches. It was at the heart of the most powerful campaigns for civil rights. A whole generation’s demand for peace in Vietnam got electrified with rock and roll.
And yet another round of citizen activism against nuclear power has been put to music from the grassroots and the sound stage, including that of Musicians United for Safe Energy.
The first MUSE was formed after the 1979 melt-down at Three Mile Island. For five nights Raitt, Browne, CSN, Hall, the Doobies, Sweet Honey were part of an astonishing galaxy of stars that lit up Madison Square Garden. The shows were accompanied by a massive rally at Battery Park City that drew 200,000 people and featured the likes of Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Peter Tosh and many more. (Battery Park City is now the site of one of the nation’s largest solarized urban developments).
A three-record album followed that went platinum, along with a Warner Brothers feature film called “No Nukes.”
In the wake of Three Mile Island, MUSE and a huge upwelling of grassroots citizen opposition, the corporate push to build atomic reactors shriveled and died. For three decades the industry went moribund, with virtually no US construction of new reactors.
Thanks to citizen action, the thousand nuclear reactors Richard Nixon promised for the US by the year 2000 became just 104.
But those decaying, radioactive death traps are under increasing citizen pressure to finally shut. Many are near major earthquake faults. Some two dozen are virtual clones of Fukushima Unit One, now spewing radiation in the air and sea around Japan.
The lead shut-down fight now is in Vermont, where the state legislature has voted to deny Entergy the ability to run the Yankee reactor after March, 2012. The vote stems from a contract signed by Entergy with the state giving it the power to shut the reactor if it chooses.
But Entergy is now in court trying to overturn the deal it made, arousing fury throughout New England, even among mainstream commentators. Entergy has gone so far as to order more than $60 million in fuel rods meant to keep the reactor operating after the 2012 deadline, intensifying the anger of the region.
Meanwhile, fueled by wads of radioactive cash, the nuclear lobby has come back to Congress demanding taxpayer subsidies. Omitted from the recent budget deal, it’s widely expected the industry will try to insert into a Continuing Resolution or some other legislative vehicle a loan guarantee program forcing taxpayers to underwrite new reactor construction.
Along with aid for the people of Japan, opposition to that and other nuclear subsidies are at the core of MUSE2. Grassroots nuclear opponents from all over the country will be tabling at Sunday’s concert, which will also feature an eco-village organized by long-time benefit promoter Tom Campbell. The Shoreline Amphitheatre is the nation’s largest green-certified concert venue.
In person or on line, we’ll see you there on Sunday!
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Harvey Wasserman edits http://www.nukefree.org and helped coin the phrase “No Nukes” in 1973. He is author of Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, which available at http://www.solartopia.org
10 Comments
“For three decades the industry went moribund, with virtually no US construction of new reactors.
the thousand nuclear reactors Richard Nixon promised for the US by the year 2000 became just 104.”
And since then how many trillions taken from our economy and sent overseas to feed our oil addiction?
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to sell you that nuc plants aren’t a risk (kinda like supertankers, you know?), but you should consider what it’s costing you to play it safe.
Look at our current economic situation and consider that we are sending a billion dollars a day out of the country for oil. Ask yourself how much lower that figure might be if we had an additional 1,896 nuc plants?
Then ask yourself what could be accomplished with that money, and who is being hurt and how much because we don’t’ have it.
Then decide if playing it safe was worth the cost.
This is very nice to hear about but I’m wondering if there are any current singers, musicians or bands among the “many more” who will be performing. Everyone you mention was there 30 years ago but it seems no one from subsequent generations has come along to fill the gap that will be left when those “oldies but greenies” are no longer available to protest.
you know
there’s is no shortage of good singers, and bands, they just aren’t well known.
for instance holcombe waller , who I think lives in that area.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jueOS85H2Gs&NR=1
they certainly should be there as well.
I meant to say “good younger singers, and bands”
O wise ronymeter please tell me how much oil we use to generate electricty. The amount if money we would have saved would be very little since only 2.5% of the electrical generation in the US is from oil.
Do you really need my help to calculate 2.5% of $1,000,000,000?
Okay: $25 million dollars per day or over $9 billion/year at current levels, so $90 billion (or so, probably a little less) since the year 2000. Now, I am “wise” enough to know that those figures are too high: the unbuilt plants would not have completely eliminated oil-generated electricity and I don’t know to what extent they would have reduced it.
Your point is valid (although I wouldn’t really call up to $90 billion “very little”) but let’s also consider that we will hopefully be transitioning to electric trains and vehicles: will that mean more oil used for electricity, or shall we build coal plants? Either way the greenhouse gasses keep on coming, of course, but that’s a different story.
Then there are also the positive economic effects of spending money on construction here, as opposed to wire transfers overseas. How many American workers does it take to build 1,896 nuc plants? At a rough cost of $75 billion each, how many trillions would have been pumped (no pun intended ;) into the economy?
Since your argument about oil vs nukes is a fail you should have chosen coal as your target.
The fact is that wind is already cheaper than coal and solar will be soon.
I know the construction industry and unions hate the enviornmental movement because the love big construction and don’t have to worry about the front or back end of the nuke cycle.
The only thing nukes pump into the economy is long term public debt and very long term contamination.
How is it a “fail”? You don’t think we could have saved tens of billions over the last decade by reducing our oil imports by even 1% ? Please keep in mind that I specifically said I wasn’t advocating for nucs, just suggesting that we consider the cost of “playing it safe.”
Wind and solar are intermittent and the techniques for dealing with that are only effective if it is a low proportion of total demand. In other words, they can reduce the need for coal and oil generated electricity but not eliminate it.
Would you like to me to repeat my argument with coal? It would be less about saving money on imports and more about saving the planet: which does the environmental movement hate more, coal or nucs?
If you’ve come across any of my previous posts about energy you know my preferred solution is not nucs, but tides.
You started out with a trillion and ended up with 80 billion savings.In todays economy that’s a rounding error. Solar may be intermittent but so is tidal and once we develop large scale storage, batteries, hydro it can be even more effective. Wind is approaching $.02kwh in some areas and we have just begun to tap it’s potential.
I don’t believe we can eliminate coal any time soon but we can reduce it’s growth and we can elinminate nukes and replace them with renewables.
Wind and decentralized solar with natgas backup is the best choice for the near future. The problem with tidal like all alternatives is the NIMBY attitude.
I don’t really want to argue, I just think you’re downplaying things a bit (as perhaps I’m overstating a bit).
Try telling the folks who’ve been praying for Tier V unemployment that 80 billion is a rounding error, for example. You also haven’t responded to my point that as we move toward electric cars and rail we’ll need less oil for fuel and more (of something) for electricity.
I’ve no idea what you mean by tides are intermittent. The sun and the wind are intermittent: some days you have them, some days you don’t. When was the last time there was a day with no tides?
NIMBY: There are hundreds of miles of uninhabited coastline along both shores which are unsuitable for wind or solar (not flat enough) but the tides still come in and out on a regular basis.