The following is testimony I gave at the sham of a public hearing sponsored by the Division of Air Quality to decide if Duke Energy was going to receive a final permit to build its coal fired power station at Cliffside. This testimony was given by me as a representative for NC Interfaith Power & Light, a program of the NC Council of Churches. I work part time for NCIPL as the public policy coordinator.

For more info and to ask Gov. Perdue to intervene use this link.

I come today out of love – love for life, love for this beautiful world that was given to us as a gift to preserve and protect, and love especially for our children and grandchildren. I come because the bountiful world I was born into just 65 years ago is under siege from our mindless and careless way of living.

We are a violent people responsible for continuous wars and genocides. Today, there is a sin of greater magnitude being perpetrated by all of us in our violent, mindless, and careless way of living. We are perpetrating and perpetuating one of the greatest extinctions of life on Earth. Human society is not immune from the consequences of our actions. Certainly from the evidence of its dangers, we could consider using the 19^th Century technology of burning coal to produce electricity the most violent activity of this century.

Burning coal is the original sin of industrial society. We know that using coal for this purpose is deadly and dirty from its mining, washing and processing, to its combustion in boilers that produce toxic wastes and hazardous air pollutants. The CO₂ from coal smokestacks has destabilized the climate. The coal ash debacle in Tennessee and the 1000 other spills and leaks that have been under and un-reported compounds coal’s assault on society and nature.

Although I come here in love, I also come to speak the truth; and the truth is sometimes harsh. The DAQ has worked diligently to keep this permitting process from full and open public scrutiny. As an agency of state government, DAQ has an obligation to protect the public health and welfare. As an agency of state government, DAQ has a responsibility to ensure the public can be represented in this decision process, yet I had to drive from Mars Hill to present this testimony, and citizens from the eastern and coastal communities, from metropolitan areas such as Raleigh, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem have no ability to bring their concerns to public attention. By having the public testimony heard only in Statesville and Forest City, DAQ is blatantly ignoring its duty to serve the general welfare. We wonder with whom DAQ’s loyalty resides, Duke Energy management and shareholders or the public good. By hiding the hearings in Forest City, DAQ is preventing media coverage of the charade that these hearings represent.

Now I understand that this hearing has a very narrow focus. It is the question of Hazardous Air Pollution, and most specifically Mercury. Judge Thornburg clearly stated that Duke Energy should place best available technology on Cliffside #6. Clearly DAQ should follow the letter of the law on this issue. But it appears that DAQ is about to approve the Duke Energy permit on some bogus technicality by assenting to Duke’s contention that Cliffside is a “minor” source of mercury pollution.

Let us be clear. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin. Contrary to belief, there is NO safe level of mercury for a growing fetus or child. The menu of toxins including Mercury floating in placental blood, breast milk, and food to a growing nervous system is astounding. There are NO “minor sources” of mercury. This is a false distinction based on the crazy logic of risk benefit analysis and fostered on us by an industry that cares more about shareholder value than healthy children.

Where is our moral compass when we compromise life being allowed to grow to its fullest potential? According to NC Department of Health and Human Services, mercury toxicity is the cause of over 13,000 cases of mercury poisoning in N.C. In some circumstances this is a question of life and death because children with mercury toxicity are mentally retarded and have seizure disorders, both causes of reduced life expectancy.

We must ask whom does DAQ serve? This is the fundamental moral question. The officials and staff of DAQ are public employees in the bureaucracy of our state government. But whom do you serve? Are you just number’s crunchers in service of Duke Energy? You could instead choose to serve life, specifically the children and beauty of the people and natural wonders of the State of N.C.

In our time, with the air and water continuing to be imperiled with toxins such as mercury, with climate change accelerating at a rate that will certainly flood our coastal cities by century’s end, and destroy our ability to feed ourselves with diminished capacity to grow our food, we are facing an ecocide of such proportion to make the stories of our Bible palpably real.

It would be good for all of us to reread the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament verses from Isaiah chapter 24

Versus like this speak to our concerns:

The earth dries up and withers,

the world languishes and withers, 
      

the exalted of the earth languish.

The earth is defiled by its people; 
      

they have disobeyed the laws, 
      

violated the statutes 
      

and broken the everlasting covenant.

We ask in the name of life to not break your covenant with the people of North Carolina.

Please make your decision on love, the duty to protect and preserve life.

The health and well being of all children are depending on your care and wisdom.

