Atoms to atoms, dust to dust



What Jack Huttner misses most is the feeling that he and his ragtag band of activists, the SHAD Alliance, “could do anything.” The SHADs — shorthand for Sound-Hudson Against Atomic Development — were among the more visible of the 1970s environmentalists who took on energy modernity head-on. In Shoreham, New York; Seabrook, New Hampshire; Avila Beach, California; and dozens of other sites across the country, the SHAD Alliance and groups like it channeled the passions of young adulthood to deliver a simple message: No nukes.

By the late '70s, resisting nuclear power had become a cultural fever, and at Shoreham, 60 miles east of New York City, the SHADs waged one of the era’s great battles. As New York Times coverage from June 4, 1979, depicts, the Shoreham protest drew an estimated 15,000 people airing their discontent with the building of a new nuclear power plant on the banks of Long Island Sound. From among the 15,000 demonstrators, police arrested more than 600 for breaching the construction site and, according to the Times, bombarding utility company workers with “dirt, stones, and soda cans.” At Seabrook, 50 miles north of Boston, similar scenes had played out in 1977 and 1978, with 10,000 protesters on hand and more than 2,000 arrested.

Compounding the environmental drawbacks of purging our grid of nuclear power, the alternatives bring dire geopolitical risks.

Emblematic of the cultural milieu from which the protests sprang, folk singers like Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie (Woody’s kid) were mainstays, enlivening the demonstrations with song. The anti-nuclear movement had by then become the rallying point for the counterculture — a magnet for activists without a cause.

As the Washington Post described amid the June 1978 Seabrook demonstrations, the core of the movement was “made up in part of antiwar activists who dropped out of middle-class life during the Vietnam war days and moved to the hills of New England and elsewhere.” One protester told the Post that the anti-nuclear movement was a feminist and lesbian issue. “The struggle against the rape of our earth by rich, white males,” she said, “is the same struggle as the struggle against the rape of our bodies and the rape of our lives.” Another admitted that he joined the movement not on account of environmental concerns, but for the “feeling of camaraderie and good vibrations.”

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Photo by Giannis Alexopoulos/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Seeger’s lyrics offer a window into the cloudy thinking of the day. For Seeger and the activists he inspired, humans had gone too far along the path to transforming nature. Driven by greed and conformity (give “Little Boxes” a listen), we’d become, in Seeger’s eyes, detestable. To Seeger, nuclear power was something of a culmination of our worst bourgeois impulses, emerging out of the war machine and promising a future of ever-greater consumption. Despite the fundamental differences in the technologies that enable them, Seeger slipped between opposition to nuclear weapons and opposition to peaceful nuclear energy without drawing any distinction. Splitting the atom, for Seeger, was a violation of the natural order.

Seeger’s perspective was consonant with that of academic Paul Ehrlich, who said in the 1980s that the achievement of nuclear fusion would be like “giving a machine gun to an idiot child” and of once-prominent environmentalist Jeremy Rifkin, who asserted that fusion technology would be “the worst thing that could happen to our planet.” Seeger, though, captured in his music the emotional foundations of nuclear resistance, invoking, if somewhat clumsily, both Hamlet and the book of Genesis in his song “Talking Atom”:

The question is this, when you boil it down:
To be or not to be!
That is the question
Atoms to atoms, and dust to dust
If the world makes A-bombs, something's bound to bust.

Victory secured

Five decades on, it appears that Pete Seeger and Jack Huttner’s SHADs have won the long game.

Though certainly an international phenomenon, 1970s anti-nuclear activism has had particularly lasting effects in the United States. Between 1970 and 1990, the U.S. installed 95 gigawatts of nuclear power at plants in more than 20 states. But the eventual victory of the anti-nuclear activists had long since been sown. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, planned nuclear capacity additions began to slow in the late 1970s and were truncated further by fear surrounding the incident at the Three Mile Island plant in 1979. While the incident gave the movement wider visibility, it is crucial to note that it was in full swing well before Three Mile Island, as the Post’s 1978 coverage of Seabrook shows. By inculcating the American public with images of nuclear hellscapes, capitalizing on ignorance, and mastering procedural slowdowns, the movement ensured that the nuclear industry’s flowering would be brief. From 1979 through 1988, 67 power plant plans were canceled.

In the 20 years from 1996, not a single nuclear reactor came online in the U.S. In 2012, when there were 104 operating nuclear reactors, U.S. nuclear electricity generation capacity peaked at about 102 gigawatts. Today, only 93 reactors with a combined generation capacity of about 95 gigawatts remain in operation. Despite 10% of American reactors shutting down since 2012, nuclear has maintained a consistent share of total annual U.S. electricity generation (around 20%) through uprating, i.e., increasing generating capacity at existing reactors.

Even with uprating and re-licensing, nuclear power's days could be numbered. U.S. reactors average more than 40 years of age, and crucial plants are being retired each year. The examples include California's Diablo Canyon, which makes up 9% of the Golden State's power but is slated for retirement. According to the EIA’s 2022 Annual Energy Outlook, nuclear’s contribution to U.S. power generation will be 50% lower than today by 2050. It is a tragic and ironic denouement, considering nuclear’s now-well-articulated energy advantages of density and dispatchability and its environmental advantage of being emissions-free.

But the strangling of nuclear energy directly causes innumerable problems.

The nuclear plateau and its subsequent decline is, one might argue, representative of the wider American economic stagnation. But far from being inevitable, as charges of “late-stage capitalism” would suggest, the great stagnation as represented by the nuclear stall-out is a product of evidence-be-damned cultural impulses — vibrations, as the 1978 Seabrook protester might say — aligned against human economic and technological advancement.

