Let’s get the banks to divest from coal. There must be a way.

The entire scientific community (including NOAA, NASA, and the US delegate to the IPCC) agree that global warming is real, it is human caused, and something must be done in the next 10 years to avoid huge catastrophes – flooded cities, major droughts etc. This was widely known 20 years ago. We also know that the reserves of oil will run out long before we ever reach a limit with coal.
Coal is the problem. Stop coal and we have a chance. Stop the loans that fund coal-mining.
Now for something positive.

Clean energy is a design problem. So is divesting from coal.
Groups like RAN have spanked the banks. Now let’s show that there is a solution. All of you bankers, MBAs, investment whiz kids, lawyers: here is your challenge. Suppose you work for a large bank with major investments in coal mining and coal-fired plants. The bank wants to completely divest from coal, legally and with no loss in overall profit, within 6 months. There is your challenge. Go.

The word is out. Now let’s talk about the solution. Don’t tell me its impossible to divest from business commitments that quickly. When the heat was on, companies around the world found a way to divest from Apartheid South Africa, quickly, legally, profitably. We did it then, we can do it now.
All you business whiz kids out there – write a step by step process for how Bank of America and others can divest completely from coal in 6 months.

Be famous. Be the banker that stopped coal.

Civil disobedience has a long history my friends…including giving freedom to this country (also an act against a corporation — Boston Tea Party), the right to vote for women and civil rights…all of you complaining about “inconviences” sound just like the folks who spit on Martin Luther King, kicked the iron-jawed angels and stood silent while this country fought for independence. Take your place amongst democracy’s wallflowers and thanks for keeping the status quo as stale as ever.

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, http://www.appvoices.org. Write him at harvard@boone.net.

I am sure RAN did not attack you or anyone else. The law has failed us who have been fighting this fight so many times. The fines levied against these companies are always reduced to nearly nothing, so it is more profitable for them to break the law than to obey it. They come out ahead paying the paultry fines, meaning they reap huge profits by doing so. The Bush administration is only making it easier for them to do so by relaxing the laws for the mining industry.

We have been called eco-terrorists by industry officials here, but where I live we have never harmed anybody or any equipment. They are the eco-terrorists, they are the ones destroying the land and water and our homes, and the habitat of the animals, not us. I would hope that you would please do some reading on this subject and really learn about what is happening here in the Appalachians and out in the western coalfields. You will see that the comforts that we have come to depend on will someday cause our doom. Learn to conserve, have a little compassion for those who don’t live in the cities. The hoggish nature of city life itself is killing the environment. Urge your city to try to conserve energy. There are many websites out there that show how much money towns and cities can save by being eco-friendly. And please understand that the inconvenience that you folks had for that one day was to get your attention, not to destroy anything or harm anyone. It did get your attention didn’t it? Well then RAN succeeded, and I am so proud of them for doing so. Maybe this can open up a dialog that will be helpful instead of hateful. Environmentalists are not bad evil people. We care for the people of the earth, and the earth that cares for us. It is just mutual respect, that is all. I hope that you can understand that. We don’t worship rocks and trees, we understand the balance that must be kept in order for all things to live and thrive. Returning to balance is essential if we expect to turn this mess that we have all made around.

Clearly, RAN has made the evaluation that stirring things up is worth the occasional negative reaction.

The only thing I’ll say with respect to the civil rights comparison is this: although communities directly suffering from extraction are being hurt the most, coal is a threat to every human being that currently lives or will live in the future. Global warming is the greatest threat we have ever faced as a species, and, failing some rather unlikely advances in space travel, we don’t have “the option of leaving.”

I’m not a legal scholar, so I will take your viewpoint at it’s value legal eagle. Thank you for the information. I’m still surprised the legal system hasn’t been able to correct some of the negative activities from coal mining, they seem pretty damn capable of doing so in other arenas whether justified or not.

I’m glad I decided to take time to comment on this blog and read your responses, particularly those who live in these areas who are affected. I understand the motive, yet I still believe in the overall scope, the RAN stunt in Charlotte will serve to alienate more people than it will attract.

I also reject the comparisons of this struggle to that of civil rights. Sorry Ahmad. Civil rights righted a wrong against an entire race of people who were denied human rights, not people who happen to live in a certain geographic area. Not to diminish those of you who are affected in this area, but some of you may have the option of leaving.