Please tell Gov. Perdue that here is no minor source of Mercury 

What do the N.C. Justice Center, the City of Durham, the N.C. Council of Churches, Clean Water for N.C., and N.C. WARN have in common? The answer is concern for the public welfare, the economy and the public health. A coalition of these organizations, plus 9 others from the anti-poverty, consumer, and environmental communities, called N.C. SAVE$, has proposed that the N.C. Utilities Commission establish an independent (non-utility) administrator for a state wide energy efficiency and conservation program.

The road to this collaboration is the result of decades of disregard of the mandate from the North Carolina Utilities Commission that our public utilities, Duke Energy and Progress Energy, “…include use of the entire spectrum of demand-side options, including but not limited to conservation, load management and efficiency programs…” (N.C. General Statutes: § 62-2. (3a))

Lack of investment

The result of this disrespect from investor-owned utilities is that N.C. ranked 46th out of 50 states in spending per capita on energy efficiency and conservation measures — a meager 44 pennies per person or $3.8 million for the whole state.

A 2007 decision to allow Duke Energy to build a huge new coal-fired Cliffside power unit required the company to spend 1 percent of its income on efficiency. Duke proposed “Save-a-Watt” as their efficiency program.

But the program offers almost nothing to reduce energy costs for those least able to afford these rising costs. Even the Public Staff of the Utilities Commission, after their own analysis and a public hearing, has determined that Save-a-Watt costs too much, gives Duke too much profit, and does too little to promote conservation and efficiency.

A conflict of interest

Are we surprised? The facts are clear. Investor-owned utilities have an inherent conflict of interest in promoting conservation and efficiency. Their technical and business expertise resides in producing and distributing electricity. They make good profits from this model and will lose money if they promote conservation and implement significant demand side reductions.

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy reports that states should be spending 10 to 30 times what N.C. utilities are spending to make a significant impact on energy demand.

It is obvious that the public utilities in our state are unable and willing to do what is necessary to move North Carolina into a clean, sustainable energy economy.

There is another way. A study (www.cwfnc.org) showing efficiency programs run by independent public agencies or non-profits demonstrated that the independent administrators accomplished large reductions in energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions. In New York, participating homes were saving an average of $225 a year on utility bills.

The SAVE$ plan

N.C. SAVE$ is asking the N.C. Utilities Commission to create such an independent administrator.

We propose that this will be funded initially by a small fee on electricity bills or public bonds, lower than the fees that customers would pay under Save-a-Watt, and producing far greater reductions in energy use.

A fee of less than $1 per month per household, plus corresponding charges to businesses, industry, and natural gas customers would generate over $100 million per year to promote the programs that will help transition us to a cleaner and more economically dynamic energy economy.

The administrator would be a not-for-profit organization or an existing public benefit organization.

Waiting for leadership

Energy efficiency and conservation are the safest, healthiest, cheapest way to transform our energy economy.

The green job economy is waiting for our state leadership to step up to the plate. N.C. SAVE$ is providing a proven path for the Utilities Commission to follow.

Every local economy will be stimulated as homes are weatherized, appliances upgraded, and energy efficiency devices are installed. Local businesses will grow. Living wage jobs will be created. The programs can target low-income households and include renters, unlike “Save-a-Watt.”

The elderly can be protected from escalating energy costs.

We must face reality. We are in a drought, and climate change will make it worse. Coal and nuclear electric generation wastefully withdraw more water from our rivers and lakes than all other uses combined.

Furthermore, there is no such thing as “clean coal”. It is dirty, polluting our air and lungs, and contaminating our waters with mercury.

The bottom line is clear. The less energy we use, the healthier our air and waters will be.

Efficiency and conservation will significantly reduce outdated, careless, and harmful methods of producing energy.

Our economy, public health, and climate are calling out for an independent energy efficiency administrator. Join N.C. SAVE$ in advocating that the N.C. Utilities Commission do the right thing.

To learn more check out www.ncsavesenergy.org/  

We are poisoning our air with mercury, ozone and microscopic particles. We are poisoning our atmosphere with CO2. Too much too fast is destabilizing our delicate climate system.I am not the first to use this horrific metaphor. Jim Hansen, the USA’s preeminent climate scientist, compared the coal cars lined up at our electric power plants to the boxcars leading to the crematoriums in Germany. The effect will be the same, genocide on human cultures and ecocide on planetary ecosystems. Understanding our predicament, it becomes very appropriate and even urgent to finally ask the fundamental questions: Who owns the air? Who owns the atmosphere?

