Climate strike starts tomorrow, please GO; briefing slides and report from town hall meeting; memorial for John Otter Sunday Sept. 29, 2-4 pm at The Commons; fall fundraising begins with matching fund

September 19, 2019

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This letter:

1. Climate strike starts tomorrow: please GO, and don't stop;
2. Briefing slides and report from town hall meeting on plutonium missions, LANL expansion and what you can do; 
3. Memorial for John Otter Sunday Sept. 29, 2-4 pm, at The Commons, 2300 West Alameda (map)
4. Fall fundraising campaign begins with $5,000 matching fund

Preceding letter (09/14/19): Reminder; alert your networks: town hall meeting Tues Sept 17, noon, Capitol Rotunda; Heinrich, Udall embrace and increase Trump nuclear weapons funding

Dear friends –

1. Climate strike starts tomorrow: please GO, and don't stop

We realize this is more or less the last minute to be saying this but we hope you will attend one or another of the many climate strike events planned in our state for tomorrow -- or that you will take independent action alone or with friends.

Tomorrow, numbers matter. They aren't all that matter, and they don't always matter, but numbers do matter tomorrow.

So if you are wondering whether to go, or what good it will do, just GO. Please. You can discuss the details when you get there, whichever "there" it is. Maybe you'll see some of us.

Going to one of the climate strike events is the most important thing you can do tomorrow and this weekend to stop the new nuclear arms race.

Truly facing the climate danger, with consequential personal actions, is also truly facing the reality of our declining empire, the international struggle for scarce resources, and the new nuclear arms race.

Some of us left relatively easy if boring careers to try to save what we could of civilization and nature a long time ago. Knowing what we knew, there was no real choice to make. That's the reality coming to us, the train on the tracks that all of us are camped on.

That's what we are asking, more or less. We all need to be looking for "biographical opportunity." We all need to be examining our lives, looking at what we can bring to the struggle (hint: the harder you look the more you will find).

We all should be supporting young people, and retired people, and working people with a little extra time, accepting our job of putting together a "partnership of the generations" -- a very conservative phrase and idea, you'll recall -- to break free of the paralysis and co-optation that has marked the climate movement from its inception until, maybe, now.

Now, most of the groups hosting these events may have not had the best environmental policies up to now. Perhaps they didn't support the fracking moratorium in the last legislative session. Perhaps they think our economy can be made "green" by substituting merely renewable energy sources for dirty sources of electricity, and then we can carry on much as before.

Perhaps they think fixing leaks in natural gas extraction will make fracking all right, as long as it doesn't happen near Chaco Canyon. Perhaps they don't put all the oil and gas the Grisham Administration, and our congressional delegation, want to extract on their greenhouse gas books, allowing this Governor to pass herself off as somehow "green."

Perhaps tomorrow's events will create pleasant, easy photo opportunities for Democrats who aren't really doing anything serious for the environment or for the poverty and fragility in our communities, because they imagine that plutonium pit production or Facebook or Netflix or oil and gas or the Spaceport or Meow Wolf or the military will finally bring prosperity and the rising tide that will lift all boats.

Perhaps they will say that Republicans are the biggest problem, rather than deeper, more subtle problems far closer to home. Perhaps they will say that if "we" all drive $35,000 electric cars "we" can continue our happy motoring into a rainbow-tinged future. And so on and on.

And of course many will say that Trump is awful -- oh, he's the worst! Well of course he is, though it can be argued that having a polite climate-destroying liar as president that puts everybody to sleep is pretty bad as well. Being "against Trump" and $4.00 will buy a Starbucks venti (I think). Being "against Trump" is not being anything.

Despite all that you should go. We all have things to learn, and many people will be heartened into taking a step into something new. And then another step, and another. Let's be those people, tomorrow, and every day after that.

Our civilization is failing. Nature is being brutally killed. We aren't going to have a nice future in the old, narcissistic, consumerist sense. We can have a much better future than that ever was. But we've got to get our hearts ready, and our minds, and our families and friendship networks. Wholly new careers are now needed and wide open and we've got to support people in them -- support them with intellectual, moral, material, and social resources, as we step into evolving new roles ourselves.

