Solartopia Green Power & Wellness Hour

Green Power And Wellness - FUKUSHIMA IS STILL HAPPENING - 07/08/14

FUKUSHIMA IS STILL HAPPENING as we hear from PAUL GUNTER and KEVIN KAMPS of BEYOND NUCLEAR about the horrific on-going disaster in Japan.  Far from being calmed and cool, the crisis in spent fuel management continues at Fukushima.  Loss of coolant in Unit Five's spent fuel pool has developed.  Units Four, Three, Two and One are also in varying states of flux, to the extent that Tokyo Electric has taken a "vacation" from bring down damaged fuel rods at Unit Four.  Paul also reports that a two-inch piece of spent plutonium fuel has been found more than a mile away from the reactors, along with many other fragments of what was obviously a fission explosion.  That the assault on nuclear regulators in Japan continues.  And that the Japanese people have stood firm against opening any of the 48 other reactors still shut.  NONE of this is being reported in ANY corporate media despite its life-and-death impacts on us all.  Paul and Kevin will be back with us for more reports.  In the meantime, please listen closely and send the links for this important show so others can know that FUKUSHIMA IS NOT OVER!!!

Green Power And Wellness - SOLARTOPIA IS UNDER ATTACK but FIGHTING BACK - 07/01/14

Ohio's swing state legislature has become the first to REPEAL a pro-green portfolio standard meant to promote renewables and efficiency. As JEN MILLER, director of the Ohio Sierra Club tells us, the corporate billionaires from ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) have swung Ohio into anti-Solartopia attack mode.  This is happening all over the country, and Ohio is now the cutting edge of a huge push-back from King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas). With campaign finance laws in ruins, the Koch Brothers are out in full force, and they've smashed their way through in Ohio.  

Meantime, in America's test market---Columbus---CAROLYN HARDING is helping with a COMMUNITY BILL OF RIGHTS designed to allow human beings to control FRACKING and protect themselves from total environmental destruction.  Crafted by the COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL DEFENSE FUND, this list of limitations on tracking is headed for the Columbus ballot. Carolyn tells how you and your own community can make this happen nationwide---to save our children and our planet.  

Green Power And Wellness - Fran Koster & Aaron Klein - 06/24/14

The OPTIMISTIC FUTURIST Fran Koster joins Harvey Wasserman on the GREEN POWER & WELLNESS SHOW to talk about the mega-conversion to renewables and the micro-victories people can win in their own communities. Fran changed the world by organizing the mid 1970s TOWARD TOMORROW FAIR at UMass to feature  renewables guru Amory Lovins, wind pioneer William Heronemus and many other great visionaries who shone the light on the solutions to a world being killed by King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas). Fran's book DISCOVERING THE NEW AMERICA also gives us beautiful small stories about how communities have bettered their lives through simple campaigns on issues like when in the morning to begin middle school, how kids should wash their hands and what it can mean to teach prisoners how to cook. See still more at www.optimisticfuturist.org. 

We finish with Aaron Klein of GREENERCORNERS.COM, a rising small business that has placed more than a thousand metal recycling containers in public places. Aaron sells advertising on the containers which are emptied by local recycling businesses and save their host communities serious money in trash management and tipping fees. A classic case of green entrepreneurship, Aaron provides an optimistic reality to our booming Solartopian future.  

Green Power And Wellness - Joseph Mangano - 06/10/14

The Certain Death Toll Among Children at Fukushima is mounting steadily despite the best efforts of the nuclear industry and the United Nations to deny any of it.  We talk with Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health Project about the horrific epidemic of childhood thyroid cancer among kids living in the area around Fukushima.   

So far the rate of thyroid cancer there is FORTY TIMES (40X) what would normally be expected. They are also experiencing an accelerating increase in pre-cancerous thyroid abnormalities which will almost certainly lead to cancer…involving FORTY-SIX PERCENT of some 250,000 children being studied.  

According to Mangano, who has been studying these health effects for decades, statistics from THREE MILE ISLAND and CHERNOBYL confirm the pattern of death and disease downwind from atomic reactor disasters.  Mangano's work also shows that when a "normal" reactor shuts down, the health of the downwind public improves.  Such assertions have been confirmed by the numbers in studies from Columbia University, in Canada and throughout Belarus and Ukraine, downwind from Chernobyl.  

If you are concerned about your health and that of your children, don't miss this riveting, devastating investigation. 

Green Power And Wellness - Bob Alvarez - 6/3/14

 The challenge of dealing with RADIOACTIVE WASTE has reached a tipping point with the failure of New Mexico's Waste Isolation Pilot Project in a fire that has rendered the multi-billion-dollar facility all but useless.  We talk with long-time researcher BOB ALVAREZ, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies about the unsolvable problem of rad waste storage from both weapons and power reactors.

