Welcome to ArticleXI.com!
We are a group of environmental advocates united in providing a one-stop source for Virginia's environmental news. We each focus on different issues, but share the vision of a Commonwealth that preserves and protects its natural resources. Please join us!
A lot of great press coverage around the Hampton Roads coal plant proposal has come out in the last couple weeks, setting a great tone moving forward in our effort to squash what would be the largest coal plant in Virginia in this new year.
Just before the holidays The Virginia Asthma Coalition, The Consortium for Infant and Child Health and the American Lung Association joined forces to fight the coal plant stating that they are concerned about the thousands of tons of air pollutants the plant would emit. In a joint statement against the plant they cited a new analysis predicting that the lifetime impacts of the soot from the plant would include 1,500 premature deaths and thousands of heart attacks and asthma episodes. You can read the article here. Note that the reporter incorrectly states that coal plants are not a source of ozone. This statement was corrected in the written version to correctly state that coal plants are a major source of dangerous ground level ozone. It was not however, corrected in this video narrative. The three groups also presented to the Virginia Beach City Council.
On New Years Day the Washington Post asks the question, "Have Investors Moved to Cleaner Energy Sources?" stating that, "construction did not begin on a single new coal fired power plant in the United States for the second straight year." The article goes on:
"Coal is a dead man walkin'," says Kevin Parker, global head of asset management and a member of the executive committee at Deutsche Bank. "Banks won't finance them. Insurance companies won't insure them. The EPA is coming after them. . . . And the economics to make it clean don't work."
Yesterday an excellent letter to the editor of the Fredericksburg Free Lance Star was published which illuminates the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative's (REC's) anti-science attitude about climate change. REC is a part owner of ODEC and a part to the coal plant proposal. ODEC's publication, Coop Living Magazine, actively campaigns on anti science and climate change denial on behalf of REC -without ever backing up their claims.
This past October, Cooperative Living devoted a full-page column to a commentator with no climate expertise who dismissed all scientific research showing that prompt action is needed. He claims that "government" largely funds climate research, and therefore climate scientists all somehow have "a conflict of interest." Without citing a single source, the commentator concludes that it will be decades before we see any serious consequences from climate change.
This letter to the editor attempts to set the record straight and you can read it here.
Today NPR is airing a story about how ODEC's proposed Hampton Roads coal plant may be in trouble as the EPA finds ways to regulate climate change gasses. "Finally we've got the rules that are beginning to require power companies to account for their global warming pollution," says Cale Jaffe of the Southern Environmental Law Center, "That's a historic turn of events." You can listen to or read this story here.
User comments or postings reflect the opinions of the responsible contributor only, and do not reflect the viewpoint of the Sierra Club and/or the League of Conservation Voters. The Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters do not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of any posting. The Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters accepts no obligation to review every posting, but reserves the right (but not the obligation) to delete postings that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate.
ArticleXI.com is paid for and authorized by
Virginia League of Conservation Voters PAC, 530 East Main Street, Ste. 410, Richmond, Virginia 23219, (804) 225-1902 and
Sierra Club VA PAC, 422 E. Franklin Street, Suite 302, Richmond, VA 23219, (804) 225-9113.
