"In this budget, we will end education programs that don’t work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don’t need them. We’ll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use."
-President Barack H. Obama,
State of the Union Address, 2009
Mr. President,
I am really excited to hear you say this, especially the last part. Students in the UC System have been questioning our school's connection to the Department of Energy and Bechtel, not because they are opposed to alternative energies, but because they are opposed to weapons research.
Though there are UC scientists who are researching alternative energies, Ninety five percent of research funding goes into designing nuclear weapons. The UC System has designed every nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal.
I am glad that you picked a UC scientist to head your Department of Energy, but funds must be diverted from nuclear weapons research to alternative energy research; this includes solar, wind, algae fuels, and nuclear energy technologies.
In Lawrence Livermore's press release about Chu, they referred to the research lab as, "a national security laboratory, with a mission to ensure national security and apply science and technology to the important issues of our time." I had a chance to speak with your CIA pick Leon Panetta, and he said that the issue of Climate Change is a national security issue and that we need to become energy independent.
If we divert the money away from nuclear weapons research, imagine how it will effect the education budget, how it will effect the energy budget, how it will effect our diplomatic efforts. UC scientists are essential, but we must give them to tools necessary to forge our energy future, not to design outdated weapons.
Please, Mr. President. Now is the time to put our resources into combating global warming, because we will pay more in the future and increase the deficit if we do not solve the Climate Crisis. I am glad that you are pouring money into research, but you must cut money from "Cold War-era weapons systems" to make the technology of the future possible.
Thank you.