I was at an environmental seminar last year, and I've been getting e-mail for situations like this regularily ever since. It's crazy how much shit this guy and his family take on. He's the man, and apperantly his whole familly rocks too. Becoming more aware of the situation is a way of showing our support for them.
Greetings:
You may have heard that my wife,
Donna Dillman, started a hunger strike outside the
gate of the uranium mine proposed for up river from
Ottawa. Donna stopped eating Thanksgiving
morning, October 8, and aims to continue until
there is a moratorium placed on uranium
exploration and mining, at least for Eastern Ontario.
Needless to say I am concerned about the
woman I love shrinking away in a camp on highway
509 without running water or electricity. This story,
however, has much more to do with the
grandchildren. Donna & I have four, two of which
live 30 km. down wind from the proposed site. If
drilling and mining were to go ahead, these young
people would be subjected to the various radioactive
dusts and gasses that inevitable drift up when steel
and dynamite, crushers and sorters break up
uranium bearing rock.
Bring Gramma Home!
Aged between one and a half and eight years,
the grandchildren are oblivious of the problem their
grandmother is boldly calling public attention to.
They only want her to come home.
You can help. Make a sign that says
"Bring Gramma Home"
and put it in your window, on your lawn, or wear it
on your lapel. When anyone asks what's up. The
conversation is started & you can tell them.
More Than a Family Concern.
While the personal story of grandchildren
asking for their grandmother has popular appeal,
the stakes of this issue are far more profound.
The danger of radioactive contamination and
other environmental degradation is shared by more
than a million people who live downwind and
downstream from the site (Sharbot Lake to Ottawa).
Hundreds of millions more face similar dangers from
other such sites around the world.
Sooner or later we are going to have to pay
respect to what the Earth and Sun offer on an
ongoing basis. Nuclear energy is only tempting us
to think that we can ignore this responsibility.
Were we to shift our electricity demand to nuclear
power, uranium reserves would be depleted in 30 to
40 years. Then, the grandchildren would find
themselves saddled with the same problems we are
trying to avoid today, except that the problems
would be far worse. The resources available for
working on solutions would be diminished and there
would be quantities of radioactive waste, here, there
and about, to haunt them for tens of thousands of
years to come.
Both the Earth and the Sun are hugely
abundant. Together they have enabled life to thrive
for thousands of millions of years. Humans are
fully capable of being successful here. By saying yes
to living within the natural process of life on Earth,
we can avoid freeing the genie of uranium from the
rock in which it is trapped. Civilization is now at
the height of its possibilities, if this generation
cannot meet the challenge of sustainability, how do
we expect the grandchildren to do so when it comes
to be their turn?
As countless generations have cared to deliver
a better world for those who followed, we are
responsible to the grandchildren of today.
Help bring Gramma home.
Thank you.
Yours, Mike N.
Other ways you might help.
* Contact your local media and tell them to
cover this courageous stand to protect the entire
next generations of grandchildren.
* Forward this email to your associates and
ask them to help bring Gramma home.
Bring Grandma Home (Anti-uranium mining campaign)
I really hate emotional appeals like that one.
There are plenty of reasons why we should oppose the current nuclear industry, but I feel like propaganda only succeeds in polarising people and weakens the argument.
Arguments based on speculation about what could happen are weak at best. My concerns with the nuclear industry are due to the actual environmental damage that is caused, the fact that nuclear power creates huge amounts of carbon emissions (in mining and development of power plants), the fact that's a non renewable energy source, and the huge amounts of energy needed to safely store the waste.
I don't believe that the fear campaigns about the dangers are a genuine argument, because all those problems are completely solvable, and indeed there are many examples of nuclear mines and power plants that have not caused any major health problems that we know about (and we certainly shouldn't not do something because of speculation of the things we don't know).
The reality is that nuclear power is uneconomical, unsustainable and environmental. It can be safe.
There are plenty of reasons why we should oppose the current nuclear industry, but I feel like propaganda only succeeds in polarising people and weakens the argument.
