Present(ing) Progression

I come to you today at a critical intersection of space, time, and place. It is critical in terms of my own professional trajectory (AND YOURS), and it is critical in terms of the trajectory of energy policy in this country and the world. We are here, together, doing this work at a series of moments where time has accelerated, space is transforming and place, yours, mine, ours, the global commons, as well as that of the tiny rural community in Idaho along the stunning Snake River that is being threatened from so many directions that it is to easy, as activists, to literally be swept off our feet in a terrifying storm of chaos driven by money, greed, and fear. We must ground ourselves and in that grounding we must also continue to reach upwards, to a place where our vision exceeds the limits of the threats. I want to tell you a fable, a story, a myth. I want to take you to the place where I stand. Give a geneology, engage in a constructed history. Artifice. ART-i-fice. In so doing, I want to encourage ALL OF US to tell our own myths because it is through knowing your perspective and why you are here, why you do this work of brutal soul searching and endless, sometimes unrewarding battles, that you will be able to move forward. We need to ask ourselves why we are here, because if we don't we will get lost on the way forward and the work we do will not be as effective. It will have an effect, but the more we know from where our passion may come, or what we see in this work, or how we ended up in this place, the more intentionally effectual our work will be. I come to this place from studying globalized hierarchies of inequality propagated by a development matrix that tells us we are the "first world". I come next, to this work ,from Feminism. The locale from which I operated for many years, and still use today since I find that environmental work is deeply intertwined with the questioning of a dominant frame that has been driven by capitalist patriarchal, racist and class based hierarchies of exclusion and marginalization. In environmentalism I have found a way to finally address these issues in the most comprehensive form and at quite an urgent moment.I believe environmentalism is the encompassing movement of our time. I believe we are all here and we will all go back and continue this work because we know that. Donna Haraway is a postmodern feminist scientist working at the University of Santa Cruz. In her work "A Manifesto for Cyborgs" she describes the period we are in as a period of leaky distinctions and hybridity where we must find new combinations to talk about our realtionship to nature. She speaks of a post-apocalyptic threshold on which we precariously sit. She asks us to recognize ourselves as both animal and machine and she calls upon us to let go of a goddess myth of origins, where we view ourselves as pure and whole organic beings inevitably of the mother earth. She says, "I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess." Picture Quote. "The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust. Perhaps that is why I want to see if cyborgs can subvert the apocalypse of returning to nuclear dust in the manic compulsion to name the Enemy. Cyborgs are not reverent; they do not re-member the cosmos. They are wary of holism, but needy for connection- they seem to have a natural feel for united front politics, but without the vanguard party. The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential." It is with this theoretical apparatus in mind that I will frame the picture of the fable I tell. This is the picture of a place I love. I am a third generation Idahoan, which means nothing to folks of 10 generations, not to mention indigenous origins. But it is deep for me. My state is beautiful. We have wild places to boggle the mind, we hold wild animals in huge numbers, our rivers our the lifeblood of the West. Thousands year old forest reach high into an endless sky where birds of prey some near endangerment, fly. ***Idaho is facing 3 immanent nuclear development and 1 possible. These 4 encompass a near (im)perfect representation of the fuel cycle. 1 uranium enrichment plant, 1 reprocessing facility, and 1 nuclear power plant being proposed by an exceptionally insane and ruthless nuclear developer. The final threat is a uranium mine proposed at the headwaters of the world class wild Salmon River. These nuclear dominoes are starting to fall and if one goes I fear they will all go. The state I love will become a radioactive wasteland. A place where people speak of the wildness in the past tense. Here is the map: We have a mostly rural population spread across widely dispersed geographical locations. Their is a tradition of jobs in mining, logging and agriculture. For this reason there is open hostility to any environmental movement, even when it protects these interest. One of the nations premier nuclear labs (INL) is located in Eastern Idaho (This is the main reason AREVA sited for coming to Idaho, that and the huge tax breaks) Our legislature is 80% R and 20% D. Our Governor will not admit that climate change is human caused nor will the majority of our legislators. All but one other large environmental group in the state either will not take a postition on nuclear and/or tacitly endorses nuclear power. 9% of our current energy comes from biomass. By 2015 1/3 of our energy could come from geothermal. We are 13th in the nation for wind potential. This is my first question: How do we bridge the gap between the perception and the potential? I offer this map to you as a way of encouraging you to remember your own. I know you have done it a thousand, maybe a million times, I know you have places you love as dearly as I love mine. I know you face challenges as great as great as me and unique challenges I have not yet imagined. But we can only find our actions by determining our praxis. This is the second theoretical apparatus at play in my fable. Marx talks about praxis as the melding of theory and action (I am a Marxist too, but I am not a communist, the distinction lies in the the implemenation of the theory) . I believe it is essential to recognize the way both of these are informed by experience. These three parts make up your praxis. They make up the place from which you act with intention. Arjun's "Roadmap" is a perfect example, an emblematic example, that we all must, as members of this Alliance create in our locales. He has done the global frame. Let us create the local piece. In putting them together we will come to decipher a fantastical and critical puzzle that is Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free by 2050. Vernice's impassioned speaking is another example of praxis in action. She articulated beautifully the way her experience of racism, marginalization, death and disease has sparked her action informed by strategic theorizing. My first action from these two theoretical places-- the cyborg and the enviroteriat--leads to the second question. How do we create a clothesline consciousness? I want to see wooden clothespins hanging from the recycled cables of computers, telephone lines, and power cords among cityscapes where we are cleaning up the pollution, which, lets acknowledge again please, the communities most affected are racially and socioeconomically specified (this is a form of genocide). I want to see these lines made from the same rope used to steer cattle by the cowboy who currently will not give me the time of day, cause I am from that crazy radical group SRA. I want to see them among the rural areas, like those along the snake river plane where 750,000 barrels of radioactive waste is leaking into our aquifer from unlined pits that were built to store the waste from the weapons testing that my 2nd generation Idaho mother watched from a high-point in Boise. They went to watch the magnificent light from Nevada. They were told it was completely safe. Those clotheslines are there already. They are in my backyard, and your backyard and our garages right now. They need to be everywhere. Why? Here is a puzzle: The average clothes dryer uses 6,000 watt hours of electricity to dry a load on low heat. Go to the Energy Information Association website. Find your state's CO2 emissions, or if your state imports most of their power (like Idaho) find a state that has a high CO2 emission. Now, multiply that # by 6. That will give you the number of kilograms of CO2 emitted/kwh when you dry a load on low heat in a clothes dryer. Each time you dry your clothes it is the pollution equivalent of driving at least six miles. That is the place for consciousness shift--its the first impact, then we tell people the implication. I have conducted an unscientific survey of the ease with which you can find clothespins in the area we are staying. 4 stores (1 co-op, 2 CVS's, 1 Safeway). No clothespins. They need to be accessible. This is one action, one place I want to embrace. But there are more small acts we can encourage people to take. It is more than the act, it is the education and empowerment involved in the action. ***I would like to propose that we share small regional snapshots with each other. We each submit a map of our work and possible action. By doing that we can assess our similarities and differences and collaborate accordingly. This may help us breakthrough the difficulties of launching such a unified but large campaign. That is my fable, my story, my first conclusion. I am so excited to see yours as we tread, roots down, vision up towards a FUTURE FREE OF CARBON and FREE OF NUCLEAR by 2050. It is in 2051, that we will may live in the land of freed energy.