Earthrise Accord Envisions
Earthrise Accord is a nuclear energy advocacy, climate solution, and climate justice organization dedicated to exposing fossil fuel disinformation about anthropogenic climate change and nuclear energy, advocating nuclear realism and other transition imperatives, and holding fossil fuel actors—fossil fuel companies and petrostates—accountable for environmental crimes, past and present.
Earthrise Accord recognizes nuclear power as essential for a realistic and timely decarbonization strategy—highlighting its unmatched potential as a safe, clean, and scalable replacement for fossil fuels. This is clearly evidenced by France's post-1973 oil embargo nuclear program, which has provided the country with over 70% of its electricity for decades while preventing billions of tons of pollutants from entering Earth’s atmosphere through the safest energy deployment in history at that scale.
Our name invokes the profound global unity captured in the iconic 1968 Earthrise photograph taken by Apollo 8 astronaut William "Bill" Anders. That image helped spark global environmental awareness by portraying Earth as a shared, fragile, and finite home—a “spaceship Earth” that demands collective responsibility: One Ship, One Crew, One Future.
Bill Anders' legacy extends beyond Earthrise: he was a nuclear engineer and the first Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He led General Electric’s nuclear division and later helmed General Dynamics as it expanded the U.S. Navy’s nuclear fleet. For decades, he championed the immense promise of nuclear power—while fossil fuel-funded disinformation, including misinformation disseminated by some legacy environmentalist groups, undermined that promise in the United States and abroad. France chose the clean energy route despite this onslaught, demonstrating that a different path was possible.
Earthrise Accord sees Nuclear Realism and Climate Justice as two of the central transition imperatives required for a viable and just future. Nuclear is the only firm energy source capable of complementing renewables at scale to fully displace fossil fuels. At the same time, the fight for climate justice must confront fossil fuel companies and petro states directly. The global addiction to fossil fuel combustion—and the profits it generates—will not end voluntarily.
Fossil fuel actors—Big Oil, petrostates from Saudi Arabia to Norway, and especially the United States, which combines being the most extractive petrostate with being the most criminal emitter—do not change unless compelled.
Earthrise Accord aims to support rigorous academic research, bold policy advocacy, and high-impact strategic litigation. Through partnerships with leading universities, it seeks to establish interdisciplinary programs and centers focused on energy policy, environmental law, and climate accountability—training the next generation of policymakers in evidence-based clean energy transition imperatives, and preparing climate justice advocates committed to securing justice for the entire world—for all members of spaceship Earth’s crew.
Founded by Eric Anders to honor his father’s dual legacies—one-ship, one-crew, one-future environmental consciousness and principled nuclear realism—Earthrise Accord fights to ensure that Earth remains habitable, just, and thriving for generations to come.
William "Bill" Anders
1933-2024
Earthrise
Apollo VIII, 1968
Climate Justice and Nuclear Realism
Climate justice demands more than promises—it requires accountability for the historical and ongoing harms caused by fossil fuel corporations and the governments that have enabled them.
Earthrise Accord connects climate justice to nuclear realism, recognizing nuclear power as the only carbon-free technology capable of replacing fossil fuels at the scale necessary for effective global decarbonization.
For over fifty years, the fossil fuel industry has conducted a dual disinformation campaign: one denying climate science, the other attacking nuclear energy. These efforts, often backed by fossil-funded environmental groups, suppressed the development of nuclear power even as climate risks escalated. While California v. Big Oil targets denialism, Earthrise Accord extends that accountability to include the decades-long sabotage of nuclear power—an omission that has cost the planet immeasurably.
The consequences of these disinformation campaigns have fallen disproportionately on Indigenous, frontline, and Global South communities—those least responsible for emissions yet most vulnerable to their effects. For Earthrise Accord, climate justice means confronting this layered harm and delivering reparations not through vague financial mechanisms but through clean, sovereign energy infrastructure.
This is the foundation of our Clean Energy Reparations initiative: replacing fossil-fueled dependency with nuclear-supported sovereignty. We ask: how do you repair the Niger Delta without incentivizing more oil extraction? What reparations are owed to the Maldives before rising seas erase it from the map? And why aren’t the perpetrators already funding AI-assisted geoengineering, like cloud seeding, to slow or even stop the rising seas?
True climate justice means forcing those most responsible—Big Oil, petrostates, and criminal emitters—to stop, pay, and repair. But it also means being honest about the solutions already available to us. We cannot afford the magical thinking of “renewables only” ideologies that ignore physical and geopolitical realities, nor can we allow narrow national interests or sovereignty claims to override the survival of the planet. Justice without realism is rhetoric. Justice without action is complicity.
William & Valerie Anders
In 1968, Apollo VIII astronaut William Anders captured the most well-known photograph of all time: "Earthrise." This powerful image made our planet's isolation, finitude, and fragility undeniable. Earthrise became an icon of the then-burgeoning environmental movement.
Anders was deeply moved by what he saw and captured as he circled the moon. He was an environmentalist who spent his honeymoon in Yosemite Valley with Valerie Anders who would be his wife for the next fifty-nine years. Bill and Valerie would later become major donors to Yosemite National Institutes (YNI) where Valerie spent many years on the board.
Prior to Apollo VIII, Bill Anders graduated from the Air Force Institute of Technology as a nuclear engineer. After Apollo VIII, Bill's career trajectory saw him serving as the first chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where he was instrumental in shaping policies that governed the safe use of nuclear energy.
Following his work on the new NRC, Bill furthered his impact on the field of nuclear technology as the director of the nuclear division at General Electric, guiding efforts to harness nuclear power in more efficient and environmentally responsible ways. He would later be instrumental to the U.S.'s development of nuclear submarines as the CEO of General Dynamics, the parent company of Electric Boat.
Bill believed his environmentalism and passion for the advancement of nuclear energy were harmonious since he believed this clean and abundant energy source would be an essential component of any sustainable energy policy.
Bill Anders died in the summer of 2024. He left Valerie the resources to establish the Earth Rise Foundation in honor of his passion for preserving the environment and his lifelong commitment to exploring clean energy frontiers in order to preserve the fragile and finite home planet he captured so memorably in "Earthrise."