Dear Santa Fe: Lest we forget, there is a hazardous waste dump called Area G just a few miles from the Plaza.

This marks the second week of wrangling among activists, Los Alamos National Lab (which owns the waste pit) and the New Mexico Environment Department on LANL’s proposal to close Area G; what happens to the radioactive material there will depend not only on the determination of activists like Joni Arends of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (above, right) but also on LANL’s own future—which in turn depends on a slew of high-level nuke policy talks. After the jump, a round-up of recent nuclear developments and their implications for New Mexico. Continue reading »

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu looks a little dazed.

Today, the Department of Defense released its Nuclear Posture Review, a “roadmap for implementing President Obama’s agenda” on nuclear weapons—a somewhat muddled one, as evidenced in the review:

This NPR places the prevention of nuclear terrorism and proliferation at the top of the US policy agenda…At the same time…the US must sustain a safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal.

Speculations abound on what the NPR really means—and in New Mexico, its implications are sure to be magnified. Read what some nuke activists are saying after the jump. Continue reading »

It's not that they aren't pretty...

President Obama’s 2011 budget eliminates funding for manned lunar expeditions and rolls back tax breaks for fossil-fuel companies and families bringing in more than $250,000 a year—all of which lends credence to what he told the New York Times this morning:

“We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences, as if waste doesn’t matter, as if the hard-earned tax money of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money.”

Defense, Medicaid/Medicare, Social Security and education are held harmless from such belt-tightening, though, and the US nuclear weapons program stands out among those agencies slated to get increases—here, to the tune of $5 billion more over the next five years. Los Alamos National Laboratory alone gets a 21.6 percent (from $1.8 to $2.2 billion) budget increase for 2011.

Read about what this means for New Mexico after the jump. Continue reading »

Activists at Copenhagen. (Photo courtesy Joan Brown)

This ain’t no Climategate: SFR’s been getting its own totally legit e-mails from New Mexicans at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP-15, for short) that began Mon., Dec. 7 and will wrap up with President Obama’s visit this Friday. I’ve posted here what didn’t fit in this week’s paper version: insights, observations, photos and general musings from our friends in Denmark, starting with Ken Hughes, the conservation chair of the Sierra Club’s Rio Grande Chapter. (Minor typos have been corrected for readability).

“This place is more frenetic than Zozobra,” Hughes wrote on Dec. 9, his first day at the conference. After the shock wore off, he passed on some more substantive reflections; read his and others after the jump. Continue reading »

Unhappy with “New Boss” Obama’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan? Or maybe considering a career in the military, since that job search isn’t panning out so well?

You might want to check out this documentary screening at the CCA tomorrow night, hosted by local chapters of Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War. The movie is called “The Good Solider,” and it’s supposed to be a powerful account of several service members’ political awakenings.

After Before the movie, the audience will be able to chat with the peace group members and, via Skype, the filmmakers. Here’s the deets:

The Good Soldier

7:30 pm
Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009

Center for Contemporary Arts
1050 Old Pecos Trail
982-1338

Click the picture to play the trailer.