fyi, regina you may want to fwd to the FOM list if it has not shown up there yet. best, paul

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alice.McKeown@sierraclub.org <Alice.McKeown@sierraclub.org>
Date: Oct 30, 2007 1:20 PM
Subject: Charlotte Obs: Demand for coal destroys mountaintops-- MTR/ GW/ new coal plants

I wanted to make sure everyone saw this opinion piece out of NC-- it links
MTR, GW, new coal-fired power plants, and corporate accountability all
together.  AND it ends with a nod to efficiency.

It's from our friends at App. Voices.

________________________________
Alice McKeown
Sierra Club
Clean Air & Coal Campaigns
tel:  202.675.6271
fax: 202.547.6009



Demand for coal destroys mountaintops
BofA and Duke Energy contribute to practice that hurts environment

HARVARD AYERS
Special to the Observer
Charlotte Observer
http://www.charlotte.com/409/story/336472.html

This week's protest of Charlotte-based Bank of America's practice of
financing companies who strip mine coal in West Virginia, Kentucky and
Virginia raised concerns that should be of interest to all North
Carolinians. The Rainforest Action Network hung a huge banner off a crane
in
front of the Bank of America building that dominates the skyline of
downtown
Charlotte. The sign read, "Financing Coal, Killing Communities."

Many of us are not aware of all the mining practices of coal giants such as
Arch Coal and Massey Energy. Besides the familiar underground mining, they
blow up mountains in Appalachia to get down to the coal, and push the waste
and debris into surrounding valleys.

Known appropriately as mountaintop removal, this practice has leveled more
than 470 Appalachian mountains and buried or polluted thousands of miles of
mountain streams -- streams at the headwaters of the drinking water supply
of millions of Americans. Blasting and flooding from mountaintop removal
are
also devastating families and communities in the mountains and leaving the
economy of central Appalachia in shambles.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., perhaps the most prominent environmentalist of our
time, recently stated in a speech in Blowing Rock, "Mountaintop removal is
the biggest environmental battle of our hemisphere. You know, you can
restore the Hudson River in perhaps a hundred years. But you will never,
never, get these mountains back. This is truly a crime against every human
being in the world."

Duke wants huge new plant

Another prominent corporation in Charlotte, Duke Energy, is closely
connected to Kennedy's concerns. Duke is trying to gain state approval for
a
huge coal-fired power plant just upwind from Charlotte. The smaller,
existing plants at this Cliffside site use mostly mountaintop removal coal
from West Virginia and surrounding states, and the much larger unit, if
approved, is expected to burn coal from the same region. In fact, according
to the Boone-based environmental organization Appalachian Voices, Duke
Energy is one of our nation's three biggest users of mountaintop removal
coal.Not only would increased demand for coal from the expanded Cliffside
plant lead directly to the destruction of more beautiful and irreplaceable
Appalachian mountains and communities, it would add millions of tons of
global warming gases and other pollutants to our atmosphere. Congressional
efforts to curb global warming are very likely to succeed in what promises
to be a much more environmentally concerned Congress. So the Duke Energy
effort to gain approval for the Cliffside coal plant may be seen as a race
against time to get what may well be one of the last of the dirty coal
plants in under the wire.

When Congress does finally act to regulate global warming gases, those
regulations will be costly for states like North Carolina that get most of
their electricity from dirty coal plants. With an astronomical 61 percent
of
our electricity already generated by burning coal, North Carolinians have a
lot to lose by putting even more of our energy "eggs" in the coal "basket."

Rhetoric misleading

Another connection exists between Bank of America and Duke Energy: both
claim to be responsible corporate citizens who are concerned about their
environmental footprint. Bank of America claims to be investing heavily in
technologies that will reduce global warming. However, in 2006 the company
spent $100 on dirty energy projects for every dollar it spent on clean
energy, according to a white paper by the Rainforest Action Network.

The environmental rhetoric of Duke CEO Jim Rogers is just as misleading:
Rogers asserted in a recent editorial in The New York Times that the best
power plant is the one you don't have to build. But a recent study by the
N.C. Utilities Commission demonstrated unequivocally that conservation,
efficiency and renewables could meet North Carolina's projected energy
demand at a comparable cost to what Duke plans to spend building the
Cliffside coal plant.

The motto of North Carolina is Esse Quam Videri -- "To be, rather than to
seem." But what North Carolina-based companies Duke Energy and Bank of
America may have most in common is how far they are from living up to this
standard.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------

----
Harvard Ayers is professor emeritus of anthropology at Appalachian State
University and a board member of Appalachian Voices, www.appvoices.org.
Write him at harvard@boone.net.





--
Paul Wilson
Sierra Club
504 Jefferson Ave
Charles Town, WV  25414-1130
Phone: 304-725-4360
Cell: 304-279-6975