We know that all of you are facing multiple challenges in this universally stressful period converging crises. We deeply appreciate your support for our past work. If you can manage it, we hope you will continue to support our on-going work in the coming year.

Reading The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking by Roman Krznaric reminded us of the attitude that has actually informed all our work from the very beginning. [On a personal note, we are posting this on Mary Beth and Jim's 38th anniversary of working together.]

For nearly 4 decades – first as the Nuclear Sovereignty Project, then as Options 2000 Productions, then, since 2000, as the Ecological Options Network - our public education, newsletters, organizing, reporting and media production work focused on some of the key issues of our time. We are proud to have made our contributions. The following are a few of our over 750 videos on many issues that you can find on our popular YouTube channel, which has 7,720 subscribers and millions of views.

Palau: Networking with many others around the world, we helped prevent a U.S. nuclear submarine base to be built in the environmentally sensitive island nation of Palau. Palau’s waters in Micronesia are home to the most varieties of underwater species in the world.  We produced the award-winning Strategic Trust: The Making of Nuclear Free Palau that was broadcast internationally, nationally on PBS screened in Congress and the UN, and used by activists, in Parliaments and libraries worldwide. For ten years we gathered information and shared it at the UN Trusteeship Council and testified in Congressional hearings to protect Palauan’s rights. A decade later we produced the CPB-funded sequel, Islands on the Edge of Time that was nationally toured by the Margaret Mead Film Festival.

Ward Valley, CA and Sierra Blanca: We played a key role in catalyzing opposition to the proposed radioactive waste dump in Ward Valley located in the Mojave desert on land sacred to many indigenous tribes. We also produced a short doc, CHOICEPOINT. After ten years of effort by a wide coalition, the plan was stopped. The dump would have infiltrated the water supply of millions. We also produced PELIGRO - Nuclear Showdown on the Rio Grand, which was screened at the Dallas Film Festival about the proposed radioactive waste dump in Sierra Blanca, Texas. That proposed radioactive waste dump was also stopped.

Nuclear Weapons Free Zones: We organized locally in the San Francisco Bay area, nationally and internationally to establish Nuclear Weapons Free Zones. We produced, with David Brown, Free Zone, Democracy Meets the Nuclear Threat. MB served as a Marin County Peace commissioner.

Community Choice Aggregation: We produced videos used statewide and organized with others in Marin County to establish the first statewide CCA, Marin Clean Energy in 2010. We were motivated to develop CCA's to gain community control over climate goals, clean energy at affordable rates, local economic development and green jobs, transparency and accountability. Now Community Choice energy programs provide about 25 percent of the load in the territories of the state’s three main investor-owned utilities (Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Edison). There are currently 21 community choice energy providers successfully serving more than 10 million customers in 170+ cities and counties throughout California!

San Onofre: We helped to catalyze statewide pressure to shut the damaged nuclear reactors at San Onofre located in San Clemente, CA. San Onofre was indeed shutdown by tremendous activist effort. We documented the long process and are now finishing the resulting film, The Shutdown Legacy that tells the story of local residents dealing with the sobering conundrum of managing the eternal threat of lethal radioactive waste remaining at the nuclear facility. Incredibly at San Onofre, the tons of intensely radioactive waste are being stored in damaged thin stainless steel canisters on the beach in a historic tsunami and flood zone surrounded by earthquake faults. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says there is no credible scenario that the 5/8” thin corroding stainless steel canisters would ever leak!

Wireless EMF/RF Issues: We helped catalyze awareness of the health and democracy risks and resistance to proliferating microwave cell towers with our award-winning 2000 production Public Exposure: DNA, Democracy and the Wireless Revolution, co-produced with Libby Kelley. It was the first documentary on this now ubiquitous issue and has had hundreds of thousands of views.

‘Smart’ Meters: We helped catalyze resistance to the roll out of ‘smart’ meters, organizing county-wide. We also worked as Public Intervenors at the California Public Utilities Commission to force the utilities to allow opt outs of their harmful technology. This set the precedent nationally and internationally.

5G Resistance: We helped catalyze push-back to the rollout of 5G, worked to enact restrictive county and city ordinances and battled to stop the California legislature from enacting SB649 that would have removed any local jurisdiction over antenna placement. Then Governor Brown vetoed the bill. Resistance continues against this rollout and the launch of nearly 100,000 disastrous 5G satellites in low earth orbit that will blanket the planet and all its creatures and systems with man-made RF radiation. Click here for more info.

Election Integrity : Working with committed allies, we investigated how our elections have been and are being rigged. In collaboration with others, we organized and produced many videos on the issue, including Help America Vote on Paper! and The Price of Liberty. We linked with other democracy activists nationally and internationally. Our documentary A Little Light’ll Do Ya, was translated into Urdu and nationally broadcast in Pakistan the same year Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated while campaigning. On two occasions, we were honored to serve as official International Election Observers and produced video documentation of elections in the Philippines.

Pesticide Spray Ban: We organized with others and produced videos to block the planned aerial pesticide spraying of the entire Bay area. We were told later by an involved law professor that we were the only area worldwide to have been able to stop overhead urban spraying.

This year our main focus has been on completion of the feature documentary we have been working on since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, now titled The SHUTDOWN LEGACY, with a release date in 2021. 

We anticipate that completion, release, distribution and promotion of our SHUTDOWN LEGACY feature documentary will be the primary focus of our energy and resources in the coming year.

We are hugely encouraged by the fact that the SHUTDOWN LEGACY Team has now expanded to include – in addition to Executive Producer Mary Beth Brangan, Co-Director/Editor Morgan Peterson and Co-Director James Heddle:

Animation and Graphic Design – Andres Gomez Isaza, award winning animator LaFinka,tv and Keke Robertson, based in Melbourne, Australia

Composer and Audio Artist - Christopher Hedge, Award winning original music composer for film and television The Magic Shop Studio and

Consulting Producer - Steve Ladd, website developer and expert on the complex, ever-changing world of funding, media distribution and online marketing Ladd Media,

Social Media Outreach - Karen Topakian, life-long friend, former Greenpeace Board Chair, and now communications consultant Topakian Communications,

Archival Rights & Stock Footage Researcher - Blanche Chase archival film and photo researcher and an experienced clearance coordinator

Web Master Dennis Rivers

Together, this impressive SHUTDOWN LEGACY Team of talented and accomplished professionals will help see this important project through the many technical - and expensive - final stages and challenges of the post-production and distribution process, including: image and audio enhancement; original scoring and recording; animation and graphic design; mastering and duplication for distribution; as well as our coming advertising, promotion and impact campaign.

Despite the many competing existential challenges now facing our species, we continue to believe that the responsible, long-term, trans-generational management and stewardship of radioactive waste management and storage of the massive, lethal radioactive waste generated by the Atomic Age must continue to be an overriding commitment for us all, if we aspire to be “Good Ancestors.”