ANNOUNCING:
20th Anniversary Edition
of INOCHI’s Safe Energy Handbook
to be released in 2015!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
We are writing to announce the upcoming publication of the 20th Anniversary Edition of INOCHI’s Safe Energy Handbook in Spring 2015 and to request your donations to meet our next fundraising goal.
In 1995, we published our first edition – a small handbook containing the whole story — from the perils of nuclear power and weapons to the promise of safe sustainable energy and non-violent resolution of conflict. We never imagined that our little 36-page booklet with straightforward writing, basic facts, and beautiful drawings by Mayumi Oda would travel to every corner of the world. In fact, over 20,000 printed copies in 14 languages — including Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish, French, German, Hungarian, Portuguese, Turkish, Finnish and Dutch have been distributed globally. And, 30,000 more copies were downloaded from the Internet! Colleagues told us it was one of the most concise and useful resources they had ever received.
Last year, we went back into action to revise, update and publish the Safe Energy Handbook, 20th Anniversary Edition: Towards a Solar Economy Future. Our INOCHI team all agreed that we had to respond to growing global concern about the March 2011 Fukushima-Daichi disaster in Japan as well as the need to shut down other dangerous nuclear reactors (like Diablo Canyon in California). We also wanted to make the case that the urgently needed response to Climate Disruption must be a Safe Energy response.
This moment in time is well represented by the Japanese word “ki ki”– a combination of two characters — “danger” and “opportunity.” We see it as an opportunity to build the Solar Economy Future we all want. We believe as we did in 1995, that a world without fossil fuels or nuclear power, and where agreements are solved through cooperation rather than conflict is not only desirable, but possible.
We recruited a wonderful “next generation” team of young researchers—Eri Suzuki and Mari Asai from Japan and the US and Nathalie Lowenthal-Savy from California. These three bright young women worked with Claire throughout 2014 to complete the research for this updated and expanded edition. Our research phase was completed in January of 2015 and now, in February and March we are writing and editing to be followed by design and printing (including an online edition). We are especially excited to have a new set of wonderful, original drawings by INOCHI’s co-founder Mayumi Oda, including the “Solar Economy Mandala” on the cover of this letter.
Your help would be so valuable now as we hope to print the English edition for release on Earth Day—22 April 2015. We already have colleagues and friends in place to help with translation for editions in Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, French, Spanish, Dutch and German. We will work with volunteers around the world to translate and locally print as many versions as possible with a special focus on communities that are threatened by unsustainable energy projects.
We will continue to distribute the Handbook around the world throughout 2015 and 2016 to reinforce the urgent need for a Safe Energy transition—towards conservation, energy efficiency, renewables and alternative energy and away from fossil fuels, mega dams and nuclear power. We hope our little book of solutions will be of use to the rising chorus calling for an end to dirty energy. We support keeping oil reserves in the ground, an end to fracking, stopping development of the Alberta Tar Sands, cancelling the construction of the Keystone XL and other pipelines, halting new nuclear power plant construction and closing dangerous plants that are still online.
We would love to raise a final $10,000 in order to complete this next phase of our writing, editing, design, printing and distribution at the largest scale possible. Many of you already helped us fund the initial research phase.
We are indeed grateful for your donations to date and hope that you will join in to bring our Safe Energy Handbook, 20th Anniversary Edition: Towards the Solar Economy — out into the world on Earth Day 2015!
Thank you again so much for your support of and faith in our work.
For a Peaceful Solar Future.
Love, Mayumi, Claire, Kaz, Nathalie, Eri & Mari
Click here to view the Safe Energy Handbook 1997 Edition
(To be completely Revised and Updated in 2015)