AMSTERDAM, June 17, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

Will organize large nuclear-free, carbon-free contingent to Paris climate march in December

Clean energy groups from across the world today launched a new international campaign in preparation for December's COP21 climate summit in Paris, to ensure that climate negotiators will stand up for clean energy, and not to listen to the false promises of the nuclear energy lobby.

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"Under the expiring Kyoto Protocol, nuclear energy is rightly excluded from the possible solutions available to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the nuclear industry, in collaboration with certain nations, is lobbying for their dangerous and polluting technology to be sold as a climate-friendly option during the Climate COP21 this year," explains Peer de Rijk, director of WISE (World Information Service on Energy). "We are calling on 1,000 civil society organisations to join us for a campaign to block the nuclear industry's lobby activities at COP21 and instead ensure the world chooses clean energy; it is the only real climate solution."

"France should shift towards renewable energy," said Charlotte Mijeon of France's Sortir du Nucleaire. "But the government keeps supporting a dirty, expensive, dangerous and declining nuclear industry. We condemn the sponsoring of the COP by polluting companies--and especially by EDF--and will denounce the greenwashing of the nuclear industry in Paris."

"Nuclear power is in no way a climate solution," explained Michael Mariotte, President of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, based in the U.S. "Nuclear power remains dirty, dangerous and expensive; is not carbon-free; and encourages nuclear proliferation.

"Nuclear power manifests a wide range of human rights violations, from the rights to life and health, to disproportionate impacts on indigenous peoples, women, children, and future generations" says Sascha Gabizon of the global Women's network WECF.

"Clean energy is the better way, and it more effectively reduces carbon emissions as well," summed up Peer de Rijk. "That's why we will be in Paris: to ensure that the world does not make the terrible mistake of returning to the failed nuclear path."

As the initial step in the campaign, the organizing groups today launched an international petition to world leaders in support of the nuclear-free, carbon-free path. The petition is available for sign-on here:  

http://www.wiseinternational.org/campaign/sign-petition

SOURCE WISE International