The SHAD-led action at Shoreham was perhaps the movement’s greatest triumph. Despite the investment of $5.5 billion and completion of construction and testing, Shoreham never opened. As the New York Times reported, “a lengthy dispute between the company and state and Suffolk County officials over emergency evacuation plans delayed issuance of a federal operating license until April 1989. By then, the company had agreed with Gov. Mario M. Cuomo to abandon the plant in exchange for rate increases and other financial compensation.”

The fate of the nuclear plant at Shoreham, the ruins of which can still be visited an hour east of the city, is an avatar of a persistent social plague.

From anti-war to anti-nuke to anti-house

While the SHADs concretized the movement with their siege of Shoreham, Connie Hogarth brought to the anti-nuclear fight a deeper philosophy, transcendentalism, that offered justification for the means. Like many of the anti-nuclear agitators, Hogarth earned her stripes in the anti-war movement, scoring her first arrest at a “die-in” outside the White House. Just two years after the U.S. was chased out of Saigon, Hogarth would find a more durable purpose waging what would become a lifelong crusade against nuclear energy.

Writing in the Times in 1977, Hogarth compared her arrest for trespassing at the Seabrook nuclear plant to Henry David Thoreau’s imprisonment for tax evasion. There was a moral imperative, Hogarth argued, to disrupt in any way possible the nuclear enterprise. Like Seeger, she did not distinguish between nuclear weapons and nuclear power, writing, explicitly, that both “are storing up the unthinkable potential for creating hell on earth.”

Hogarth’s career as a provocateur would endure far beyond Seabrook, with transcendentalist motivations underlying much of what she would accomplish — or, more accurately, prevent others from accomplishing. In 1979 she was arrested and imprisoned for 12 days for trespassing at New York’s Indian Point plant. Another dozen arrests would follow, as Hogarth acted out against a range of perceived injustices well into the 21st century. Though it would take four decades, Hogarth had the last laugh. Indian Point, which made up 13% of the Empire State's power in 2019, was shut down in 2021, a year before Hogarth herself passed on at the age of 95.

Hogarth’s small-is-beautiful, back-to-nature, transcendental underpinnings continue to animate much of the anti-nuclear movement today, as they do the parallel social contagion that is commonly denoted as NIMBYism (Not in My Back Yard). While the fight against large-scale nuclear energy has come to a near-close, broader NIMBYism has become yet more prevalent — and damaging.

The recent Times profile of Marin County activist Susan Kirsch delves into the not-in-my-backyard psychology. Kirsch’s activism, like Hogarth’s, began with opposition to McNamara’s war and has been in search of a big wave to surf ever since.

Kirsch, now 77, is David Brooks’ archetypical bobo — the Bohemian turned bourgeoisie. She came of age when drifting from place to place railing against the powers that be didn’t preclude upward mobility. Once she’d had her fun, she settled into middle-class comfort, buying a house in what is now an unfathomably expensive zip code for all but the wealthiest Americans.

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Photo by Walter Leporati/Getty Images

From that amenable perch, she has made life miserable, in her own small way, for others. With her personal pressure group Livable California, Kirsch has almost single-handedly prevented the development of new housing in her neighborhood, blocking one project for 18 years running.

As it was for Hogarth, smallness is a touchstone for Kirsch. “Using the language of centralized power is what charges me to do this,” Kirsch told the Times, “I think small is beautiful.” For Kirsch, unable to realize that she’s no longer the scrappy underdog, the fight is against what she sees as the tyranny of powerful outsiders. She wraps her opposition to development, the Times explains, in a “small c” conservative philosophy that a local government is better and more responsive to its citizens than a bigger one farther away.

In this perspective, of course, there is a kernel of truth. It’s natural to feel loyalty to your way of life and to want to uphold your aesthetic experience against the central planner’s bulldozer. Indeed, Kirsch’s strain of conservatism is consonant with some of the themes championed by English philosopher Roger Scruton and his environmental philosophy of oikophilia, or a love of one's home. But approbation for Kirsch and her fellow travelers can only be but mild.

What began as a moral crusade to stop the napalming of villages and then channeled its attention against nuclear power has morphed into a banal procedural battle to secure community stagnation and the comfort of a privileged few. The error of those like Huttner, Hogarth, and Kirsch, who have gummed up our 21st-century economy, is that they have never trained a critical eye on their own beliefs. The anti-nuclear and anti-housing sentiments latent in today’s environmental movement are byproducts of Kirsch’s generation’s unbearable hubris. It is a generation that believes it never was, and can never be, wrong.

But wrong it is.

Stagnation’s cost

Myopia, complacency, and a curiosity deficit insulate Kirsch and her fellow travelers from the reams of evidence that their pet causes have harmful consequences that, if ever acknowledged, could only bring them shame.

Rather than unleashing the “hell on earth” Hogarth presaged, nuclear energy has now established a half-century record of extraordinary safety. While generating one-fifth of U.S. power and even higher proportions in countries like France, South Korea, and Japan, nuclear can be credited with reducing thousands of deaths annually that would otherwise have resulted from fossil-fuel-related air pollution and has caused almost no harm to human beings from the ostensible concern of radiation poisoning.

As Energy for Humanity explicates, the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi meltdown caused by a tsunami has yet to show severe lasting harm in the population. No deaths have been attributed to radiation exposure, nor have radiation-induced changes in cancer rates surpassed the level required for statistical detection.

