6 Opinions The Pioneer Log, April 22, 2011

Sustainability is Sexy
A weekly column dedicated to environmental issues
BY RACHEL YOUNG
Staff Writer
News coverage of the nuclear
disaster in Fukushima, Japan has
been highly discussed among the
Western public for weeks now.
Te disaster has rightly brought
up questions of safety in energy
production, but when considering
these safety standards it is crucial to
look beyond nuclear power and an-
alyze energy production as a whole.
While we are all distracted by
the upheaval in Fukushima, every-
day deaths and illnesses caused by
mercury poisoning, air pollution
and toxic contamination from coal
plants, refneries and the tail pipes
of cars go unscrutinized and un-
mentioned.
Every week, miners, pipeline
workers and plant workers die
across the globe from fres, explo-
sions and mine collapses; this hap-
pens all the time.
Many of the worst energy-relat-
ed disasters last year went relatively
unreported and unnoticed by the
Western world. Last year, coal min-
ing accidents in China killed over
4,200 people, not to mention the
tens of thousands of people who
are plagued by toxic coal pollut-
ants.
Coal is far more dangerous than
nuclear power. Coal kills some-
where in the realm of 4,000 times
more people per unit of energy
than nuclear power. Yet nuclear
power plant disasters are embel-
lished far more because of public
ignorance and fear-based environ-
mentalists.
Historical accounts of nuclear
power plant disasters show that
public perception makes these
tragedies out to be far worse than
they actually are.
Tree Mile Island was the worst
disaster in United States commer-
cial nuclear power history, and no
one died in that disaster. In fact,
University of Pennsylvania and
other institutions did studies on
the long-term health and environ-
mental impacts of the radiation,
and the results showed there were
no increases in cancer rates due to
radiation exposure and no changes
in fsh or deer health. Tis was be-
cause the average radiation expo-
sure for people within a fve-mile
radius of the site was only around
9 mrem. To put it in context, we
experience over 116 mrem per year
just from terrestrial radon and cos-
mic rays. A fatal exposure level is
approximately 24,000 mrem.
However, public perception was
of mutations and mutilation. Based
on accounts in TMI 25 Years Later:
the Tree Mile Island Nuclear Power
Plant Accident and its Impact, writ-
ten by Bonnie A. Osif et al., report-
ers were forced by deadlines and
confusion to embellish the event
and misrepresent the dangerous re-
sults. Teir reports were not scien-
tifcally based.
Environmentalists are accus-
tomed to questioning theories
from biologists, ecologists and
climatologists. However, when it
comes to nuclear power, conspiracy
and embellishment replace science.
Te reality is that fossil fuels,
coal in particular, kill thousands
of times more people than nucle-
ar power. Fossil fuels are also the
heaviest contributors to environ-
mental degradation, both locally
and to global systems.
In this bipartisan world, we
need to pick our battles and go for
the real killer.
Who is the real killer, coal or nuclear?
My Eyes Are Up Here
BY MAGGIE HENNESSEY
Staff Writer
I have come to associate the
three diferent eras of feminism
with the story of Te Tree Bears.
Te frst wave was too rigid, and
I wish they had reached for more
than the right to vote. Te second
wave was almost too radical for
me, even as a very left-wing femi-
nist. With the energy of the second
wave as its tailwind, third wave
feminism might just be my favor-
ite.
First-wave feminism was cen-
tered on women fghting for the
right to vote, culminating in the
passage of the 19th amendment
in 1919. Personally, I think they
could have pushed for way more
rights.
Te second wave of feminism
is what most people associate with
modern feminism, which is re-
ally only partially accurate. While
women had gotten the right to vote
nearly a half century ago, women
still faced giant pay gaps and bla-
tant sexism and discrimination
in the workplace during the mid-
1960s and 1970s.
Key writers and activists during
this time period were Kate Mil-
lett (Sexual Politics), Betty Friedan
(Te Feminine Mystique) and Glo-
ria Steinem. Although this wave is
the most fun to study, I think its
a little radical, although Im cer-
tain the gender studies professors
would disagree with me...
Today, most feminist scholars
would argue that we are now in
the third wave of feminism. Tis
embraces many of the views of the
second wave such as equality and
a positive view of women, but it
incorporates issues of race, class,
sexuality and gender identity as
well.
