There’s something in the air, can you feel it? Suddenly this country has awakened to an issue long buried as a forgotten environmental cause no longer worthy of much attention.

The anti-nuclear movement had gone out of fashion, imagine, when years ago it was all the rage. But you know, like all fashion, what was old is new again… what goes around comes around. Just like a style long worn out gathering dust in your closet, suddenly you want to shake off the cobwebs and wear it anew, looking as fresh as the day you bought it.

What happened was easy to predict for those with an ear to the ground and their eyes on the ball… The anti-nuclear movement started the environmental movement. There wouldn’t have been a need for grassroots renegades in the 60’s to start installing solar power and wind turbines, had it not been to “fight the power” embodied by the nuclear power industry. Climate change came much later, we all got side tracked.

In America there’s 104 civilian nuclear reactors in operation, usually two or three to a nuclear power plant. They’re all past their due date, built in the 60’s and 70’s, half of them leaking radioactivity. The task of decommissioning them, shutting them down, is so expensive, so daunting, it’s been put off, irresponsibly, by a governing authority totally bought and paid for by its own industry. It’s called the NRC, it stands for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The nuclear industry monitors itself, it has no other overseeing body, no independent safety assessors.

But now the nuclear power industry is broke, because it’s so costly to run, and it only does so because of the immense subsidies given to them, including the billions it costs each time there’s an accident, like when two Entergy plants were flooded during Katrina. So Obama, under pressure from Exelon, the Illinois-based utility which donated heavily to his campaign, wants to write the nuclear power industry a bail-out check for $58 billion dollars in loan guarantees to build new plants, when we should be using that money to train engineers to safely close down old plants before it’s too late.

It’s now cheaper to produce electricity from solar and wind when you take into account the long term environmental costs of nuclear power, and you don’t have to pawn off a ten thousand years legacy of radioactive waste on future generations. That’s the problem we’re faced with today, a problem much more pressing than climate change, down played by everyone involved in a cover up worse than anything experienced with banking scandals.

This week, the Vermont legislature voted 26 to 4 to shut down their nuclear power plant. They were the only state in the Union with authority superceding the NRC. A major victory for the anti-nuclear movement, which has witnessed the NRC rubber stamping new licenses for old reactors all over the country, despite public outcry around hosting communities. The Vermont vote has turned the tide, because it showed the media, that given the choice, a majority in this country would rather not go down the path of nuclear power anymore, because it’s a dirty, unnecessary risk.

In addition to solar and wind, the introduction of super efficient lighting, especially light emitting diodes (LEDs), is reducing electrical consumption in areas where energy saving programs have been put in place like New York and California. Fashion is rising to the occasion. During fashion week, Eco-Chick reports that designers like Gary Harvey have started to incorporate anti-nuclear themes and slogans into their clothing. We need more… we need cool t-shirts and jackets to put the message out there on the streets!

It’s no secret that when I’m not blogging about fashion or electric cars, I also run an anti-nuclear direct action group called Rock The Reactors which has focused primarily on the Indian Point nuclear power plant just 30 miles North of Manhattan on the shores of the Hudson River. Green fashion model May Lindstrom, also known as Betcee, lent her striking image early in her career to the first stories published about our work. In the last 4 years Rock The Reactors has been organizing events, it researched, wrote and filed with Green Nuclear Butterfly and other IPSEC members, over 158 petitions against the relicensing of the plant.

On July 14, Rock The Reactors will host a “Celebration of Green Lighting” at one of New York’s most popular clubs, the Hiro Ballroom. We’re asking designers to come up with amazing things models can wear and photographers can shoot on that evening. You have six months to prepare, make extraordinary things. Anti-nuclear is back in vogue… imagine… high tech and green gadgets have taken the place of boiling water with the most toxic man-made substance on Earth. Isn’t that a no brainer, a win-win situation? Except as usual, the folks in power don’t know any better yet, so fashion needs to show them.

(Photo Credit: Brian Clark Howard)