LOS ANGELES, CA. & WASHINGTON, DC. (Top 40 Charts/ Fenton Communications) - Musicians Bonnie Raitt,
Jackson Browne and Graham Nash announced today a new campaign to stop Congress from bailing out the nuclear power industry. They launched the campaign with the release of a YouTube video and national petition effort all available at https://www.nukefree.org. The artists will deliver the petitions to Congress at a press conference and Lobby Day in Washington D.C. on October 23rd.
Initial petition signers include Ben Harper, Natalie Maines and Emily Robison of the Dixie Chicks, Melissa Etheridge, Maroon 5, Keb' Mo', Patti Smith, Pearl Jam, Herbie Hancock and dozens of others. Already the Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, U.S. PIRG, Environmental Working Group, TrueMajority.org, Friends of the Earth, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Working Assets Wireless have joined the effort. The musicians are urging the public to sign the petition.
The Senate version of the Energy Bill, currently before Congress, authorizes the Department of Energy to provide virtually unlimited loan guarantees for funding of new nuclear reactors. The nuclear energy industry has already indicated it wants $25 billion in guarantees for 2008, and another $25 billion for 2009, with untold billions more to come after that.
The petition states:
"We ask that all members of Congress join us in working to remove from the pending Energy Bill massively expensive loan guarantees - potentially a virtual blank check from taxpayers - for the building of many more nuclear power plants. We strongly support those parts of this Energy Bill that advance Renewable Portfolio Standards, increased fuel efficiency for automobiles, and other safe, clean solutions to global warming."
The YouTube video, produced by Robert Greenwald's Brave New Foundation, integrates an adapted version of the Stephen Stills song, "For What It's Worth," with information about both the problems of nuclear power and the potential of safe, green energy, including:
- The vulnerability to attack, or accident, of both the reactors and the thousands of shipments of radioactive nuclear waste moving through neighborhoods across the country.
- How subsidies to nuclear power would depress investment in sustainable safe sources of energy.
- The global warming pollution produced in reactor construction, and in the mining, milling and transport of nuclear fuel and waste.
Graham, Bonnie and Jackson worked, with many others, on the issue of nuclear power throughout the 1970's, culminating with the 1979 series of five "No Nukes" concerts at Madison Square Garden. The Rally, feature film and triple album based on those concerts along with the ongoing work of grassroots organizations helped catalyze overwhelming public opposition to nuclear power. There have been no new atomic reactors ordered and built in the U.S. since then.
Instead of new nuclear reactors, the artists are urging Congress to get behind those parts of the Energy Bill that advance safe, economically viable solutions to global warming.
