Which one works? Even XR members can spot the difference.

Extinction Rebellion’s pasty-faced and ghoulish-looking members aren’t renowned for their common sense on energy matters. But – in a road to Damascus moment – one of its leading lights, the aptly named Zion Lights has, indeed, seen the light. And it’s one powered by nuclear energy.

Instead of dressing up like an extra in a horror film and gluing herself to the road, Ms Lights has become an acolyte of, and advocate for, nuclear power, for all the right reasons.

Extinction Rebellion spokeswoman Zion Lights quits green movement to become lobbyist for nuclear power saying: ‘I changed my mind’
Daily Mail
Dan Sales
26 June 2020

Extinction Rebellion’s spokeswoman has quit the protest group to become a nuclear power campaigner.

Zion Lights, 36, has left the climate change cause, which brought London to a standstill last year, to join pro-nuke outfit Environmental Progress.

The former XR communications head said she had felt ‘duped’ after being surrounded by anti-nuclear campaigners until she read more into the radioactive fuel.

Mother-of-two Zion said: ‘The facts didn’t really change, but once I understood them I did change my mind.’

The switch took non-campaigners by surprise given her new role seems entirely at odds with her old position.

Zion, who was born in the West Midlands and given her unusual name as a baby, said: ‘I have a long history of campaigning on environmental issues, most recently as a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion UK.

‘Now, I have quit the organisation to take up a position as a campaigner for nuclear power.’

The Environment Progress site suggests she joined their group on Sunday, with her profile dated that day.

Zion, who was grilled on the Andrew Neil Show last year, added to City Am: ‘Surrounded by anti-nuclear activists, I had allowed fear of radiation, nuclear waste and weapons of mass destruction to creep into my subconscious. I realised I had been duped into anti-science sentiment all this time.’

It is an astonishing turnaround since her views in 2014 when she said there was no clear answer on the safety of nuclear power.

There was little reaction from Extinction Rebellion today after the news of her transfer was published.

Its website dodges the question on what it thinks about nuclear power saying it wanted to welcome ‘a variety of views’.

The group continues: ‘We believe a social movement is best built as a “broad church” and that respectful discussions should take place within the movement on a variety of topics.’

Zion has previously spoken about being worried about the environment since she was a child.

She was inspired after seeing an advert on television which said ‘it is not too late’.

Recounting the experience, she said: ‘I remember seeing it and having the horrible feeling of what if we are letting it be too late? ”
Daily Mail

Zion Lights proves that there might still be hope for this lot.

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

According to Time Magazine, we are currently in a climate crisis because “As the world came out of the Great Depression and World War II, the U.S. launched a rapid bid to remake the global economy–running on fossil fuels.”

2020 Is Our Last, Best Chance to Save the Planet

BY JUSTIN WORLAND  JULY 9, 2020 6:42 AM EDT

…

In early April, as COVID-19 spread across the U.S. and doctors urgently warned that New York City might soon run out of ventilators and hospital beds, President Donald Trump gathered CEOs from some of the country’s biggest oil and gas companies for a closed-door meeting in the White House Cabinet Room. The industry faced its biggest disruption in decades, and Trump wanted to help the companies secure their place at the center of the 21st century American economy.

…

We find ourselves on the brink of climate catastrophe in large part because of the decisions made during a past crisis. As the world came out of the Great Depression and World War II, the U.S. launched a rapid bid to remake the global economy–running on fossil fuels. In the first postwar years, Americans moved to suburbs and began driving gas-guzzling cars to work, while the federal government built a highway system to connect the country for those vehicles. The single biggest line item in the Marshall Plan, the U.S. government program that funded the European recovery, went to support oil, which ensured that the continent’s economy would also run on that fossil fuel. Meanwhile, plastic, an oil derivative, became the go-to building block for consumer goods after the U.S. had developed production capacity for use in World War II.

…

The underlying philosophy of economic development in this time period was a focus on gross national product, a term developed by U.S. government economists during the Depression, which included consumption as a proxy for prosperity: the more we consume, the better off we are, according to this model, which, in the postwar era, the U.S. assiduously spread abroad. The promise of endless growth also required an endless supply of oil to power factories, automobiles and jet planes. In 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sealed a deal with Ibn Saud, the first King of Saudi Arabia, trading security for access to the country’s vast oil reserves. Every U.S. President since, implicitly or explicitly, has continued that exchange.

The coronavirus pandemic is the most significant disruption yet to the postwar fossil-fuel order. The global economy is expected to contract more than 5% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This is a challenge so big that it has also created a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change direction.

This moment comes just in time. In 2018, a landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N.’s climate-science body, warned that allowing the planet to warm any more than 2°C above preindustrial levels would drive hundreds of millions of people into poverty, destroy coral reefs and leave some countries unable to adapt. A 2019 analysis in the journal Nature identified nine tipping points–from the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet to the thawing of Arctic permafrost–that the planet appears close to reaching, any one of which might very well be triggered if warming exceeds 1.5°C. “Going beyond 2°C is a very critical step,” says Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “not only in terms of economic and human impact but also in terms of the stability of the earth.”

…

Read more: https://time.com/5864692/climate-change-defining-moment/

Anyone who thinks the Marshall Plan was a mistake never talked to anyone who lived through that time, has no idea of the chaos and food shortages Europeans endured.

Someone I was very close to was evacuated as a teenager to Australia from a refugee camp in post war Germany. But he wasn’t German, he was Eastern European.

Stalin blocked US aid from reaching postwar Eastern Europe because he was worried US aid might dilute Soviet authority in his new empire, so thousands of children like my friend became displaced. They left their homes in Eastern Europe, walking hundreds of miles in a desperate search for food their surviving parents if any could no longer provide. Those who made it mostly ended up in US run refugee camps in Western Europe.

Even with US help there was not enough food to take care of everyone. My friend spoke of two food rich countries, Argentina and Australia, who offered to take care of children Europe could no longer afford to support. My friend loved Australia and the USA his entire life, because of what they did for him. He survived long enough to be evacuated only because of the generosity of the USA.

The alternative to post WW2 US aid and the Marshall Plan would likely have been a humanitarian disaster. In the faltering postwar economy many thousands more starving children could have perished from hunger.

When the iron curtain fell and Eastern Europe was liberated, if you have ever wondered why Eastern Europeans are so friendly towards the USA, its not just because the USA helped engineer their freedom. Some of them remember the USA once saved their children, even if many others have forgotten.

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