Our shared delusion is that we live on the earth, but in reality we live within the biosphere — the shared complex interdependent dynamic matrix of the living earth. We are aware of the weather, especially when it changes, or is at its extremes of too hot, too cold, too wet and too dry. But on most days the air, atmosphere and the long-term trends of climate are invisible and insensible to us.

Being mostly out of our awareness has meant that in a remarkable sense we are air that has forgotten it is air. We don’t have to think to breathe, to remember to inhale and exhale. It all comes naturally. For all but the last few generations of humanity, each breath brought the grace of just the right amount of pure air to nurture us. But now, each breath is a guarantee that we inhale harmful particulate matter and ground level ozone that damages our lungs and even prevents the normal development of our children’s lungs.

It has taken us a long time to understand that the air and atmosphere, despite their invisibility to our ordinary senses, are not finite and indestructible. We are well into danger zone of causing the climate to “tip” into irreversible heating, and climate experts like Hansen believe we must have a moratorium on any new coal-fired power plants until and unless they can successfully sequester CO2.So if we are forced to breathe poison, questions about who owns the air and atmosphere deliver us to the heart of our democratic process.

Simply put, the air and atmosphere are being used as a dump for an antiquated and self-destructive energy policy determined for the most part by corporate America. In North Carolina, because of the power and monetary influence of so-called “public” utilities on our governor, legislature, Utilities Commission and Department of Air Quality, Duke Energy received a permit to build Cliffside #6. We are now subsidizing future contracts for trainloads of coal that will eventually destroy us.

CEO Jim Rogers’ PR machine manages to get national and international attention by talking green, but when the rubber meets the road we get a new Cliffside power plant that will add 6 million new tons of CO2 to our atmosphere every year. This is the equivalent of 1.5 million new cars. Duke Energy has admitted that rate payers will be seeing an increase of between 40 and 70 percent when carbon is finally priced into the costs of producing electricity. So not only are we going to be poisoned, but we are going to be paying more for such a horrible privilege.

We are at a defining moment in our history. Our government was formed to promote the general welfare … To Ourselves and Our Posterity. We are not living up to the promise and potential of our Constitution. We are not in denial. Polling consistently shows citizens want clean, renewable energy. But we are complacent and politically lazy. Most of us don’t engage in our democratic processes. We allow wealth in the form of corporate influence to rule.

Climate change is the biggest challenge our democracy has ever faced. For democracy to work effectively for the general welfare and our Posterity, we must engage now. Who owns the air — the atmosphere? Is it Duke Energy? They will claim it if we allow them. To learn more about how you can help, log on to www.stopcliffside.org.

A few weeks ago I was privileged to attend Duke Divinity School’s Convocation called Our Daily Bread. Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson, two of the most insightful and respected thinkers and authors on a proper earth economy, were inspiring in their presentations and conversations. Wes Jackson used the word restraint to describe the relationship humanity should have towards earth’s bounty. We hardly ever hear this word in civil discourse anymore. Restraint calls on us to reflect on the consequences of our simple everyday actions, to determine if harm, whether intended or not, could come to others. 

Wes Jackson called restraint the forgotten virtue. Virtue is another word scarcely used in public dialogue. So it was a shock to me when I heard John Edward’s comments in a recent forum on Global Warming. Calling climate change the moral challenge of our generation he said “…the American people are ready for a President who calls on them to sacrifice, and asks them to be patriotic about something other than war.” 

The final International Panel on Climate Change reports that climate change is “unequivocal.” We are warned that we must begin to cap and reduce our CO2 output within several years. We are told we must develop renewable energy technologies and efficiency programs. Investment in research is needed. All of this is correct, but unfortunately quite insufficient for the crisis we face. 

We know in our hearts that sacrifice and restraint are virtues. Efficiency shouldn’t be conflated with conservation.  In order to achieve a meaningful cap on CO2 emissions, and then reduce them to levels that will ensure a stable climate for healthy human communities in an ecologically diverse and beautiful world, we must conserve. We will be required to limit economic and population growth. Yes there are limits to growth; it’s a fact of biological life. There is no getting around it. No amount of wishful thinking (delusion is a better word) can create an earth economy that could support 6-9 billion people the way North Americans, Japanese, or Europeans live.  