The 1986 Chernobyl accident, conversely, was a genuine disaster. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, 28 emergency workers died in the first three months after the explosion from acute radiation sickness; two workers died in the explosion itself, and another emergency worker died of cardiac arrest. Lasting effects can be seen in Ukrainian mortality rates, which show that in radiation-contaminated areas, 26 people per 1,000 died in 2007, compared with 16 for the entire country.

Recent research, however, allays some of the gravest fears surrounding the long-term effects of radiation exposure. A 2021 study analyzing the genomes of 130 children conceived between 1987 and 2002 by at least one parent who had experienced gonadal radiation exposure related to the accident found no new germline mutations. And, hearteningly, two of the three engineers who volunteered to drain millions of gallons of water from beneath the burning reactor (an act of heroism dramatically portrayed in the 2019 HBO series) are still alive today. The third survived until 2005. When considering the tragedy of Chernobyl, it is important to recall that the disaster resulted from poor governance, not any inherent flaw in the technology.

Three Mile Island, far from marring nuclear’s record, confirmed its safety. As the Institute for Energy Research’s Paige Lambermont has written, the 1979 incident sparked public fear, but, as monitoring has proven, it never posed a real threat. “Because of cancer concerns following the accident,” Lambermont explains, “the Pennsylvania Department of Health maintained a registry of people living within five miles of Three Mile Island when the accident occurred. The 30,000-person list was kept up until mid-1997, when it was determined that there had been no unusual health trends or increased cancer cases in the area immediately surrounding the accident.”

Yet to this day, leading environmental groups like Greenpeace hold nuclear in the lowest regard possible. Greenpeace, in its own words, “has always fought — and will continue to fight — vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity.” The only solution, it argues, “is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants.”

But the strangling of nuclear energy directly causes innumerable problems.

On the energy side of things, it has cost states like California a dispatchable (i.e., you can use it when you need it) power source and made them overly reliant on the variable output that comes from wind and solar facilities, leading to grid instability. Environmentally, the loss of nuclear perpetuates the use of more polluting fossil-fuel power sources and eats into natural ecosystems, due to exorbitant land demands for dilute wind and solar.

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The control room simulator at the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in Avila Beach, California.Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

According to 2017 research from Strata, the nuclear sites in the U.S. require an average of 0.901 acres per megawatt. Utility-scale solar, meanwhile, requires more than eight acres per megawatt. California’s Solar Star facility, the largest solar power generation site in the U.S., takes up more than 3,000 acres to reach its capacity of 580 megawatts. The Diablo Canyon nuclear facility has four times the capacity yet is sited on just 1,000 acres. Moreover, Solar Star’s power only comes on when the sun shines, while Diablo Canyon’s can be relied upon day and night. Put another way, Solar Star disrupts three times more natural space than Diablo Canyon does, but can only generate a quarter of the power of Diablo Canyon in the best of circumstances — hardly an environmental bargain.

The California housing blockade, similarly, yields perverse land-use outcomes. While NIMBYs tout low-density as low-impact, the opposite is true. Because of the stifling of developments like those Kirsch opposes in Marin County, more families find themselves settling in the warmer inland areas of the state, using additional power to cool their homes in the summer and additional fuel to commute by car to the economic hubs in the Bay Area. Throughout Southern California, and indeed much of the U.S., the same story is playing out.

The issues have become so pronounced in the Golden State that even Governor Gavin Newsom (D), not one to regularly upset the progressive coalition, has suggested that state energy regulators rethink the planned closure of California’s last remaining nuclear reactors and has directed ire against the anti-housing NIMBYs he says are “destroying the state.”

Compounding the environmental drawbacks of purging our grid of nuclear power, the alternatives bring dire geopolitical risks.

On this point it is instructive to look across the Atlantic to Germany. Germany, like the U.S., experienced massive anti-nuclear protests in the 1970s, but saw nuclear energy grow in importance nevertheless. As late as 2011, Germany got a quarter of its power from nuclear reactors. Following the Fukushima incident, however, Germany’s anti-nuclear movement seized the upper hand. As part of the country’s Energiewende, it has reduced nuclear power generation severely and planned to phase it out entirely.

But doing so has resulted in a paralyzing dependency on Russian natural gas. For the past decade, Germany has been the largest export market for Gazprom, a company in which the Russian state has a majority stake and effective control. Not exactly the position Germany would like to be in with Russia waging war just beyond NATO’s fringe.

The United States, likewise, could find itself dangerously dependent if nuclear energy isn’t a centerpiece of any planned transition to low-carbon energy. In the U.S. case, China would be the most likely beneficiary, as it supplies the bulk of the key materials that go into batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels. “The rapid deployment of clean energy technologies as part of energy transitions,” the International Energy Agency wrote in its 2021 report on key energy inputs, “implies a significant increase in demand for minerals.” Across a wide swath of these so-called energy transition minerals, China sits in the driver’s seat. In the rare-earths category, for example, China produces 60% of the world’s total and processes 90%. IEA describes China’s position vis-à-vis rare-earths as “dominance ... across the value chain.”

So in addition to causing environmental harm by blocking nuclear, the ostensible anti-authoritarians like Hogarth and Greenpeace are playing the United States into the hands of some of the world’s most repressive regimes.

Compassion for Kirsch, Hogarth, and their somewhat quaint outlook gives way to horror when one considers their human and environmental costs: that California childhoods are spent in the back seats of cars despite the blessing of the world’s most salutary climate, that families are being broken and scattered across the inland West for want of living space, that the state’s inland desert ecology is being paved over for far-flung housing and plastered with miles of metal-and-glass solar arrays, that blocking nuclear provides de facto support to Moscow and Beijing.

