President Obama has proposed a whopping $54 billion in loan guarantees for the construction of new nuclear power plants.

What does that mean? If the costly new nuclear plants aren't finished, then taxpayers cover the huge financial loss.

If they are built, then we're stuck with power plants that generate overpriced electricity and create deadly radioactive waste that will remain toxic for thousands of years.

Either way, the nuclear industry wins, and we lose.

Tell President Obama to stop the nuclear power boondoggle.

Nuclear power creates deadly radioactive waste, from the mining process onwards.   It's got a scary history: think Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.

Just recently, a nuclear plant in Vermont was ordered shut down after radioactive tritium, which is linked to cancer, leaked from the plant into local water supplies.

Nuclear power is so financially risky that even Wall Street won't bet on it.  It's a public health and financial disaster waiting to happen.

Instead, our government should promote energy efficiency and a decentralized power system based on safe, clean, renewable energy.

Tell President Obama today: don't risk our future with nuclear power subsidies!

In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama called nuclear weapons the “greatest danger to the American people.” Yet his 2011 budget proposes a major increase in spending on the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Incredibly, President Obama proposes to spend $600 million more on nuclear weapons than did George W. Bush in his final year.¹

Tell President Obama to cut the nuclear weapons budget, not increase it.

Obama's proposed new nuclear spending boost will enable construction of new facilities that would allow the U.S. government to develop new nuclear warheads in the future. That flies in the face of Obama's professed goals of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.

Nuclear bombs are a grave threat to life on Earth — that's why we need the president to walk his talk.

Tell President Obama today: cut the nuclear weapons budget, don't increase it.

Notes:

1. Carol Driver, “Nobel Peace Prize-winner Barack Obama ups spending on nuclear weapons to even more than George Bush.”  Daily Mail, 1/30/10.

Dr. Jill Stein’s formal announcement on Monday of her campaign for governor of Massachusetts as the Green-Rainbow Party candidate drew coverage from media outlets including the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, MySouthEnd.com, and Open Media Boston.

“If you’ve had enough business as usual, if you’ve had enough of the culture of influence, if you’ve had enough payoffs and layoffs and rip-offs and bailouts, this is the campaign for you,” Stein told about three dozen cheering supporters who waved her green campaign signs.

“It’s true I’ve never been a CEO and I’ve never been a Beacon Hill insider,” Stein said. “I’ve never huddled with health insurance executives who have denied people their health care. I’ve never met in the backrooms with predatory lenders or casino ambling executives or real-estate schemers. And I just don’t owe any favors to machine bosses or big-money donors who are looking to buy influence. Sorry. I’m a mother and a medical doctor and an advocate for healthy people, healthy economies and a healthy democracy.”

The full text of Dr. Stein’s remarks can be found on her website JillStein.org.

Jill Stein ran for governor once before in 2002, when she earned 3.5% of the vote and was widely recognized for her excellent performance in the one debate she was allowed in. She received over 20% of the vote in a 2004 state rep. race and garnered over 350,000 votes for secretary of state in 2006. She currently serves as a member of Town Meeting in Lexington.

To learn more about Jill Stein’s campaign, check out JillStein.org.

Attention Green Party members!

I'd like to invite you to an experiment in online democracy.

The Green Party of the United States is amending its platform for 2010.

You are invited to help update the Green Platform in an open, collaborative process on GreenChange.org and GP.org, the website of the Green Party of the United States.

A number of volunteers have already joined our platform writing team – will you help too?

The Green platform represents our movement's collective aspirations for an American society based on peace, justice, democracy and sustainability.

In the spirit of grassroots democracy, we want to maximize participation in the platform amendment process. So we've posted the 2004 Green platform, section by section, and we invite you to post your suggestions on how to improve it.

Read and comment on the platform. Post your suggested amendments too.

Democracy
Social Justice
Ecological Sustainability
Economic Sustainability
Nonviolence

We have until February 15th to collaborate, discuss and debate, then we'll work with you to pass on your suggested amendments to your state Green Party. Only state Green parties and national party caucuses can submit amendments. The amendments must be sent to the Platform Committee no later than April 15th.

This is your chance to lend your voice to the Green Party's vision for our world.