We must use restraint in travel, useless and frivolous purchases, and our extravagant use of fossil fuel energy. The most prosperous of us will need to sacrifice the pleasure of a raspberry or asparagus in winter, another toy for our child or the vacation by air. For a great majority of Americans the extravagances mentioned above are beyond their reach 

For those who value justice that means the more comfortable among us must work to change the structural imbalances in our economy that keeps the poor and struggling middle class in or near poverty. We must create jobs that provide a living wage, affordable housing, and reliable convenient transportation within an energy infrastructure that is based on renewable energy.  J

ustice means we live more simply so that others may simply live. The “American way of life” – the automobile culture, urban sprawl, throwaway consumerism, chemical agriculture or a meat based food system - is incompatible with justice, worldwide democracy, and ecological survival. For developing and undeveloped nations to live anywhere near the level of consumption that we enjoy, we would need 4 to 5 more planets worth of water and other material resources. Technology alone won’t provide us a healthy, stable, and beautiful earth as a legacy to our children. Only restraint, cooperation and sharing the gifts of creation will deliver us to that awesome world. 

We need a politics and economy based on reverence for life. Our current actions need to help protect, preserve, and restore a damaged earth. Albert Einstein once said “…the world that we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level at which we created them.”  The problems we created are based on the idea that human progress and happiness are satisfied by material consumption and accumulation. But no wisdom tradition, religion, or human psychology can confirm this as true. 

We know in our hearts that once our basic human needs for food, shelter, safety, and health are met, we are happiest when we are engaged in meaningful work and living within loving families and communities.  

Einstein even in his brilliance missed the point. We will not get to the level of thinking that will get us out of the political, social, economic, and environmental mess at which we arrived until we learn to love life again and revere it as a sacred trust. 

Reverence is seeing the beauty and inherent worth of all people and all creatures. Reverence is the recognition of life as a fragile and delicate gift of the mystery of Creation. Reverence is a willingness to live a life of compassion, and the determination to leave our communities and world a more beautiful and healthier place than we found them.

  Reverence requires restraint. It’s a political and economic choice, and one that will bring joy to your life throughout 2008.

If politics is the art of compromise, then “sustainability” promises to be the new grease into our slide into ecological suicide.

Let’s reflect a little. If Western North Carolina, the Blue Ridge Province of the Southern Appalachian Bioregion is to become “sustainable”, then we must limit economic growth and so-called development- period!

The health of the earth, its ability to replenish and restore itself, is the final bottom line for sustainability.

The elements the make the Ellington relatively a “good” design are insufficient to make it good for the health of our community. The minimum requirement would be for any new structure, especially one with such a large ecological footprint and is designed to last for a mimimum of 100 years would for it to be a net-zero energy consumer, i.e. - to produce 100% of its internal energy needs. Of course, zero waste would be a bonus too!

Somehow, “sustainability” itself is becoming a “value” in some abstract economics. But the earth’s economy is not abstract. All elements of earth’s living ecosystems are in steep decline - topsoil loss, forest degradation, water and air pollution, species extinction, and catastrophic climate change are making each choice that much more important.

Hippocrates, the father of Western medicne said “Illnesses do not come out of the blue, they come from the small daily sins against nature. When enough daily sins are accumulated, illnesses will suddenly appear.” The Ellington is another sin against nature.

Our bioregion needs restoration of its health. Luxury hotels and condos aren’t part of the perscription, they are more of the disease. The 20th century idea of progress as economic growth is killing us. When will we learn?

I’ll close with a quote that serves as an introduction to Wendell Berry’s recent book of essays The Way of Ignorance. The author of the quote is David Cayley, from his The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich.

“The good, as he came to understand it, is what is uniquely and incomparably appropriate to a given setting. It observes a certain scale, displays a certain proportion. It fits, and the senses can recognize this fit…Values, on the other hand, are a universal coin without a proper place or an inherent limit…Values undermine the sense of proportion and substitute an economic calculus. What is good is what is always good; a value prevails only when it outranks a competing value.”

When we bring “sustainability” to the table we need to bring the good, the beautiful, and the truth!

At a Convocation at Duke Divinity School a couple of weeks ago, I was one of the lucky 600 or so folks who were privileged to witness author Wendell Berry in conversation about the relation of religion or spirituality and the economy and politics. His wisdom is profound. A short quote from an essay called “The Burden of the Gospels”:

“If we take the Gospels seriously, we are left with a dire predicament, facing a humbling question: How must we live and work so as not to be estranged from God’s presence in His work and all His creatures? The answer, we may say, is given is Jesus’s teaching about love. But that answer raises another question that plunges us into the abyss of our ignorance, which is both human and peculiarly modern: How are we to make of that love an economic practice?”