The refusal to grapple with these issues makes anti-nuclear, anti-housing NIMBYism reminiscent of the set of concepts University of Cambridge researcher Rob Henderson has called “luxury beliefs.” Interestingly, the Post’s 1978 coverage of the Seabrook protest involved a similar angle, quoting a refreshingly self-aware recent Dartmouth grad who recognized that “it's a luxury to be able to be concerned about nuclear power.” The way Henderson sees it, luxury beliefs are badges of identity that are worn by people who will never bear the cost of their implementation, but who can attain from them status among their in-groups.

Henderson’s characterization fits squarely upon the anti-nuclear, anti-housing outlook. For the bobos, performative transcendentalism remains en vogue. As Huttner’s longing for the good vibrations of the '70s, Hogarth’s obituary, and the Kirsch profile reveal, activism on these issues is a defining feature, perhaps the defining feature, of the activists’ sense of self. They display as feathers in their caps the successful disruption of scientific, economic, and social advances. For an aging property owner in idyllic, temperate Marin County like Kirsch, stagnation is all upside.

For the rest of us, however, a better course must be charted: an approach to energy, environmental, and local development questions that holds space for the proper love of home but that recognizes the evidence of NIMBYism’s costs and rejects the divine right of stagnation.

By the light of a reasoned oikophilia, the twin veto crusades against nuclear and new housing wilt. Though the vibrations may say otherwise, the legalization of nuclear power and of residential density are perhaps the two most crucial planks in an agenda for improving environmental outcomes, improving the daily experience of Americans on the economic margins, and preserving the best elements of our shared home.

Reclaiming ‘environmentalism’ from the radical left



Certain words and phrases take on new meaning as time goes by, often due to the politicization of our language. A clear example is the linguistic evolution of what it means to be an environmentalist.

Decades ago, concern for the environment largely centered on keeping the land free of clutter, the water protected from contamination, and the cities unpolluted by soot and smog. One of the major environmentalist movements of the 1960s was fronted by then-first lady Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, who initiated a campaign to “Keep America Beautiful.”

Trump’s executive order is a first step toward reclaiming environmentalism and unifying the country around the concept of a cleaner world.

Johnson explained that her passion for beautification was in perfect concert with other important objectives. “Getting on the subject of beautification is like picking up a tangled skein of wool,” she wrote in a 1965 diary entry. “All the threads are interwoven — recreation and pollution and mental health, and the crime rate, and rapid transit, and highway beautification, and the war on poverty, and parks — national, state and local. It is hard to hitch the conversation into one straight line, because everything leads to something else.”

The campaign to clean up the national landscape was bolstered by a heavy rotation of television ads showing litter along highways, in waterways, and in parks and imploring people to “Keep America Beautiful.” Most famous in the long-running campaign was an early 1970s ad ending with a close-up of actor Iron Eyes Cody, a tear falling from one eye as he surveyed a polluted environment. Cody turned out to be an Italian-American, not a Native American as portrayed, but that’s another story.

But as the “global warming” movement came into vogue, the definition of environmentalism began to shift. Left-wing media, politicians, and organizations began to define environmentalism almost solely on the basis of adherence to its greenhouse gas theories and demonization of the fossil fuel industry. In their world, anyone supporting our most reliable and dependable energy sources — natural gas, fuel oil, and coal — disqualified themselves as environmentalists. In fact, they were accused of being “anti-environment.”

Too often, the left’s political targets played right into their hands, struggling to defend themselves and sometimes even downplaying or ridiculing the importance of a clean environment. By allowing “environmentalism” to be redefined and co-opted by the radical left, true environmentalism was lost. Fortunately, a recent action by President Donald Trump will help reverse course.

Reclaiming true American environmentalism

While Independence Day weekend headlines were dominated by the passage and signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, an executive order signed by Trump on July 3 went largely under the radar — but it may have an even more lasting impact. The president’s “Make America Beautiful Again” order “establish[ed] a council tasked with conserving public lands, protecting wildlife populations, and ensuring clean drinking water,” as the Washington Post described it, while adding that the order remained “silent on climate change.”

While the Post and other left-wing news outlets cling to the “climate change” definition of environmentalism, Trump’s executive order is a first step toward reclaiming the term and unifying the country around the concept of a cleaner world.

Trump’s order tasks all federal land management agencies with the following:

Promote responsible stewardship of natural resources while driving economic growth, expand access to public lands and waters for recreation, hunting, and fishing, encourage responsible, voluntary conservation efforts, cut bureaucratic delays that hinder effective environmental management, and recover America’s fish and wildlife populations through proactive, voluntary, on-the-ground collaborative conservation efforts.

Trump’s order was inspired by the years-long efforts of 27-year-old Benji Backer, a “conservative environmentalist” who leads a group called “Nature Is Nonpartisan.”

“This issue needs to get out of the culture wars,” Backer told the Post. “People just are so divided over President Trump, right? But if he could do one thing that brings people together, and it’s protecting the environment, it would change the course of the issue forever.”

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Photo by Documerica via Unsplash/Getty Images

By returning “environmentalism” to its original purpose of protecting the air, land, and water, the Trump administration will open the doors for those targeted by the left as environmental villains, welcoming everyone — right, left, and center — to actively engage in real environmentalism.

Environmentalism without costing energy

Those who provide America and the world with our most affordable and reliable energy sources have long cared about preserving the environment. In particular, they have continually invested in new technologies that make traditional energy cleaner than ever.

For example, advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies used to extract natural gas have allowed the United States to lead all major industrialized countries in carbon reductions. Home heating oil burner emissions have been reduced to near-zero levels, while sulfur content has been reduced from 1% to about 0.5%. Moreover, rapidly evolving coal plant technology means that modern pollution controls reduce nitrogen oxides by 83%, sulfur dioxide by 98%, and particulate matter by 99.8%.