Orphan reticulated giraffe with wildlife keeper

2. Briefing slides and report from town hall meeting on plutonium missions, LANL expansion and what you can do

We had an excellent, well-attended town hall meeting in the state capitol on Tuesday, Sept. 17th ("Nuclear disarmament group criticizes proposal to produce more plutonium ‘pits’," Santa Fe New Mexican, Sept. 17). No public officials came to speak or sent staff to observe, despite our requests.

The briefing slides we used, plus a few more, are here: "LANL’s plans for plutonium pit production and weapons expansion: Ending enchantment?"

We added a few bare-bones comments before posting, which are available via the little boxes in the upper left corners of some of the slides. We hope to post a video of Greg's talk in due time, or make another one here in the office. The situation here and in Washington is changing week by week. When more is known we will tell you.

Long-time observers may notice a couple of surprises in those slides, only partially explored. As you will see, plutonium in shipments to and from LANL is expected to increase by a factor of very roughly 100 -- just a ballpark estimate at this point -- mostly without using TRUPACTs. The New Mexico senators know about this new mission, but they probably haven't connected all the dots. If more plutonium missions and more money are inherently good things, why think further?

Only a Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) would connect those particular dots along with others. But neither they, nor the Governor, nor Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, have requested one.

Nationally, alternatives and impacts can only be explored with a supplemental or new programmatic EIS (PEIS), as we have formally emphasized to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Pentagon, and Congress since April of 2018 (plus here, here, here, here, and here), as well as in briefings in Washington.

As we have explained, the New Mexico senators want an even larger pit mission (80+ pits per year) than LANL now envisions (30+ ppy).

With no positive response from NNSA we anticipate litigating these issues. 

We already sued successfully to obtain two NNSA studies of its pit mission, the first of which made clear (2 p. summary) just what a bad choice LANL would be for any expanded pit mission.

There is still a fairly-universal Democratic Party consensus nationally (and in New Mexico), and among the arms control community and its institutional funders, that LANL should host an industrial pit factory. That was also true in 2010, when we were able to stop and defeat the then-proposed plan.

As is apparent, the situation is complex and developing rapidly, with large consequences for the future of northern New Mexico and the state as a whole.

What can citizens do?

Right now we urge you to get informed and organize your friends to write letters to editors (LTEs) demanding:

• A SWEIS as well as a nationwide ("programmatic") environmental study of pit production, which is slated to span multiple states, with nationwide as well as local impacts;
• Transparency from the federal government -- not just LANL, a contractor -- about just what its plans really are.
  

Even in the best, pro bono case, litigation is expensive. Our fall fundraising campaign is beginning; see 4. below.

3. Memorial for John Otter Sunday Sept. 29, 2-4 pm, at The Commons, 2300 West Alameda (map)

We were very sad to learn to that our friend John Otter passed away this past Sunday. All who knew John know he was a mighty force for good in many channels in Santa Fe -- always there at meetings, always contributing good ideas and actions, not just for the Study Group but for many organizations over many decades. He was a wonderful example of selfless service for many of us, and his passing leaves a gigantic void where personal virtue and magnanimous action had been. He was our friend. We are stricken.

He is survived by his wife Suzi, who informs us that there will be a memorial for John at The Commons on Sunday, September 29, from 2-4 pm. The Commons is at 2300 West Alameda (map).

4. Fall fundraising campaign begins with $5,000 matching fund

We haven't asked for financial support in quite a while now. Now we are. A generous donor has put up $5,000 in 1:1 matching funds, in the hopes of attracting more support for the Study Group.

This doesn't seem like the place to go into detail about this fundraising campaign, and how important it is. We will do that in a Bulletin to our main mailing list, of which this is a subset.

Thank you for your attention, best wishes, and see some of you tomorrow!

Greg and Trish, for the Study Group