Instead of just focusing on gen-
der, feminism has opened its doors
to everyone in the hopes that wom-
en can be judged on merit instead
of gender, have agency over their
reproductive rights and fnally
achieve equality. I like to think of
third wave feminism as an under-
dog fghting for good throughout
the world!
A weekly feminist column for everybody
It comes in waves!
Te Tern
A weekly column dedicated to social justice issues
Rif at Powershif draws
racial and class lines
BY ADRIAN GUERRERO
Staff Writer
Activists are fghting to ensure
that humanity can continue to ex-
ist on a living planet. Tis should
be the highest goal of the environ-
mental movement. However, the
eco-establishment controlled by
Al Gore and Van Jones does not
have survival as its primary mis-
sion. Te goal of the eco-establish-
ment is to make feel-good money
from the further commodifcation
of the environment.
Tis reality has caused a gaping
split in the environmental move-
ment, illustrated nowhere better
than at last weekends Powershift
2011, the largest student environ-
mental conference in U.S. history.
I attended PS2011 with one
goal: to subvert the eco-establish-
ment and the direction that I saw it
being taken by Global South activ-
ists at COP16.
I arrived to a see hundreds of
working class people of color, stu-
dents and non-students alike, rang-
ing from 12 to 67 years old, who
1) fundamentally oppose Al Gore
and all false solutions to climate
change, 2) believe that environ-
mental destruction is colonialism
on their communities, 3) are anti-
capitalist and 4) want a revolution.
Tese are the front-line communi-
ties.
Te front-line communities had
focked from around the country
to attend a little-publicized sector
of Powershift 2011, the Front-Line
Community (FLC) Track. Unlike
most Powershifters, who are over-
whelmingly white, upper-mid-
dle class and in college, FLCs are
people of color, low-income, and
Indigenous communities [who] are
the frst to experience the negative
impacts of climate change. Not
only do they bear disproportionate
burdens from climate change itself,
but also from ill-designed policies
to prevent climate change, accord-
ing to a guide booklet handed out
at the conference.
Every sector of the nation was
represented. Tere were folks from
the hoods of L.A., to the coal-
mountains of Appalachia and the
oil-slicked coasts of the Gulf.
It certainly felt like a step back
in timemilitant youth talking
about overthrowing power, rais-
ing power-fsts in the air, chanting
United Farm Worker slogans and
talking in Chicano English about
Assata Shakur. Even more telling
was the presence of radical envi-
ronmental organizations such as
Rising Tide North America, whose
connections to anarchist and eco-
terrorist organizers are well known
by the FBI.
Tese grassroots communi-
ty organizers laid out a series of
documents establishing their po-
litical heritage, from the Treaty of
Guadalupe-Hidalgo (signed after
the Mexican-American war) to
the Declaration on the Rights of
Mother Earth, signed at Cocha-
bamba, Bolivia, in 2010. Draw-
ing on these documents and their
own struggles, they have taken a
frm stance against carbon trad-
ing, forest privatization schemes,
and any corporate techno-fxes
that commodify Mother Earth
and her people. Tey call these
false solutions and instead choose
an ideology centered around re-
localization, grassroots organizing,
international solidarity and a rejec-
tion of industrial capitalism.
Tough I was thrilled by this
growing movement, the rest of
Powershift was a constant thorn
in my side. Te fact is that Power-
shifts organizers (the Energy Ac-
tion Coalition) are still opposed to,
if not terrifed by, the FLC revolu-
tionaries. Te result of this is that
the white environmental move-
ment is still overwhelmingly at-
tached to the eco-establishment.
FLC organizer Lilian Molina
said, SSC is part of the coalition,
but their scope and their frame-
work is only as broad as their ex-
perience. And though they have
an anti-oppression commitment,
some of them sometimes will com-
promise certain things... with their
justifcation that they want to
progress.
If environmentalists are seri-
ous about saving the planet and its
people, they will take cue from the
people most afected by ecological
collapse: front-line communities.
Why? Because they dont have
the privilege of separating social
justice movements from environ-
mental ones. For them, environ-
mentalism is life or death.
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