As Benji Backer says, it’s time to move environmentalism out of the realm of the culture wars. Americans across the political spectrum love the environment and understand the need to protect it. Led by the president’s “Make America Beautiful Again” commission, the day is here when we can once again declare in unison that we are all environmentalists.

Editor’s note: A version of this article was originally published at the Empowerment Alliance via RealClearWire.

Netflix rebooting 'Captain Planet' to push pagan climate propaganda on new generation of kids



"Captain Planet and the Planeteers" was an animated television series produced by depopulationist billionaire Ted Turner, founder of the United Nations Foundation and CNN, and fellow climate alarmist Barbara Pyle, the co-founder of one of America's first legal abortion facilities.

The show, which aired in over 100 countries from 1990 to 1996, was a brazen work of pagan liberal propaganda that impressed upon American children various radical notions beyond just demonizing affordable energy, mining, Western industry, and capitalism. It had a hand in shaping the minds of some of those climate alarmists now involved in demonstrations, public tantrums, ruinous leftist policies, and vandalism.

With public concern about changing weather patterns down by double digits in parts of the West, radicals evidently feel it's time for a revival of the green-haired officer: Netflix is set to become home for a live-action adaptation of "Captain Planet."

According to Deadline, the series will be developed by Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way, Warner Bros. Television, and Greg Berlanti's Berlanti Productions. Warner Bros. Television, where Berlanti Productions is under a deal, will reportedly be the studio, reported Variety.

DiCaprio — the climate activist who downgraded last year to a $25 million superyacht and who suggested that a normal, recurrent weather phenomenon was an instance of "scary" climate change — will reportedly serve as an executive producer. The series will be written by Tara Hernandez, co-creator of the series "Mrs. Davis."

DiCaprio's involvement is a good indicator that the new show will pick up where the original left off: advancing a leftist worldview and suggesting to young Americans that human beings are harmful to the planet.

RELATED: The climate cult is brainwashing your kids — and you’re paying for it

Ted Turner. Photo by Mike Pont/FilmMagic

Every episode in the original series opened with this narration:

Our world is in peril. Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, can no longer stand the terrible destruction plaguing our planet. She gives five magic rings to five special young people. From Africa, Kwame with the power of earth. From North America, Wheeler with the power of fire. From the Soviet Union [later changed to Eastern Europe], Linka with the power of wind. From Asia, Gi with the power of water. And from South America, Ma-Ti with the power of heart. When the five powers combined, they summon earth's greatest champion — Captain Planet!

There was nothing subtle about the agenda behind the show, which boasted vocal cameos from big-name actors including Jeff Goldblum, Tim Curry, Martin Sheen, and Sting, and whose titular protagonist threatened to "take pollution down to zero."

In one episode, the showrunners took a page out of the Chinese Communist Party's agenda and advocated for reducing the size of families, suggesting that large populations are unsustainable.

"Did you know the population of the world is now more than 5 billion?" Captain Planet asks one of Gaia's child soldiers.

"Wow! That is a lot of people!" responds one of the children. "And it's increasing by 90 million people each year," says another.

"So when it is your turn to have a family, keep it small," the Soviet and North American characters say in conclusion.

The green-haired protagonist emphasized to those viewers who would grow up to witness a catastrophic population collapse, "The more people there are, the more pressure you put on our planet."

This particular episode, "Population Bomb," borrowed its title from depopulationist Paul Ehrlich's magnum opus, a 1968 book whose faulty thesis helped inspire China's one-child policy, resulting in hundreds of millions of abortions. As with Ehrlich doom-saying about the population bomb, which never went off, his other major anti-human and anti-natalist predictions similarly failed to come true.

RELATED: Climate hysteria sets stage for suicidal behavior: Study

Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images

Pyle told Good in 2016 that she made documentaries for years but found that those who watch documentaries are "smart people and also people who are already set in their ways," so she spoke to Turner about "alternative programming routes."

Turner, Pyle, and their fellow travelers apparently settled on kids' programming as the best way to advance their worldview and began pushing their agenda in cartoon form.

Pyle said in an interview with Grist, "We knew there was going to come a time when it would be necessary for an entire generation — your generation — to speak with one voice on behalf of the planet. In some ways, the entire Captain Planet series was about preparing us for this moment."

Gaia's five environmental child soldiers, who were apparently based on people Pyle knew, helped reflect her anti-Western prejudices over the course of the series. Whereas the Soviet character proved time and again to be a brainiac and the Brazilian character was an empathetic soul who could commune with animals, the North American character, Wheeler, was a mistake-prone redhead who apparently needed the most environmental coaching.

Netflix won't be breaking any new ground if its "Captain Planet" is race-obsessed, as Pyle indicated efforts were made the first time around to ensure that the pagan goddess at the center of the show wouldn't be mistaken for a "white Barbie doll," hence her portrayal instead as a "plump beige woman."

Unsurprisingly, the Captain Planet Foundation — the nonprofit founded in 1991 by Turner and Pyle — is committed to DEI.

Netflix declined to comment about the project to Deadline or Variety.

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Is this how we beat China? Trump’s AI dream guts small-town USA



Imagine Arab sheik-funded AI supercenters dotting rural America, staffed by foreign labor, draining local water and power, and hollowing out small-town life — all so Big Tech can build its digital technocracy. Sounds like the globalist Agenda 2030 schemes we’ve warned about for years. But shockingly, it’s now become the Trump administration’s top priority.