Arguments based on speculation about what could happen are weak at best. My concerns with the nuclear industry are due to the actual environmental damage that is caused, the fact that nuclear power creates huge amounts of carbon emissions (in mining and development of power plants), the fact that's a non renewable energy source, and the huge amounts of energy needed to safely store the waste.
I don't believe that the fear campaigns about the dangers are a genuine argument, because all those problems are completely solvable, and indeed there are many examples of nuclear mines and power plants that have not caused any major health problems that we know about (and we certainly shouldn't not do something because of speculation of the things we don't know).
The reality is that nuclear power is uneconomical, unsustainable and environmental. It can be safe.
Just sharing what was sent to me.
But I am against nuclear power and all the uses of uranium that I know about. Look at other parts of the world, sustaining themselves with windfarms and solar panels... I don't understand why we can't just hook that up here. Why bother with nuclear? It creates waste, radiation and risks meltdown. Why?
I do agree with Jeremy about this whole emotional apeal though, now that you mention it. I just posted it because I want the same ends as they do... despite their lame means.
But I am against nuclear power and all the uses of uranium that I know about. Look at other parts of the world, sustaining themselves with windfarms and solar panels... I don't understand why we can't just hook that up here. Why bother with nuclear? It creates waste, radiation and risks meltdown. Why?
I do agree with Jeremy about this whole emotional apeal though, now that you mention it. I just posted it because I want the same ends as they do... despite their lame means.
Ben Roscoe
Makin' super heroes is definately a bad ass purpose of theirs.Jeremy wrote: I'm opposed to nuclear power in most circumstances, but I don't think you can say that all uses of radioactive material are bad.
I didn't know that smoke alarms had anything to do with nuclear power. Fancy that! I guess they're good. X-rays are necessary aswell I suppose, but I still avoid them absolutely as much as possible. I never let them zap my head when I go in for dental work unless I feel something wrong with my teeth, and they can't find the problem without using the X-ray (and that has never happened). Me not liking it certainly doesn't take away from its usefullness though.How do you feel about smoke alarms and medical equipment like x-ray machines?
Thanks for pointing that out, Jeremy. I guess we need a bit. ..for now. Somebody should get on inventing ways of getting around it though. Heck, if one could get super powers without radiation or genetic modification (and without being born with them), I'd be all over it.
Ben Roscoe
Yeah smoke detectors don't contain Uranium, but they do contain Americium 241 I think. Although there was a guy in the UK who built a nuclear reactor (a small one) in his back shed using the Americium from smoke detectors. It has a much lower yield than Uranium, but theoretically you could use it to make a nuclear bomb (you'd need a lot of smoke alarms to blow anything up though).RawSko wrote:Makin' super heroes is definately a bad ass purpose of theirs.Jeremy wrote: I'm opposed to nuclear power in most circumstances, but I don't think you can say that all uses of radioactive material are bad.
I didn't know that smoke alarms had anything to do with nuclear power. Fancy that! I guess they're good. X-rays are necessary aswell I suppose, but I still avoid them absolutely as much as possible. I never let them zap my head when I go in for dental work unless I feel something wrong with my teeth, and they can't find the problem without using the X-ray (and that has never happened). Me not liking it certainly doesn't take away from its usefullness though.How do you feel about smoke alarms and medical equipment like x-ray machines?
Thanks for pointing that out, Jeremy. I guess we need a bit. ..for now. Somebody should get on inventing ways of getting around it though. Heck, if one could get super powers without radiation or genetic modification (and without being born with them), I'd be all over it.
In medicine and science there are a lot of other applications for radioactive substances - x-rays etc. None of these use uranium either, but many of the radioactive substances they do use come from nuclear power plants. These could easily be created from nuclear reactions without generating nuclear power, but we would still need to mine a little uranium. Of course uranium and other radioactive isotopes of metals are non renewable, so eventually we're going to have to stop using them anyway.