Guests: Gar Alperovitz and Bryan Welch
Bryan Welch is the publisher of the highly successful Mother Earth News, Utne Reader and other publications, and one of the nation’s leading thinkers on what some have dubbed the "new capitalism." His vision of a more just and sustainable world proposes a capitalism that distributes value according to the durability, provenance and sustainability of products -- by paying attention to every consequence of a company’s operation.
Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative. Among his most recent books are America Beyond Capitalism and (with Lew Daly) Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back. He believes -- as conveyed by the title of one of his books -- that we need to move beyond capitalism, in order to pave the way to a vibrant democracy with a sustainable economy that can satisfy human needs -- not least of which is the need to control one’s work and life.
This week on Political Analysis:
Guest: Richard Littlemore, co-editor of DeSmogBlog
This week, Political Analysis host Sandy LeonVest commemorates the one-year anniversary of the nuclear meltdown at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, opening the show with newly released audio clips from Scientific American. The clips reveal a chilling sequence of events and interactions that took place between NRC officials and other nuclear principals, as they tried desperately to comprehend what was happening during the first week of the crisis. The show also features SLV's commentary and audio clips of a press conference held earlier this month to examine what are now being called “criminal errors” made by TEPCO officials at the time of the Fukushima meltdown. The conference, lead by Dr. Eiichi Yamaguchi, chairman of a grass-roots investigatory committee known as the Fukushima Project, was held to mark the one year anniversary of the March 11 nuclear disaster.
As President Obama continues to hammer on natural gas as a "bridge fuel" (to a "renewable future"), Political Analysis host Sandy LeonVest features a conversation on the subject of "safe hydrofracking." Daniel J. Weiss, of the Center for American Progress argues that hydraulic fracturing can be made safe with proper regulations in place, while Adrienne Esposito of New York's Citizens Campaign for the Environment, believes the process is inherently dangerous. She endorses the "precautionary principle" as the only reasonable response to the current push for increased nat gas drilling in the US.