No ‘No Nukes’ Rock Concerts Against Biden

The Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Covert, Mich., on June 24, 2010. John Madill/The Herald-Palladium via AP

Commentary

The Biden administration has announced that the Department of Energy will loan $1.5 billion from Inflation Reduction Act monies to reopen the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station on Lake Michigan, an hour’s drive southwest of Grand Rapids, Michigan—the first-ever reversal of the closure of a U.S. nuclear power facility.

The establishment media’s coverage has been ho-hum, but coming from the most left-friendly presidency in history, this is actually a spectacular ideological flip-flop. Remember that in the 1970s and extending into the Reagan era, when trendy scientists were warning about global cooling and nuclear winters, it wasn’t only the bomb that the left was worried about and hated; nuclear anything was verboten because it was the monstrous technological offspring of chauvinist man rather than feminist Mother Nature.

John Hall—who was defeated in 2010 after two terms representing an upstate New York congressional district, and whose 1976 song “Still the One” with the ‘70s group Orleans was used by President George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign until Mr. Hall’s publisher sent a cease-and-desist letter—put it this way in his 1979 song “Power”:

“Just give me the warm power of the sun Give me the steady flow of a waterfall Give me the spirit of living things as they return to clay Just give me the restless power of the wind Give me the comforting glow of a wood fire But please take all your atomic poison power away ... I know that lives are at stake Yours and mine of our descendants in time There’s so much to gain and so much to lose Every one of us has to choose.”

“Power” was the anthem of Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE), founded that year by Mr. Hall, whose voice was one of the most recognizable of the 1970s, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash; and other popular musicians in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. That mishap released radioactivity of about one millirem above background radiation; by comparison, a chest X-ray exposes a patient to about six millirems. The “No Nukes” concerts that they put on at Madison Square Garden that September featured a breakthrough performance by Bruce Springsteen, who turned 30 on the final night, plus Crosby, Stills, and Nash; the Doobie Brothers; and Tom Petty. Jane Fonda of  “The China Syndrome” fame, and Viet Cong infamy, was seen. A rally on the water in lower Manhattan was attended by hundreds of thousands.

There were no two ways of looking at it to these rockers; nuclear power had to go. Go to MUSE’s website today, and you’ll find a clipping from MOJO magazine from several years ago in which a number of them reminisce. Jackson Browne compares the fight against civilian atomic power to the civil rights movement, complains of nuclear waste being dangerous for tens of thousands of years, and recalls deep sea diver and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau warning that nuclear power will “foment a police state.”

According to Mr. Browne, “No Nukes succeeded in that there were no nuclear plants ordered from that point on. We thought we had dealt a serious blow to the nuclear power industry. And the rest of the fight was about shutting the plants down. And it still is. It’s not over.”

Maybe not, but don’t hold your breath waiting for, say, Mr. Springsteen, now 74, headlining any concerts that protest President Joe Biden subjecting Michiganders to new levels of radiation—despite the fact that his “Detroit Medley” featuring “Devil With a Blue Dress,” made famous in the 1960s by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, was the climax of his No Nukes performance. According to MUSE principles, isn’t President Biden bringing the devil back into blue states such as Michigan?

MUSE today touts that “Jackson Browne and Graham Nash—co-founders of the Musicians United for Safe Energy and the famed No Nukes concert in 1979—are among the artists, actors, and advocates who have signed an open letter warning of the dangers of nuclear weapons.” But on nuclear power, MUSE artists’ concerts these days don’t seem to go far beyond inviting activists to set up tables handing out “fact sheets and action guides.”

In 2021, the group was among the signatories of a letter to Congress asking members “to reject all proposals in infrastructure bills that subsidize nuclear energy, and to instead invest in a just and equitable transition to safe, clean renewable energy,” declaring that “nuclear power is too dirty, too dangerous, too expensive, and too slow to solve the climate crisis, and the industry is rooted in environmental injustice and human rights violations,” adding that “bailing out nuclear power plants misdirects resources while perpetuating climate injustice.”

But that is weak tea compared with assembling an all-star lineup to take the stage at Madison Square Garden or on the Washington Mall during an election year and singing to the masses so that they see President Biden as a major part of that environmental injustice. If they truly believe civilian nuclear energy is as dangerous as it was in 1979 and that it is not a legitimate alternative to fossil fuels, why aren’t they busy organizing “No Nukes 2024”?

Apparently, the rock-and-rollers of MUSE, in spite of their many years of cultivating a rebellious image, are either too elderly or too friendly with Democratic Party elites to be “still the ones.” Instead, they obviously were “born to run.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.