President Trump’s team is pushing to override red-state zoning laws and fast-track thousands of these massive data centers. The losers? Small-town Americans. The winners? The “rich men north of Richmond.”

Who is looking out for the people when Trump and the globalists are on the same side? “We have to beat China” is the rallying cry — a lazy excuse to silence questions and crush local regulations. But we need AI that serves productivity, not a technocracy that rules over us.

Noise levels hit 96 decibels. Imagine a leaf blower that never turns off. Would you want that in your backyard? It may be coming sooner than you think.

Trump’s “Stargate” plan would spend a staggering half-trillion dollars — public and private — to build thousands of AI data centers. It’s like rushing to amputate a limb. Sometimes it’s necessary, but any sane person would demand second and third opinions first.

Yet, instead of debate, we got betrayal. Tucked quietly into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was a provision from AI czar David Sacks banning all state regulation of AI systems for 10 years. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) gaslit us, claiming this would stop California’s tech tyranny. In truth, it targets Trump’s own base: farmers, ranchers, and rural voters. Just like eminent domain carve-outs for green energy, it strips local power to benefit Big Tech.

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Even before Stargate breaks ground, rural Trump country is already grappling with AI data centers draining water, electricity, and property values. Telling locals to shut up because “we must beat China” is pure demagoguery.

Copying China’s playbook

Meanwhile, the same administration opening the floodgates for these projects is also welcoming hundreds of thousands of Chinese tech students. This is déjà vu from the post-9/11 security state. Back then, we cracked down on Americans while doubling immigration from the very regions funding terror. It was never about safety — it was always about the grift.

Across Trump country, protests are swelling against these land and energy grabs. You can almost hear Oliver Anthony’s lyrics echoing over the farmland: “These rich men north of Richmond ... wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do.”

The point of AI should be to improve our lives — not force us to sacrifice local resources and freedoms so it can exist as a modern Baal.

Troubling open-ended questions about what this “data god” will be used for lay heavily on these conversations, and it’s quite hard not to envision it being used for control. We’re told we must become like China to beat China, yet what we’re building is arguably worse. And the more immediate consequence will be irreparable damage to our rural landscapes and national power grid.

Rural communities bear the cost

Is it any wonder rural communities want to use local zoning laws to at least slow this stampede? These areas have land, fewer regulations, and desperate politicians eager for new investment. Big Tech knows exactly who to target.

Virginia’s Loudoun and Prince William Counties were early victims. Now, the industry is setting sights on Northwest Georgia, rural Oklahoma, Texas, and Arizona. What these projects promise is anything but rural tranquility.

RELATED: Trump bets big on AI to make America dominant again

Photo by Alvarez via Getty Images

A single proposed project in American Township, Ohio, for example, was slated to cover nearly 170 acres. Consider that 4,750 of these leviathans were expected to break ground just this year. What’s going to happen to America’s countryside once the thousands of data centers scheduled for this year alone are built, in addition to the subsequent thousands we can expect in the coming years?

According to the Institute for Energy Research, by 2030, data centers’ electricity consumption is on track to surpass the entire electricity consumption of Japan today. In the United States, that number will account for almost half of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030. In short, in just a few years, data centers will consume more energy than what is currently required for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods — such as aluminum, steel, and cement — combined.

The strain on water is even more concerning. A single large data center can consume upwards of five million gallons of water per day to cool the vast arrays of servers — the equivalent of a small city. Much of the water use is consumptive, meaning it evaporates and is not returned to the local watershed.

In water-scarce regions, such as Arizona — one of the primary locations targeted for these water centers — this can put a tremendous strain on already limited resources, creating a new and powerful competitor for a resource that is essential for farming, ranching, and residential life.

The daily toll of these data centers in rural America is already steep. Backup generators and cooling fans roar day and night. Locals near Virginia sites compare it to “a lawnmower in your living room 24/7.” Noise levels hit 96 decibels. Imagine a leaf blower that never turns off. Would you want that in your backyard?

It may be coming sooner than you think.

Moreover, thousands of AI data centers would destroy much of America’s rural landscapes — rolling hills replaced by giant, windowless warehouses. Yes, ugly infrastructure like power plants is sometimes essential — but at least they provide energy to the community. These data centers take energy away. A handful would be one thing. Thousands amount to a dystopia.

A better AI future

The United States could secure its lead in the AI era not by copying foreign actors’ brute-force, centralized strategy — which imposes staggering burdens on local communities — but by fostering an agile, resilient, and open ecosystem. Instead of merely stockpiling raw processing power, we should prioritize building AI systems that are accurate, reliable, globally accessible, and seamlessly integrate with existing technology.

Decentralized AI infrastructure, often pairing AI with blockchain, offers a smarter path. It keeps data under local control, bolsters privacy, complies with local laws, and dramatically cuts the risk of catastrophic breaches tied to massive single points of failure. It also encourages flexibility, allowing open-source models to flourish and adapt more quickly than bureaucratic mega-projects ever could.

If we truly want an AI future that serves American families — not Big Tech oligarchs or foreign monarchs — we must champion technology that empowers people, protects communities, and respects the land. Anything less isn’t just bad policy. It’s a betrayal of the very America these rural voters fight to preserve.

Trump bets big on AI to make America dominant again



The Trump administration is preparing to launch a sweeping series of executive orders aimed at securing America’s position as the world’s leader in artificial intelligence. If carried out properly, these efforts could help spark a new era of economic prosperity and technological dominance.

The forthcoming executive actions would radically streamline federal approvals for AI-related infrastructure, vastly expand energy resources devoted to artificial intelligence development, and prioritize the construction of new transmission and data projects critical to powering America’s AI future.

