Solartopia Green Power & Wellness Hour

The ATTACK ON RENEWABLES IN OHIO is dissected and made understandable by the brilliant NED FORD, the Cincinnati-based expert who has translated the state’s mutated energy policies for years on end.

In 2008 Ohio adopted a forward-looking bi-partisan energy policy designed to promote efficiency and renewables and bring Ohio into the 21st Century.  Like other midwestern states, Ohio has been hooked on coal.  But to meet federal air quality standards, many of the old Buckeye coal burners are scheduled to shut down in 2016.  Ohio’s excellent northern wind resource, plus new renewable and efficiency, have been poised to pick up the slack.

But since 2010 and the coming of a new Republican regime, led by Governor John Kasich, an industry attack has gutted Ohio’s green-powered future….and with it the prospects of many other states who are following in the same polluted footprint.

Ned Ford provides us a stunningly clear, concise picture of how this is happening.  If you are interested in a green-powered future, this show is a vital resource.  

RANDY HAYES of FOUNDATION EARTH (FDNEARTH.ORG) give us an astonishing overview of the ecological crisis we now face on planet Earth, and how to solve it.

A founder of the legendary Rainforest Action Network, Randy’s decades of activism and deep green analysis make him a fascinating, erudite witness to what it will take to survive amidst unparalleled challenges to sustaining our life support systems.   

Randy starts with a call to double the planet’s forest cover and then takes us through his brilliant, profoundly vital Nine Planetary Ecological Boundaries.

Full of uniquely articulated insight and hard-fought wisdom, this hour just flows by.  Don’t miss it.

MOVE TO AMEND (https://movetoamend.org/wethepeopleamendment ) wants to change our Constitution so corporations can’t buy our elections and run our government.  We’re joined by Frank Hribar of Mentor, Ohio, a long-time Move to Amend activist who tells us about the resolution passed by his small home town demanding an end to corporate domination.  A state-wide convention just held in central Ohio has joined a national wave of activism aimed at finding ways to free our political and economic systems from the curse of corporate personhood.  

In the course of our discussion we read through the actual amendment designed to restore power to the public.  Be sure to take a listen.

We’re then joined by GEORGE SAKHEIM, a 91-year-old Jewish World War II vet, born in Germany, who translated the testimony of Nazi #2 Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials.  An unrepentant Goering made no apologies for his murderous actions.  

Nor did Rudolph Hoess, SS Commandant of Auschwitz, who was personally responsible for at least 2.5 million deaths.  Sakheim tells us that at the end of his life, the rock-hard Hoess confessed his “sins” and asked forgiveness.  

Sakheim’s unique, astounding story from the very core of the post-Nazi inferno must be heard to be believed.  

A SOLAR-POWERED EARTH is our topic with the astonishing STEVE STRONG, one of our great green pioneers. Steve’s SOLAR DESIGN company has blown through many of the corporate and regulatory barriers to bring renewable technologies into the engineering and construction mainstream. Among other things, Steve coordinated the solar installations at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading learning institution for the spread of renewable technologies.

After a stint working on the Alaska pipeline, Steve founded Solar Design in the mid 1970s to push sustainable energy use into a whole new frontier of home, office and industrial construction. Today his company is promoting community-based solar model that can allow people whose rooftops can’t sustain photovoltaic panels to own their own renewable generation with shared solar farms.

Steve makes it clear that the technologies that now plague our planet—coal, oil, nukes & gas—can be effectively replaced with renewables bringing their huge upsides of economy, community control and ecological preservation. 

We are also visited by FRANK DEBAR of MOVE TO AMEND, who announces for us this upcoming weekend’s conference at the Unitarian Church at 95 Weishheimer Road in Columbus, Ohio. Aimed at overturning corporate personhood and all its many plagues, we’ll have a full report on this conference and the on-going work Move to Amend is doing on a later show.

We go from UNPLUG NUCLEAR POWER to OCCUPY and the DANDELION INSURRECTION!

For Fukushima Day, activist JOE DE MARE of Bowling Green, Ohio, lays out the terms of the annual 3/11 power down to commemorate the horrific disaster that still pollutes our precious Pacific (http://www.toledofreepress.com/tag/nuclear-energy/ ).  Joe tells us how every year a multi-stage UNPLUG boycott of electric use emphasizes public opposition to corporate control of our energy supply.  He explains that while the Bowling Green utility owns 6 of its own windmills, it’s also signed on to a devastating power purchase contract with a coal-burning utility that is undermining the community’s economy.