Alvarez also guides us through the amazing history of Dr. Alice Stewart, Dr. Ernest Sternglass and Dr. John Gofman, who against all odds alerted humankind to the DANGERS OF RADIATION EXPOSURE and the folly of using x-rays on pregnant women, of testing atomic bombs in the Earth's atmosphere, and of operating commercial reactors anywhere on this planet.

We owe them an incalculable debt, with millions of lives saved.  We thank Bob for supporting them during key moments of the battle over this critical research, and for gracing our show with this important discussion of the origins of credible research on radiation and human health.  

Green Power And Wellness - The Green Transition - 5/27/14

The GREAT GREEN TRANSITION is explained by global carbon expert CHARLES KOMANOFF whose grasp of the world energy situation is unmatched.  Charles talks to us about the CARBON TAX and the on-going decline in per capita miles driven by Americans.  His www.carbontax.org website lays out the details of the critical transition we must make to federal taxation of carbon emissions and how that'll effect both our economy and our climate.

Charles also explains German's great ENERGIEWENDE, the transition to a green-powered Solartopian economy where all fossil fuels and nuclear power are being phased out.  The astonishing success of this movement is transforming the future of energy worldwide, in part by driving down the cost of solar panels.  But as the world's fourth-largest economy shows it can be done, Charles Komanoff explains for us the compelling and profitable implications for the green-powered world to come.

Green Power And Wellness - DR. BOB FITRAKIS - 5/20/14

MEDICAL MARIJUANA and INDUSTRIAL HEMP are the prime topics with legendary activist, publisher and radio host DR. BOB FITRAKIS.  Bob is at the heart of the movements in Ohio to make marijuana more readily available to those who need and want it, and to the farmers now demanding the right to grow this great industrial crop.

We also discuss the realities of Ohio's Republican Governor John Kasich, almost certain to be a serious candidate for the Republican nomination to the presidency.  Kasich has made it clear he's running for the White House and would be a very likely choice to run with someone like Jeb Bush.

We finally cover the travesty of voter rights and lack thereof in Ohio and the on-going campaign by Secretary of State John Husted to further the Jim Crow tradition of eliminating non-Republican voters.  A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT is now in the works to guarantee the right to vote in Ohio.  Bob tells us how it might succeed and impact EVERYONE'S right to vote all over the nation.

Green Power And Wellness -STEFANIE SPEAR - 5/13/14

We are joined by STEFANIE SPEAR the editor, publisher and founder of ECOWATCH.COM, the pure green internet site full of the latest breaking news and features on all things environmental.

Stef talks with us about sustainability and her recent trip to Denmark's Samso Island, where a community of some 3800 people is making the successful transition to total energy self-sufficiency.   With 21 windmills the community already generates more electricity than it uses, and is on schedule to completely convert all its consumption away from any trace of fossil/nukes.  

Stef also tells us about the Oberlin Project, which is converting this northern Ohio college town to a totally green economy, including a large green art district.  

As one of the world's leading eco-writer/editors, this hour just flies by with its sustainable, fact-based pathways to a real and true Solartopian future.   

Green Power and Wellness: BIKES! BIKES BIKES! with Charles Komanoff

BIKES!  BIKES!  BIKES!  we talk with CHARLES KOMANOFF one of the great pioneers in the urban cycling movement, dating back to the 1970s and the rise of bicycle/people power in Manhattan. 

Charlie has been present at the creation of some of the great breakthroughs in the amazing spread of bike commuting and transport now a factor in hundred of cities all over the world.  He tells us of the two-wheeler's transformational impact on "Livable Streets"... and as the machine that makes human beings the most energy efficient of all animals on this planet.

The bicycle is, after all, the device that won the Vietnam War, and may ultimately help us win the war to save this planet as well, thanks in no small part to the savvy, articulate advocacy of folks like Charlie Komanoff.  Listen in as he glides through it all in the tones of one who knows….

Green Power And Wellness - Neville Williams - 4/29/14

SOLAR POWER is now a $100 billion industry, and NEVILLE WILLIAMS has been present at the creation.  His new SUN POWER tells the riveting story of his evolution from a Vietnam War correspondent to a solar entrepreneur who helped start two very successful green companies.  One of those companies has fit more than 100,000 homes in India with panels that give them their light.  Another has done tens of millions of dollars worth of installations throughout our nation's capital.

Neville's personal acquaintance with the great Arthur C. Clarke and his decades of amazingly effective work in the solar business make for great radio listening---and for some real guidelines on how to plunge into an industry whose Childhood's End is very much at hand….with trillions of dollars about to be made while saving the Earth for generations to come.