Artificial intelligence could be the single most important economic engine of the 21st century.

It is a remarkable development — and one desperately needed.

Trump’s AI infrastructure revolution

The expected executive orders outline sweeping changes. One key measure would create a national Clean Water Act permit tailored to speed up environmental approvals for AI-related infrastructure — especially energy and data facilities.

Another directive would push the federal government to prioritize “shovel-ready” transmission projects, helping the electric grid expand quickly enough to meet the demands of AI growth.

The orders would also unlock federally managed land for rapid development of the infrastructure needed to power and support artificial intelligence operations.

Finally, the administration plans to increase dramatically the energy resources dedicated to AI development, treating the technology as a national priority.

These changes aim to eliminate major regulatory and logistical obstacles slowing AI advancement. By streamlining permitting, securing energy access, and opening federal land, the orders would lay the groundwork for building and deploying large-scale AI systems nationwide.

A critical change

Each of these reforms matters. The numbers make that clear.

An article published earlier this year in MIT Technology Review summarized estimates from multiple researchers analyzing AI’s future impact. One study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory projected that by 2028, powering AI in the U.S. could require between 165 and 326 terawatt-hours of electricity annually.

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Douglas Rissing via iStock/Getty Images

That would exceed the total power consumption of all U.S. data centers today. It’s enough to supply more than 20% of American households.

Put another way, the article noted that AI’s energy demand could create emissions equivalent to driving 300 billion miles — roughly 1,600 round trips between Earth and the sun.

This isn’t a modest technological shift. It’s an industrial revolution, and it’s already under way.

The global AI race

China’s leaders understand the potential benefits and costs of artificial intelligence, too, which is why they have approved dramatic increases in energy development in recent years.

In May, the Chinese government approved a plan to build 10 new nuclear reactors at a cost of $27.7 billion. If implemented, it would make China the planet’s largest generator of nuclear power by 2030.

China also invested more than $900 billion in renewable energy sources in 2024, nearly matching global investment in fossil fuels.

China is taking its energy needs seriously, and the Trump administration appears committed to ensuring that the United States doesn’t fall behind.

AI’s $13 trillion opportunity

Artificial intelligence is not just a futuristic novelty. It is the key to unlocking one of the greatest economic booms in modern history.

The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that AI could generate as much as $13 trillion in additional global economic productivity by 2030. That is the equivalent of adding three new economies the size of India’s. Nations that lead in AI development will enjoy a productivity surge, revolutionizing manufacturing, logistics, transportation, health care, finance, and nearly every other sector.

For the United States, this means the potential to revitalize American industry, re-shore critical supply chains, and create millions of high-wage jobs. AI could supercharge small business growth, empower entrepreneurs, and streamline government services. It could give America the edge in military technology, scientific research, and global competitiveness.

In short, it could be the single most important economic engine of the 21st century.

But to get there, America needs to act quickly. Building the infrastructure necessary to power AI’s massive growth, both physically and digitally, will require bold and aggressive leadership. That is exactly what Trump’s new executive orders represent.

Protecting liberty

Artificial intelligence will transform nearly every part of American life — our economy, schools, military, and medical system.

The upside is immense. With the right leadership, AI could spark a new American golden age, driving productivity and innovation beyond anything in living memory. That’s the future President Trump aims to deliver. If his initiative succeeds, it could define America’s 21st-century revival.

But the risks are real.

So far, Congress and most state legislatures have done practically nothing to safeguard Americans’ basic freedoms in the age of AI. No national guardrails exist to stop this technology from being used to suppress free speech, erode religious liberty, or undermine economic independence.

Without decisive action, the very tools that promise prosperity could become the greatest threat to liberty in American history.

That’s why the Trump administration and Congress should tie any pro-AI legislation to strong protections for individual rights. If America plans to lead the world into the AI future, it must lead with freedom front and center.

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Trump’s tariffs hit China where it hurts — more must follow



Donald Trump’s first term reshaped American politics. Against all odds, he upended the establishment’s consensus on trade, immigration, and foreign policy. He redefined the Republican Party’s platform with an "America First" agenda and proved that conservative populism is not only viable but dominant.

But resistance to his presidency was fierce. From day one, entrenched Washington elites and career bureaucrats worked to undermine him. Even within the Republican Party, many clung to outdated, donor-driven priorities instead of embracing the agenda voters demanded.

The United States must fully decouple from China, starting with a ban on Chinese ownership of American land and critical industries.

As a result, key elements of the MAGA movement — securing the border, dismantling the administrative state, and reducing dependence on China — faced obstruction from politicians more concerned with preserving their own power than delivering on their promises.

Better team, clearer vision

A second Trump administration cannot afford to be held back by the same forces. This time, there are no excuses. The lessons have been learned, and the roadblocks are clear. The next four years must be marked by decisive action, free from outdated GOP orthodoxy and bureaucratic sabotage. Fortunately, the Trump White House now has a team fully aligned with this vision.

To make any of the proposed changes meaningful, we must address the cultural decay that has worsened over the last four years — and that the GOP’s inaction allowed to fester for much longer. Cultural battles are just as important, if not more so, than economic or foreign policy. In his first term, President Trump reshaped the judiciary, defended religious liberty, and resisted the left’s radical cultural agenda. But the left’s extremism has only intensified — targeting children with gender ideology, undermining women’s sports, and weaponizing the legal system against conservatives.

This time, we must go further: defunding left-wing indoctrination in schools, banning irreversible gender-altering procedures on minors, and enshrining parental rights in law. Thankfully, President Trump has already signed executive orders banning biological males from competing in women’s sports and protecting children from the transgender medical industry, taking key steps to dismantle the radical left’s agenda for good.

