Future Worlds

How well do we understand the differences in the ways people and communities suffer from environmental harm? These differences are called "disparate impacts," and form the basis for understanding how race, class, gender, and age, as well as the rural/urban divide, impact the lives of less powerful communities. This workshop will address problems of environmental injustice in south central Wisconsin, as well as what activists are doing to fix those problems.

One future would continue the present path: a few powerful, nuclear-armed states control the United Nations and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and seek to prevent, by force if necessary, the acquisition of nuclear weapons by new states and by non-state actors including terrorists. Another future is possible: a world in which the rules – including a ban on nuclear weapons – apply to all states, the UN is democratized, reliance on military force is minimized and internationalized, and global law is respected. A model for such a world is found in the program of Global Action to Prevent War.

Technology choices are not politically neutral. The existence of nuclear power and nuclear weapons both manifest and support inequitable and undemocratic economic and political arrangements, making movement towards a more ecologically sustainable world more difficult and increasing the risk of war. Action at the local level can offer insight into the way these immense institutions affect our lives, but the policies we can contest at this level often appear subject to constraints far beyond our reach. This workshop will explore the implications of these tensions for integrating work for disarmament and against nuclear power into broader movements for a democratized and ecologically sustainable economy, with examples from efforts in the San Francisco Bay Area.

To prevent climate change, the United States must phase out fossil fuels and nuclear energy by 2050. We can do this, according to both science and economics--all we need is the political will to make it happen. The Plan: We can eliminate carbon emissions from the US energy system by 2050 without relying on nuclear power, and we have a plan to do it! The Carbon-Free, Nuclear-Free Roadmap for US energy policy shows in detail, step-by-step, how to get from here to the world we want to live in. The Clean Dozen: The 12 most urgent policies to get to a Carbon-Free Nuclear-Free energy system.

Every federal agency that regulates industrial releases or the medical uses of radiation warns that every external or internal radiation exposure, no matter how small, increases one’s risk of cancer. Yet the government's promotion of nuclear power, its use of uranium munitions in war, and its outdated radiation risk standards put the most vulnerable -- women and children-- at ever increasing risk.

PSR Wisconsin has just released a report on the impact of Heat Waves on public health. Cities, due to the “heat island” effect, population density and large numbers of vulnerable people, with bear a tremendous burden over the coming years as heat waves increase due to global warming. The report shows the important responsibilities of city government to mitigate the impact of heat waves (in land use planning, building codes, etc) and in emergency and public health planning. View the report at www.psr.org.

This is one of the major panels of Future Cities 2009. This panel challenges us with the seriousness of the choices we face.