Indian Point Nuclear power plant. Photo by Daniel Case. CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/), via Wikimedia Commons
Happy weekend, Highlanders!
I had the opportunity to attend the 15th annual New Jersey Land Conservation Rally at Brookdale Community College last Saturday. Kudos to Rally coordinator Laura Szwak, the NJ Conservation Foundation and all who assisted in putting on a great event. I always get fired up and in the mood for boldly taking action after spending time with so many like-thinking people, especially after being cooped-up with “Cabin Fever” over the winter.
So I was all fired-up to finish the epic rant I promised you last week.
“What do we stand for?” is the working title, and it is based on comments I’m not giving for an award I’m not receiving (you have to wait to see the details). I had it outlined and half written last Friday. What do we do when our Governor and/or government lies to us? (Think of the Governor’s recent quote “The Highlands was based on lies” and see this article,”Tree clearing along Garden State Parkway is also part of highway widening efforts, records show” in the Press of Atlantic City and this WolfeNotes post, “Turnpike Authority Illegally Clearcuts 30 Miles of Trees and Lies About It – Where’s Christie?” for yet further examples.) Are corporations and foundations and media organizations robbing the real grassroots of it’s voice? Where is greenwashing taking place within our environmental community? And what are we, as grassroots activists, willing to do to stand up to all this? As you’ll see below, it will have to wait for another weekend, but as a teaser, here’s the lede to the rant:
Back in mid-January (several revolutions and a small war or two ago, now) a handful of friends of mine were having an email conversation about how we’ve become frustrated at what’s going on locally and nationally with attacks on the environment and progressive policies. The frustration seemed to stem from both the attacks themselves, and the complacency or a lack of organized response by environmentalists and progressives to them. The question was raised as to “how we can affect change” and motivate people to respond…
Two things happened this past week that changed my plans. The first grabbed my mental attention away from writing, changing the direction of my efforts and focus for the week rather quickly. I received the following note for our friends at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation:
“Dodge did not approve a grant to continue support for the Highland News service. We were pleased to have been able to help the service in the formative years, but with competing projects, heightened scrutiny with respect to strong alignment with our grant guidelines, and issues of impact, we were not able to push through a grant this year.”
A significant amount of time and thought goes into assembling the daily news digest I send out each weekday morning and weekend, and without the generosity of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, through a grant to the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions, the NJ Highlands News project was dead-in-the water in December of 2008. Their assistance in April 2009 breathed life into this project and helped it grow its subscriber base. I appreciate Dodge’s support for the past two years, and I thank them for it. But times change. Fortunately, there is already a group of NGOs and funders that are willing to meet with me regarding assistance in keeping this digest alive, and perhaps even making it a better product for all of us. I will meet with them this coming Friday and we will discuss possibilities for continuing my producing the NJ Highlands News. I’ll have further details in the weeks to come. Don’t start to panic, yet!
The second thing that changed the theme of this weekend’s News (since I hadn’t finished my writing) was the continued worsening of the nuclear crisis in Japan, providing the bulk of the non-Highlands material today and bringing us to ask the question, “Is no nukes good nukes?”
I’d never worried much of nuclear power gone wild in my neighborhood, after all, I live in the relative safety of the northern Highlands. All the nukes in NJ are Pinelands people’s problems, right? But Tuesday I read an article by South Jersey’s own Kate Sheppard in Mother Jones with a link to this CNN interactive map (use it and enter your zip-code) and had an eye-opening revelation…I’m only 37 miles from the Indian Point nuclear power facility, a plant of growing controversy on the Hudson River just north of New York City. Yikes! And about the northern two-thirds of the Highlands is within the latest “government advocated” 50-mile radius of concern, with escaping radiation knowing no state or local jurisdiction or political boundaries!
So with that in mind, I gathered up a bit of “nuclear news” for today’s “Beyond the Highlands…” reading. It certainly made for some thought provoking reading and viewing for me. I hope it does for you as well. Dig in!
The links:
OpEd by Frank N. Von Hippel – It Could Happen Here (New York Times)
Video – Take It On: Nuclear Alternatives (My9TV.com)
Do You Live in a Nuclear Danger Zone? (Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones)
Video – License Renewal for Oyster Creek Power Plant under Scrutiny (Ed Rodgers at NJN News)
PSEG Nuclear monitors Fukashima reactor crisis while South Jersey nuke plan proceeds (Joe Tyrrell on newjerseynewsroom.com)