We must overhaul the federal government to serve the people — not leftist NGOs and special interests that thrive on taxpayer-funded slush funds. One of the greatest threats to the nation comes from the unelected ruling class in Washington. To counter this, the Trump administration launched the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending. This initiative is streamlining operations, cutting bureaucracy, and ensuring taxpayer dollars are used effectively.

Tackling China

With strong leadership and a clear path to a revitalized America, we must also use the new MAGA consensus to address the greatest external threat to U.S. prosperity: China.

For decades, the political class sold out American workers, offshoring jobs and manufacturing in pursuit of cheap labor and corporate profits. Trump’s first term reversed this trend by renegotiating trade deals and imposing tariffs that revitalized American industry.

But the job isn’t finished. The United States must fully decouple from China, starting with a ban on Chinese ownership of American land and critical industries. Trump’s tariff proposals mark an important first step, but this moment demands bold action. A pollution tariff would be a powerful tool, forcing China to pay for its lower environmental standards while leveling the playing field for American manufacturers.

In 2020, then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer proposed to the World Trade Organization that failing to enforce minimum environmental standards should qualify as an “actionable subsidy,” allowing the U.S. to counter it with tariffs. Now, freed from officials who prioritized cheap Chinese imports over American workers and environmental concerns, the United States must ensure that domestic manufacturing and production take precedence over globalist interests.

Momentum for this shift is already growing. Lighthizer’s successor, Jamieson Greer, recently observed, “There’s an unlevel playing field, and I think other countries take advantage of a total lack of environmental regulation. ... How do we actually address that issue? I think we do have to think of creative notions on how to do it.”

As Lighthizer’s former chief of staff, Greer understands the challenge and is well-positioned to take real action against China’s cheating this time around.

Global elites are content to let America decline, effectively handing the future to Communist China. But with strong leadership, this century can and will belong to the United States. A second Trump term is the best — perhaps the only — opportunity to fully implement the "America First" agenda and secure American dominance for generations.

No more half measures. No more bureaucratic sabotage. No more pandering to the old GOP establishment. A second Trump administration must act boldly, decisively, and relentlessly to make America great again. The stakes are too high for anything less.

Trump EPA going on deregulation spree that's already hurting climate alarmists' feelings



The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it is planning to undertake a sweeping series of deregulatory actions in accordance with President Donald Trump's executive orders and campaign promises.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin identified dozens of Obama and Biden-era regulations that his agency will repeal, stating, "We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S., and more."

In addition to unchaining industry and eliminating some of the bureaucratic red tape that drove up living costs, the agency appears keen to reclaim ground lost to climate alarmists over the past two decades, effectively eliminating the EPA's authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

'This EPA is planning to take a wrecking ball to environmental law.'

The agency deregulation push includes plans to:

  • unwind numerous regulations on power plants, the oil and gas industry, and coal-fired power;
  • revise limits, guidelines, and standards for the steam electric power-generating industry;
  • reconsider various industrial regulations concerning air standards;
  • unwind the mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program that requires big emitters to report their emissions annually for publication;
  • reconsider the Risk Management Program rule that purportedly improves chemical accident prevention at facilities that use extremely hazardous substances;
  • unwind the vehicle regulations "that provided the foundation for the Biden-Harris electric vehicle mandate";
  • reconsider the Obama EPA's 2009 Endangerment Finding and all subsequent actions that rely on its assertion that the combined emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride from motorized vehicles "threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations" — a claim Zeldin said is "considered the Holy Grail of the climate change religion";
  • eliminate the remaining DEI initiatives at the agency;
  • ensure the death of the Biden administration's controversial "Good Neighbor Plan," which tried to force so-called "upwind" states to curb air pollution impacting "downwind" states — a plan whose standards the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June were likely to cause "irreparable harm" to nearly half the states in the union; and
  • utilize "enforcement discretion to further North Carolina’s recovery from Hurricane Helene."

The EPA suggested that these and other deregulatory actions could "roll back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden 'taxes' on U.S. families" as well as create jobs.

Climate alarmists are up in arms over the announcement.

Jason Rylander, legal director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity, told NPR, "This EPA is planning to take a wrecking ball to environmental law as we know it."

"The intent appears to be to neuter EPA's ability to address climate change and to limit air pollution that affects public health," added Rylander.

Amanda Leland, executive director of the leftist international Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement, "EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin today announced plans for the greatest increase in pollution in decades. The result will be more toxic chemicals, more cancers, more asthma attacks, and more dangers for pregnant women and their children. Rather than helping our economy, it will create chaos."

The New York Times indicated that Gina McCarthy, an EPA administrator in the Obama administration, is sad to see some of her handiwork undone, calling it "the most disastrous day in EPA history."

"Rolling these rules back is not just a disgrace, it's a threat to all of us," said McCarthy, who also served as former President Joe Biden's national climate adviser. "The agency has fully abdicated its mission to protect Americans' health and well being."

Democratic lawmakers have similarly denounced the EPA's deregulatory plans.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) stated, "EPA's attacks today on clean air, clean water, and affordable energy are done for the planet's biggest polluters. Americans will pay dearly — with their health and with their wallets.

"This sellout has a long road ahead of it through the Administrative Procedures Act, which we will fight every step of the way," added Whitehouse.

Republicans and others long critical of the burdens of over-regulation celebrated the EPA plan.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) called it a "historic move that will bring much-needed relief to Montanans."

West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R), chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is apparently thrilled that the EPA is "taking steps towards eliminating job-killing regulations that hamper energy production and harm workers and consumers across our country."

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