Also on today’s menu:
Safer Nuclear Power
‘Crying Nazi’ Liable In Charlottesville Rally
In the film The Graduate, when Benjamin Braddock’s father throws a cocktail party in celebration of his graduation from college, one of his father’s friends famously gives Dustin Hoffman’s character some business advice: “One word: plastics.”
The business of plastics and petrochemicals indeed has taken off, leading to a global crisis of plastics waste. The industry is welcoming the $350 million included in the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill President Joe Biden signed into law on Nov. 15 to promote recycling and improve solid waste management, but the spending will not go far.
Environmental advocates are rallying around a stricter Break Free From Plastics Act, first introduced in 2020, which would require producers of packaging, containers, and food-service products to design, manage, and finance waste and recycling programs; establish a national bottle bill; ban single-use plastic products that are not recyclable and ban or put fees on plastic carryout bags at stores; establish minimum recycled content requirements for plastic products such as beverage containers and packaging; and halt the permitting of new and expanded plastic production facilities.
Safer Nuclear Power
The federal Energy Department already had $160 million earmarked to help fund X-energy, a Maryland-based company looking to build four small nuclear reactors near Richland, Washington, that would use billiard ball-sized “pebbles” packed full of uranium fuel, as a safer, more flexible energy source. The new infrastructure bill now will cover almost half the projected $2.2 billion cost of the project.
Many Democrats eager to make progress in dealing with climate change have joined with Republicans to support nuclear development. X-energy is one of three companies with ties to the Pacific Northwest that have received federal funds. X-energy, along with Bellevue-based TerraPower, founded by Bill Gates, and Portland-based NuScale, expect the reactors to be able to ramp up and down their electrical output much more rapidly than large reactors, helping to keep electrical grids in balance as more wind and solar power comes online.
Skeptics say the next-generation projects face big challenges in producing competitively priced power without compromising safety and security, and in a timeframe soon enough to help reduce carbon emissions by mid-century.
‘Crying Nazi’ Liable In Charlottesville Rally
Christopher Cantwell of Keene, nicknamed the “Crying Nazi,” has been found “liable” and faces $500,000 in damages for his role in organizing the Unite the Right rally on the weekend of August 11-12, 2017, in which white supremacists and neo-nazis from across the country committed acts of violence, with James Alex Fields Jr. driving his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer. (Fields pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence.)
Cantwell, 40, got the nickname of the “Crying Nazi” after recording a tearful video upon hearing that he was wanted for arrest after pepper-spraying protesters at the University of Virginia during the rally.
Cantwell had moved to Keene as part of the Free State Project, and was a member of the Free Keene group until it distanced itself from Cantwell because of his racist comments and promotion of violence. As host of a white supremacist internet radio show, Radical Agenda, he clashed with the Bowl Patrol, another hate group, and was convicted of threatening members of that group. He is appealing that conviction.
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