Community Rights US Founding Director Paul Cienfuegos comments on this important story in “The Guardian,” which is linked below:

In the early days of US energy corporations building commercial nuclear power plants that they claimed at the time would be “too cheap to meter,” an anti-nuclear-power movement rose up rapidly in response. It didn’t demand safer nukes, its call was for “No Nukes.” Its stance was abolitionist, which was the right position, right from the start of the movement. Unfortunately, this example is the exception to the rule, as we examine the past few decades of environmental activism.

The movement to get pesticides out of our food supply may use all the right words in their messaging, but their demands are all about strengthening food chemical regulations, or enforcing existing regulations, both of which legalize and normalize poisons in our food. There are numerous other examples of this kind of citizen activism in the US.

So thank goodness that someone is finally stating the obvious: “We must ban fossil fuels to save our planet.” This does NOT mean claiming that so-called “natural” gas is a perfectly fine “bridge fuel” to get us there. Or by fudging the numbers with cap and trade systems or carbon offsets. Good start!

But then the author starts to backtrack, when he states, “One necessary condition for a ban is the existence of viable substitutes.” It would be lovely indeed if we had the time to gradually and calmly reduce our use of fossil fuels, but unfortunately we’re decades too late for that. And wind and solar energy are far less ideal technologies than we have been led to believe, as they also cause enormous ecological destruction. We need absolutely massive and rapid cuts in total energy usage, not just replacing our currently gluttonous energy usage with so-called renewables.

So I would suggest that the author’s stated goal is exactly right, but his timeline doesn’t match the dire ecological reality on the ground. Our planet’s climatic systems are not going to sit idly by while we tinker with our energy demands.

We The People need to start thinking and acting much more boldly – as The Sovereign People that we actually are – with the Constitutional authority to govern ourselves, especially when our elected and appointed officials are not fulfilling their “consent of the governed” responsibilities to us.

What would a fossil fuels abolitionist movement look like? Sound like? Feel like?

What new energy reduction policies would We be urging, if We understood that We have ultimate governing authority? And on what timeline?

It’s high time we figured this out. And fast.