Whether you are a Christian or Jew, pagan or Buddhist, spiritual but not religious, an agnostic or atheist, the question Berry posses is at the heart of our cultural and ecologic crisis.

Duke Energy: An Altar Call for Coal - published in Raleigh News & Observer, Oct. 22, 2007

The “Amen’s” startled at first! But then as person after person came to the podium and microphone it became clear that what I was experiencing was like an altar call in church or at a revival. People were testifying to their faith - their faith not in God or Jesus, but to Duke Energy (DE) as a “good corporate citizen” and provider of energy and jobs for their community.

The event was a Department of Air Quality (DAQ) Public Hearing on Duke’s request to build a new coal-fired power plant at their Cliffside facility in Rutherfordton, N.C.

The hearing was the ONLY public hearing that the DAQ scheduled in the entire state for public input despite repeated requests for statewide hearings at more convenient times and locations for the N.C. public. This decision was basically a sacrifice of democracy at the altar of DE. This hearing was in the high school auditorium inForest
City, the heart of Duke’s circle of influence. DAQ made it nearly impossible for a truly representative sample of public comment to be heard, because the auditorium was packed with people beholden to Duke.County Commissioner after Commissioner and Mayor after Mayor of the communities around Cliffside in Rutherford and Polk Counties testified to the community benefits that the new power plant would allegedly provide.

Paul Hawken in his new book Blessed Unrest phrased it well when he wrote:

“We live in a faith based economy, and by that I do not refer to religious practice. People are asked to place their faith in economic systems and political systems that have polluted water, air, and sea; that have despoiled communities…and created a stratosphere sufficiently permeated with industrial gases that we are, in effect, playing dice with the planet.”

What the good people of Rutherford and Polk counties don’t understand are the broader implications of the DE proposal. The new Cliffside will cost an estimated $3 billion dollars and generate only 20-30 new full time jobs. A more prudent investment of those dollars in efficiency, conservation, and renewable energy facilities will generate 100’s of middle class wage earner jobs for their local economy. In The Power to Choose, North Carolina’s Clean Energy Future, Tellus Institute’s analysis reveals close to 40,000 jobs statewide could be generated by investing in efficiency and renewable energy.  

The new Cliffside boiler, if allowed to be built, will produce over 300 million tons of CO2 during its 50 year lifespan. This will occur at a time when climate scientists are telling us that we need to immediately cap CO2 production and begin to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases over the next 20-40 years if we are to avert the most damaging effects of global warming.

Professor Martin Parry, co-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently said, “Ten years ago we were talking about these impacts affecting our children and our grandchildren. Now it is happening to us…Even if we achieve a cap at two degrees, there is a stock of major impacts out there already and that means adaptation. You cannot mitigate your way out of this problem… The choice is between a damaged world or a future with a severely damaged world.”

Jim Hansen, the USA’s pre-eminent climate scientist wrote in his written testimony to the DAQ:

“The upshot is that the scientific community realizes that we are much closer to the dangerous level of atmospheric greenhouse gases than would have been estimated even 3-5 years ago.  In turn the implication is that humanity must find some way to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide at a level of, at most, 450 parts per million, and perhaps even significantly less. Based on the amounts of carbon in the different fossil fuels, coal being the largest, an inevitable conclusion is that coal use must be phased out over the next few decades except at truly clean coal power plants that capture and store the carbon dioxide.

In blunter language, it has become clear that in order to avoid creating a different planet with disastrous consequences for humanity and other species, over the next few decades we will need to “bulldoze” old-style power plants that do not capture and store CO2.  The new Cliffside, although better than most coal burning plants, is one of those old-style plants not designed to capture and store CO2.”

 The members of DAQ are public servants and are required, according to Section 2 of the NC Constitution, to act on behalf of the “good of the whole.” The “good of the whole” includes both the human community and a climate that supports planetary integrity and stability. We need more democracy, not less. We need an altar call to life, not to a “severely damaged world.”

Daniel Quinn, in his novel The Story of B, writes “If the world is to be saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be changed by people with old minds and new programs.” Folks, tinkering & technology alone will not preserve this beautiful Earth nor save the human community from cultural suicide! Each one of us must start to dream up a greener world - it is a marvelous task and  one that will provide all of us years of joyful community life. 

