17 Comments
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jabster's avatar

Re: wind and Audubon, they don't call wind farms "condor Cuisinarts" for nothing.

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jabster's avatar

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BullScient) jumped the shark a long time ago.

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SmithFS's avatar

Again, they want the bucks, and the easiest way to get it is to be anti-nuclear power. Also I doubt very many of them are "Atomic Scientists", if any. More like Atomic Lawyers.

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Conn Nugent's avatar

Excellent piece. Bad enough that the big environmental groups won't engage in open discussions of nuclear power (they could lose member dues and foundation grants), but to see that AARP and the League of Women Voters go along for the ride is doubly depressing.

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Jim's avatar

Given their reckless opposition to nuclear energy they should probably be called The Union of Unconcerned Scientists.

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jabster's avatar

Any discussion of climate change that doesn't include nukes is not a serious conversation.

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SmithFS's avatar

The Union of Concerned Lawyers. Some guy registered his cat as a UCS "scientist".

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DrZ's avatar

I used to be a national Audubon donor. No more. They will not get a cent from me until they stand up against the environmental destruction that solar and turbine farms are causing to not only birds, but to terrestrial biota too.

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Darrell's avatar

Nuclear takes too long and costs too much, compared with wind, solar, and storage. Not to mention its waste. So the bigger question is why organizations still support it.

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SmithFS's avatar

This is all very simple-minded. If you run an NGO, you know you will get big donations if you are anti-nuclear. Just go through the IRS990's for these anti-nuclear NGOs and see all the anonymous >$million personal donations. Why would a wealthy donor want to hide their identity from their supposed altruism? Answer: because it will be obvious that they are promoting their economic self-interest in a devious and underhanded way.

It's not what the Free Market requires, i.e.: "I must make a better product for a better price than my competitors, to gain Market Share"

It's instead: "I will kneecap my competitors by financing Mercenary NGOs to burden them with frivolous lawsuits and bad publicity".

Or just buy politicians to make regulations advantageous for you and/or disadvantageous to your competitors.

SpaceX is endearing lots of the latter, financed by the likes of Bezos and Boeing.

And the odd rare pro-nuclear NGO, most prominent one is Environmental Progress, manages a miserly $million in donations/yr. Greenpeace >$350M.

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Rationalista's avatar

Awesome article. Maybe we should just kill the whole NGO industrial complex… except for Breakthrough of course 😉

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SmithFS's avatar

The Prime Minister of Georgia was pushing for a law that required transparency for foreign NGO's. And he thereupon got a call from the EU commissioner reminding him of the assassination attempt on Slovak PM Robert Fico and warned him: "Be careful".

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The Radical Individualist's avatar

League of Women Voters is not as impartial as they want us to believe. At least not at the local level. Where I live, they barely disguised their efforts to denigrate Trump and his supporters. Not even remotely impartial.

And when Obama was pushing Obamacare, the AARP magazine said essentially, "It's all very complicated but trust us, Obamacare (ACA) is wonderful." In actual fact, Obamacare is a net negative for people over 65.

Be careful who you trust. Assume nothing.

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jabster's avatar

I thought Audubon was changing their name because Audubon was found to not be P.C. Guess not. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/18/1164293652/audubon-faces-a-backlash-after-deciding-to-keep-name-that-evokes-a-racist-enslav

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jabster's avatar

I've never understood why so many progressive orgs feel the need to weave out of their lane and support unaligned prog causes.

Then again, this is what the "in this house we believe..." signs are all about. It's a purity test on rightthink.

There's only one way to prog!

Then they wonder why they can't grow their tent.

It's the incest.

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SmithFS's avatar

Yeah, like the WWF which is promoted to be about "saving the Pandas" and Greenpeace about "saving the Whales", but both of them spend most their 100's of $millions in annual income on Energy related issues. Once again, it's all about the money.

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