October 27, 2014

Reminder: Discussion Tuesday evening (tomorrow, 10/28), 6-8 pm, UNM Law School Room 2403, 1117 Stanford Dr. NE

Dear Albuquerque friends --

Tomorrow evening we are scheduled to discuss “Violence and Nonviolence in New Mexico Economic Development” (or in three words, “Disarm, and Develop”).  For more a bout this meeting keep reading.

This will be our last public meeting in Albuquerque this year, so we really hope you come.  We will be providing some important new information and analysis you can’t easily get elsewhere and we expect a lively discussion!

Also, on Thursday evening of this week (10/30) we will meet in Los Alamos, at 6 pm again, at Fuller Lodge, 2132 Central Ave, to debate issues related to plutonium pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).  If you can come to Los Alamos on Thursday, please do.

Our three November meetings are on this calendar.

Tomorrow’s talk will not focus on economic development policy – expanding, for example, on the themes sketched in this guest editorial from August.  It will not explain (again) why our big nuclear laboratories haven’t been, aren’t, and will never be engines of economic development.  It won’t explain (again) that our congressional delegation – especially Senator Udall – promotes these labs and bases at New Mexico’s expense.

It will not focus on the tens of thousands of new, good careers we could create in renewable energy (RE), sustainable transportation, and energy efficiency (EE), the other businesses that would flow from them, the greenhouse gases (GHGs), air pollution deaths, and water usage and contamination we could avoid.

These are really good topics but we don’t yet have the political power to make that vision a reality.

Tomorrow’s talk will instead focus on what has happened over the past decade, what will happen, and what is likely to happen in the remaining years of the present decade as a result of oil resource limitations alone.  I want to show you why, in the words of Governor Inslee of Washington, we need to work for “disruptive change” NOW – and why disruptive change will come to us whether we are ready for it or not.

We want to show why more radical efforts to save the climate and build a sustainable, just society are not just needed now but are also more politically possible.  We want to show why nuclear disarmament is not just a good idea, and not just the law, but to a considerable extent also inevitable.

We are hoping the themes of this discussion will ramify in other organizations in the area.  We’ll be publicizing the themes more but in the meantime we hope you will come so we can try to understand together and start strategizing together. 

Please feel free to invite your friends to these meetings. 

Sincerely,

Greg, Trish and the gang

PS: We are looking for volunteers, and interns.  We have a good program here, but we could use help.  Let's talk about it.