I hope you'll join us today, and forward this invitation to your friends and colleagues.

Peace!

Our nation's big polluters and their allies in the U.S. Senate are launching a direct attack on efforts to stop climate change.  We must defeat them — right now.  

Today, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is expected to offer an amendment to revoke the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate carbon dioxide.

Sen. Murkowski is trying to destroy the most effective tool we currently have for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — the EPA's Clean Air Act power to reduce CO2 emissions.

Tell your Senators: Vote NO on Sen. Murkowski's amendment to gut the Clean Air Act.

The Clean Air Act gives the EPA power to regulate dangerous pollutants in our air, including greenhouse gases. Right now, that's the only legal authority the federal government has to fight climate change.

Sen. Murkowski's agenda isn't hard to understand: fossil fuel lobbyists helped write the original version of her amendment,1 and she is Congress's top recipient of campaign contributions from the massively polluting electric utility industry.2

We expect the vote on Murkowski's amendment will be close, and that some Senate Democrats will vote for it.

Tell your Senators today: Defend the Clean Air Act and vote NO on Sen. Murkowski's amendment.

Recently, world leaders announced some deeply disturbing news: they gave up on reaching a binding climate deal at the upcoming Copenhagen conference. [1]

A major impediment was the refusal of President Obama and Congress to enact tough cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

We've got to turn that around. Immediately.

Tell Obama and Congress to commit to a 40% reduction in greenhouse gases below 1990 levels by 2020.

Right now, the most ambitious target that Obama has endorsed is a 3.5% reduction in emissions by 2020. [2]

That's pathetic, compared to the 25-40% reduction that we need to have a 50:50 chance of avoiding disastrous runaway global heating, according to the International Panel on Climate Change. [3]

The United States ought to lead by example. We can do it with strong emission reductions.

Tell Obama and your Members of Congress to commit to tough emissions reductions today.

Last week, House Democrats killed two provisions that could have given us the best health care in the world: single-payer. But we've still got a chance in the U.S. Senate.

Tell your senators to support single-payer health care by co-sponsoring S. 703, the American Health Security Act.

Single-payer health care is the only kind that would both control costs and cover all Americans.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had pledged to hold a House vote on single-payer, but she broke her promise, and did not allow the vote.

Even worse, Speaker Pelosi stripped a provision from the health care bill that would have allowed states to try single-payer.

As a final insult, the House approved an anti-choice amendment that will remove abortion coverage from millions of health insurance policies.

That's just not good enough.

Americans deserve a healthcare system that will cover everyone and won't bankrupt anyone.

Let's make our voices heard for real health care reform. Sen. Bernie Sanders has introduced S. 703, a bill that would create single-payer systems in every state to cover all Americans.

Tell your senators to support true health care reform by co-sponsoring S. 703 today.

Gary Ruskin | Green Change | 11.05.2009

It's easy to lie with statistics. Politicians do it every day. Climate change is the latest example.

Look at the leading climate change bills in Congress. The main Senate bill — approved today by the Environment and Public Works Committee — proposes a 20% target for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over 2005 levels by 2020. The bill passed by the House of Representatives sets a 17% target for greenhouse gas emissions cuts over 2005 levels by 2020.

Sounds good. Except it's not.

Here's the trick the Democrats are playing on you. They're moving the goalposts.

Most of the world — 184 nations — have ratified the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Those nations follow the Protocol's use of 1990 as a base year for calculating emissions reductions. The United States didn't ratify the treaty, so our politicians use whatever base year makes them look good. Let's see how this works in practice.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has called for a 25-40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, over 1990 levels – not 2005 levels.

When you use the standard baseline — 1990, not 2005 — to evaluate congressional emissions reductions targets, suddenly they look very small. Which they are.

That's the key fact that President Obama and the Democrats are trying to hide.

The House bill would only cut 3.5%, and the Senate bill only 7%, over 1990 levels, by 2020.

That's not even close to the 25-40% that the world's leading climate scientists think we need to cut by 2020.

Last week, Europe offered a 30% cut.

It's time for the United States to lead by example on climate change.

Tell your Members of Congress to play it safe with our climate. Tell them to support a 40% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, compared to 1990 levels.