Last week James E. Hansen, one of the nation's leading scientific experts on climate change, publicly released a letter he sent to Jim Rogers, CEO of North Carolina-based Duke Energy. Citing his new study about how climbing atmospheric carbon levels are putting life on earth at risk, Hansen urged Rogers to cancel plans to build new coal-burning power plants in North Carolina and Indiana.

Noting that coal accounts for half of fossil fuel-related carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today, Hansen said it can safely be used to generate power in the coming decades only if the carbon dioxide released is captured and sequestered. Plants under construction that lack this sequestration technology -- including Duke's Cliffside and another company facility planned for Edwardsport, Ind. -- are a "terrible, foreseeable waste of money," charged Hansen, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

He went on to compare the tactics of Big Coal in fighting climate action to those of Big Tobacco after it became clear that smoking caused serious health problems:

Tobacco companies manufactured and magnified public doubt about scientific evidence; they masqueraded PR as news and expert opinion; they emphasized maintaining "balance" in a "controversy," and they supported doctors and scientists wo disputed the evidence, thus proclaiming concern about discovering the truth while actually suppressing it.

Big Tobacco's playbook proved a great "success." Tobacco profits were so great that court settlements could be paid with hardly a blip on stock values. Can it be any wonder that Big Coal and Big Oil have stolen Big Tobacco's playbook?

Hansen invited Rogers to meet with him for a one-day discussion over the next two or three months with top experts on energy efficiency, renewable energy, carbon capture and nuclear power. Rogers accepted -- though he sounds skeptical the two men will find common ground, the Washington Post reports:

...Rogers, who praised Hansen as "an early voice in the wilderness" on climate change, said the scientist's demand reflects a "snap-your-fingers, instant transition of the economy" mind-set.

"My requirement is to balance reliability, affordability and clean energy," Rogers said. "He's apparently focused on the clean perspective."

(Hansen photo, top, courtesy of GISS; Rogers photo from Duke Energy Web site)

Labels: Cliffside, climate, coal, Duke Energy, James Hansen, Jim Rogers

Eight people were arrested yesterday during a protest at the construction site for North Carolina-based Duke Energy's new Cliffside coal-fired power plant west of Charlotte. Two of those arrested were first shocked with Taser guns after locking themselves to bulldozers. The protesters were charged with trespassing and resisting arrest.

The North Carolina protest was one in a series of actions that took place as part of Fossil Fools Day, an international event organized by Rising Tide with help from other groups including the Rainforest Action Network and Earth First!.

"In the face of catastrophic climate change, building a new coal plant is tantamount to signing a death sentence for our generation," said Matt Wallace, a farmer who lives near Duke's plant and one of the protesters who locked himself to a bulldozer.

Avram Friedman is the executive director of the Canary Coalition, one of the North Carolina groups fighting Duke's plant. He said the police arrested the wrong people, since the protesters were trying to prevent a crime. Those who should be arrested are the N.C. Division of Air Quality officials who granted the facility a permit despite the fact that it doesn't meet federal standards for mercury emissions and Duke Energy officials who started construction before the permit appeals process was over, he said:

They should be arrested for defying scientific evidence, knowingly constructing a powerful instrument that will result in the death, disease and suffering of tens of thousands of people from heart and lung diseases, emphysema, asthma, chronic bronchitis. They should be arrested for contaminating water ways with toxic mercury resulting in neurological damage to children, causing autism and learning disablilities.

Other actions took place yesterday in New York, Boston, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Australia.

(Photo of Cliffside protest by Liz Veazey)

Labels: center for climate strategies, Cliffside, coal, direct action, Duke Energy, Earth First, Fossil Fools Day, global warming, north carolina, protests

Two environmental organizations went to court today in the latest attempt to stop Duke Energy from building a controversial new coal-burning power plant in western North Carolina. In separate lawsuits, Appalachian Voices and the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network are challenging the state's decision to issue the plant an air pollution permit.

Appalachian Voices' novel legal approach is based on a provision of the Clean Air Act that requires regulators to consider the environmental impacts associated with the entire cycle of coal-generated electricity, which in Duke Energy's case includes mining coal through mountaintop removal. Duke is the nation's third-largest consumer of coal mined via that method, in which explosives are used to blast off mountaintops, with the resulting debris dumped into adjacent river valleys. The practice has already destroyed more than 470 mountain peaks, buried or polluted more than 1,200 miles of headwater streams, and wiped out some 800 square miles of diverse ecosystems in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee.

"Giving them a permit for a new coal plant is almost guaranteed to mean devastating impacts in terms of global warming pollution and mountaintop removal mining," says Appalachian Voices Executive Director Mary Anne Hitt.

Earlier this month, Appalachian Voices along with the N.C.-based Canary Coalition filed another federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy and the Treasury Department that seeks to end taxpayer subsidies for the building of power plants that burn coal mined by mountaintop removal.

Other than West Virginia, North Carolina is the largest consumer of coal mined by mountaintop removal, followed by Kentucky, Georgia, and Virginia. To find out whether your local power plant relies on coal mined this way, click here.

The other suit filed today by N.C. WARN charges that Duke's proposed Cliffside plant would increase emissions of greenhouse gases at the same time the Southeast already has a glut of electricity. It also claims North Carolina violated federal law by failing to require state-of-the-art controls on mercury and other toxic pollutants from the facility, where construction is already underway.

(Photo of mountaintop removal operation courtesy of Appalachian Voices. For more images from the group, click here.)

Labels: Appalachian Voices, Cliffside, coal, Duke Energy, mountaintop removal, NCWARN