As the prospective price of new reactors continues to soar, and as the first “new generation” construction projects sink in French and Finnish soil, Republicans are introducing a bill to Congress demanding 100 new nuclear reactors in the US within twenty years. It explicitly welcomes “alternatives” such as oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and “clean coal.” Though it endorses some renewables such as solar and wind power, it calls for no cap on carbon emissions.

According to the New York Times, this is the defining GOP alternative to a Democratic energy plan headed for a House vote later this month.

But niggling questions like who will pay for these reactors, who will insure them, where will the fuel come from, where will waste go and who will protect them from terrorists are not on the agenda. Given recent certain-to-prove-optimistic estimates of approximately $10 billion per reactor, the plan envisions a trillion-plus dollar commitment to a newly nuke-centered nation.

With this proposed legislation the GOP makes atomic energy the centerpiece of its strategy to deal with climate change.

Obama plans to take a larger role in the health care reform issue.
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Times are anxious indeed, but simultaneously we are face-to-face with an extremely rare chance to replace our transportation system with something we can literally live with.

To take advantage of this uncommon opportunity we will have to do something far more profound, yet less costly, than a government bailout or an act of Congress. We will have to, as Paul Newman said in Cool Hand Luke, “get our minds right” on one simple fact: what we need is reliable, sustainable transportation. That does not mean we need General Motors Corporation or even cars. Contemplate the freedom implied in that statement for just a moment: we do not need General Motors Corporation.

Truth be known, the kingpin of the highway lobby has been by far the biggest roadblock to reliable, sustainable transportation for one basic reason: while we’ve needed, and still need, good transportation, we forgot that GMC was never in the business of providing transportation. It was in the business of making money.

This visionary conversation between Ernest Callenbach, author of the legendary ECOTOPIA (1974), and Harvey Wasserman, author of SOLARTOPIA (2007), about our green-powered future was filmed by EON and can be viewed at blip.tv and youtube.


Harvey Wasserman: It's an honor to be with the author of Ecotopia, which inspired me and so many others to become active on environmental issues.

It also inspired me to write Solartopia, What I’d like to talk about is getting from Ecotopia, the first vision of an ecological society, to Solartopia, a vision of a totally green-powered Earth. Yours is the first realized vision of an ecological society and thirty years later I’ve tried to write a companion or follow-up piece with a vision of a solar-powered society.

I read Ecotopia in the early seventies and I just re-read it, and what’s amazing and shocking and gratifying about it to me, as I’m sure it is to you, is how much of it came true.

Ernest Callenbach: Not enough.