Month: August 2022

The Nuclear Threat

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I really hate talking about this, and I imagine you do, too. But let’s be adults. Humanity has a nuclear weapons problem that could wipe out everything — yes, everything! Americans were more woke (yeah, I said woke) about the nuclear threat back in the 1980s.

Real change was accomplished at that time, including a ban on nuclear testing, in large part because of the huge global, grassroots movement to end the nuclear arms race.

It was fear of nuclear war that compelled me to become politically active in 1984. I was farming my family’s ancestral land in Ireland that year. In between planting potatoes and making hay, I participated in protests organized by Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament against then-president Ronald Reagan’s unsuccessful proposal to station nuclear missiles in Ireland. Continue Reading →

Psychologist: It’s ok if disruptive climate activists aren’t popular

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Margaret Klein Salamon and I worked together in 2015 before the Iowa Caucuses, organizing volunteers to bird-dog Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to raise the profile of climate change. Our campaign never employed civil disobedience, but a handful of us did get thrown out of a Trump rally sporting signs and chanting “MOBILIZE NOW.”

Margaret appeared in a recent NY Times story, “These Groups Want Disruptive Climate Protests. Oil Heirs Are Funding Them.” She’s a clinical psychologist, founded The Climate Mobilization, and wrote Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth. She now directs the Climate Emergency Fund, which supports many climate organizations, some that employ civil disobedience.

Margaret contends that civil disobedience — or “disruption,” as it’s sometimes called — is necessary to shock people out of the delusion that what we’re experiencing with climate change is normal and acceptable. Continue Reading →

The Brainwashing of My Dad

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I feel like a broken record (broken in several places, perhaps), but I’ll keep saying it: We’ll never restore democracy in the US until we break up corporate media conglomerates.

Worst of all is radio. The airwaves used to be public. Now they’re almost the exclusive domain of a handful of big players who present a thoroughly lopsided view of our country’s challenges.

I’m all for balance, for providing a forum for differing perspectives. But on commercial radio stations, that doesn’t happen anymore. It’s one-sided, Republican-good-Democrat-bad blather 24-7.

You’ll appreciate the first conversation on this week’s program. I talk with Jen Senko about her film, The Brainwashing of My Dad, and about her book by the same title. Continue Reading →

Do Climate Bill’s weaknesses outweigh strengths?

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There’s an excellent article in The Guardian this week, giving voice to some of the countervailing viewpoints on the Climate Bill. It’s titled “Landmark US climate bill will do more harm than good, groups say.” I highly recommend you read it, and I’d greatly appreciate your feedback.

Some of the article’s highlights:

[T]he bill makes a slew of concessions to the fossil fuel industry, including mandating drilling and pipeline deals that will harm communities from Alaska to Appalachia and the Gulf coast and tie the US to planet-heating energy projects for decades to come.

Siqiniq Maupin, executive director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, said: “This new bill is genocide, there is no other way to put it. This is a life or death situation and the longer we act as though the world isn’t on fire around us, the worse our burns will be. Biden has the power to prevent this, to mitigate the damage.” Continue Reading →

Renewable energy’s rare earth mineral challenge

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Charles Goldman co-hosts this week. Later in the program, we discuss the crazy exodus of teachers from K-12 public schools. We also talk about Sen. Joe Manchin’s political death-bed conversion on climate, sort of.

But first, we kick it off with Rob Hach, CEO of Trusted Energy. Rob’s company is launching a huge solar project at Grinnell College, in Iowa, and we get an update on that. Then we discuss renewable energy’s vulnerable underbelly: rare earth minerals. Continue Reading →