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The Four Cleans
By Charles Keil, Lakeville
Clean energy … Clean production … Clean politics … Clean consciences …
Clean energy — I am so happy to hear about PACE (People’s Action for Clean Energy) and to know that Connecticut has some citizens who are campaigning for "energy independence that is healthy and does not require protection by the National Guard." (Judi Friedman of PACE) The Millstone reactor is a super-expensive millstone around our necks that can make big portions of Connecticut unlivable for decades, and/or wipe out Rhode Island entirely if the breezes flow from west to northeast on the day a single terrorist opens it up with an old fashioned mortar or a small plane. Do you pray each day for release from nuclear terror? I do. And I think of the Indian Point reactor just to the west of us, which is a lot more dangerous to us than a cement plant.
Clean production — The air and water coming out of a production facility should be just as clean as the air and water going in, or maybe even cleaner. Whatever the costs of filtration, or recycling, or restoring the quality of air and water may be, they should be factored into the price we are asked to pay for the product. What are the real costs of this bag of cement? It is our air. Our water. We share it with many other species. Poisoned air poisons us all. Why should polluting be profitable? Clean production creates many new jobs and puts a fair, nature-friendly price on every product. A clean production cement plant will employ more people and benefit everyone. What’s the problem?
Clean politics — As long as our representatives are more responsive to money than they are to morals and rational arguments, we are not going to move forward to clean energy, clean production, healthier and happier lives free of terror. President Bush announced in his State of the Union message that there are thousands of terrorists on the loose, and that the terrorists have the plans of our nuclear power plants. Yet he didn’t announce that we are closing and dismantling the nuclear power plants immediately to increase homeland security. Why not? Because President Bush and the brains in the bunker are the employees of oil and nuclear power companies, and have been for decades.
Enron and Exxon and GE and GM and Haliburton and 100 other oil- and nuclear-minded corporations contributed big bucks, the biggest bucks, to most of our Senators and Congresspeople so they will vote the path of least resistance, not make waves, not seriously question the safety of our over 100 active nuclear power plants—any one of which can release 100 times the radiation of the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs. Once these big corporations put the money they spend buying politicians into clean energy and clean production instead, we can own their shares and work for them with clean consciences.
So that makes it "four cleans": clean energy, clean production, clean politics — and Clean consciences …
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