From RIVERA SUN we hear about solar energy and utility issues in the New Mexico town of Taos, where she and her partner live in a solar-heated home.  Rivera is an OCCUPY ACTIVIST ( http://www.riverasun.com ) and radio host who’s written and community/self published three novels including BILLIONAIRE BUDDHIST and THE DANDELION INSURRECTION.  With a beautiful voice and a gentle soul, Rivera tells us of her excursions into non-violence and of what too much money can do to people.  

With guest MARK DOWIE, one of the great investigative reporters of our generation.  Decades ago Mark broke the Ford Pinto story, and has followed it with literally scores of investigative pieces that have helped change the world.

Mark is now working on a fascinating book about the HAIDA GWAII, an astonishing First Nation living on about 150 islands in the great Canadian northwest.  The Haida Gwaii have successfully protected their beautiful lands from extractive industries in a unique centuries-long campaign that Mark will explain in his next book, being published by Inkshares.  Don't miss this amazing discussion.  

The great DR. HELEN CALDICOTT comes to us live from Australia with news of her upcoming NUCLEAR FREE PLANET SYMPOSIUM ( http://nuclearfreeplanet.org) scheduled for February 28/March 1 in New York City.  

Helen's astonishing global network has attracted some of the world's great thinkers on nuclear issues including NOAM CHOMSKY, BOB ALVAREZ, BRUCE GAGNON and many others to a summit discussion of how our species might survive in a nuke-saturated situation.

Helen begins with a disturbing discussion of actions in Ukraine and the threat to the 15 atomic reactors still operating there.  She warns that the death toll from Chernobyl has climbed over a million and that the western campaign to "back Putin into a corner" is fraught with danger.

She also recalls seeing the film classic ON THE BEACH as a teenager and the impact it had, leading her to show it again at the upcoming symposium.  

Dr. Caldicott always brings the very best in medical and ecological wisdom. Don't miss her latest visit to Solartopia.  

THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS NUKE might well be DAVIS-BESSE near Toledo, Ohio. Its Keystone Kop litany of shoddy construction, operator mishap and completely uncaring mis-management is unique---and uniquely dangerous.

But Ohio citizens now have a chance to shut it down by denying it the huge rate hike its owners are asking for this crumbling, decrepit reactor and at least one additional coal burner.

We're joined by local attorney TERRY LODGE and KEVIN KAMPS of BEYOND NUCLEAR, along with TIM JUDSON of the NUCLEAR INFORMATION & RESOURCE SERVICE. They fill us in on the sorry history and perilous present of this insanely faulty reactor.

Join us to hear atomic realities you couldn't make up. Here's how you might help shut this thing:

Write the PUCO at: docketing@puc.state.oh.us

Here is the label folks should use in the subject line of the email, as well as the body of the email message, so PUCO can route the public comments to the correct proceeding:

OPPOSITION COMMENT UNDER CASE # 14-1297-EL-SSO

DON'T FRACK/NUKE OUR EARTH!!! 

Our Solartopian airwaves light up with DAVID BRAUN and LINDA SEELEY, long-time veterans of the No Nukes and Anti-Fracking movements.

David has helped organize the successful campaign that's banned fracking in New York while Linda has worked with the Mothers for Peace of San Luis Obispo that's helped rid California of all its nuke power reactors with just the two at Diablo Canyon lingering on, now under increasingly powerful grassroots attack.

Together they explore the spirit and politics of WINNING an EARTH that is FREE OF FOSSIL/NUKE DESTRUCTION, a Solartopia where our children and theirs can survive and thrive.

And together we proclaim an upcoming conference, and the joys of a combined movement powerful enough to get us to Solartopia.  Don't miss this beautiful, inspiring green-powered ode to our Mother Earth!

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SHUTTING DIABLO CANYON will be the focus of a major conference in San Luis Obispo this coming weekend.  We're joined by LINDA SEELEY, JIM HEDDLE & MARY BETH BRANGAN who are at its core to talk about how we finally close two reactors that could irradiate the entire nation.

The conference details are posted at NonukesCA.net.  

We discuss in this radio session the key issues of earthquake vulnerability, economic obsolescence, the need for cooling towers and much much more, leading up to what we hope will be a successful grass roots campaign that will rid our Earth once and for all of these dangerous and deteriorating reactors.

Join us on the radio to get briefed, and then in the campaign in California or wherever else your nearest nuke might be.  The clock is ticking on all these reactors and the time to shut them is now.