Of course this dream includes an earth free of runaway global heating, a world where there is no air or water pollution, and our children are able to play in and even drink the waters of our rivers and streams. A world in which the topsoil is accumulating instead of washing out to sea, - where the forests are maturing and not being clear-cut, - a world in which the coral reefs are not dying but teaming with life. And a greener world would be one in which all violence of human against human, both in the form of war and economic exploitation, have disappeared as the norm in human culture. A world in which all humans would have a right to meaningful work, and in which their needs for food, shelter, healthcare, recreation, and spiritual fulfillment would be considered basic rights and guaranteed by the community. 

Yes – a greener world would be one in which life – human and other than human – would be valued for itself, in which all beings would have a right to life, habitat, and the fulfillment of their biological nature and destiny without mistreatment BY humans FOR human use alone. The time has long passed when humanity can just settle for being a benign presence on the Earth, when we think in terms of dominion or stewardhip. Our spiritual and practical task is, in the words of Thomas Berry’s, to transform our evolutionary destiny into one that is mutually enhancing to all life on Earth. 

Well, - what would such a world look like, or better yet, - feel like – when each of us lived so that our actions would actually enhance the life of all of our fellow creatures.  Fundamentally, we would need to undergo a change of heart, a transformation of consciousness, in which each of us re-imagined our life’s work in terms of service to the common good. Our economy would evolve into a right and truthful service economy. Maybe Dylan’s You Gotta Serve Somebody would become a world anthem. 

The possibilities for unleashing our creative and moral imaginations are unlimited when we begin to envision of serving the greater good.  And of course, in very practical terms, this will demand much real and hard work  - wetlands, prairies, rivers, degraded farmlands, deserts would need to be restored, - degraded urban and inner city slums and industrial areas would need to be revitalized, - superfund sites would need to be cleaned up and be re-established as productive parts of healthy ecosystems. And very importantly, children would need to be educated not to become cogs in a global consumerist culture, but so that they could discover their gifts and talents and be able to express them in service to the common welfare.  Imagine each one of us living our lives in gratitude for the beauty of the Earth - and in celebration of the awe, wonder, and diversity life. What a joyful world this would be! 

When each of us dreams a destiny as the change we want to be, we will create a greener world where peace with earth will become peace on earth.  Blessings and thanks for showing up!

PE’s presentations from this first meeting are available to the public online on the CEAC web link: www.progress-energy.com/aboutenergy/wnc.asp, as is information about the upcoming monthly meetings. The public is invited to these meetings and can give verbal input at the upcoming meetings or by email at wnc@pgnmail.com.

Two things about the first meeting captured my attention. The first was the statement by Lloyd Yates, Senior VP for Energy Delivery. He wondered “How do we incent people to use less electricity when it is so cheap?” If we can unpack, examine, and find answers to that question, we will be well on our way to helping solve not only our regional energy problem, but also be able to begin to tackle global warming in a reasonable and realistic fashion.

Cheap energy, as engineered by governments and transnational energy (whether oil, gas, coal, or nuclear) and transportation businesses, has basically discounted the future by keeping energy prices artificially low. Cheap energy and its consequent consumerist culture have caused rapidly accelerating global warming and ecological devastation. If we continue our addiction to cheap energy we will be stealing the safety, security, and health of our children’s future. Keeping energy costs artificially low is essentially both stupid and immoral economic and political policy.

The CEAC “charter” as formulated by PE is basically about finding “management” solutions to help them meet their obligations to provide adequate and reliable energy. I trust the Committee will have the wisdom to enlarge the dialogue to include the challenge that Mr. Yates posed. Hopefully CEAC will have the courage to address cheap energy issues and convince PE that it is in their interests to help rethink Utility Commission regulations and to lead legislative reform when necessary.

The second item that interested me was the selection of JoAnne Stafford to “facilitate” the meetings. Ms. Stafford has many credentials, including 11 years of service on the NC Utilities Commission. Although she claimed that CEAC itself was commissioned to fashion their agenda, she seemed to bully some of the Commission members who questioned whether or not the membership of the panel itself was adequate to their mission.

Ms. Stafford’s long ties to the Utilities Commission and the public perception that she favors the agenda of the Utilities themselves may make her work as facilitator very difficult. I think that CEAC would be better served to have her as an expert witness when they examine policy, regulations, and legislation that may serve its recommendations to PE.

There are at least two substitutes that I see as better neutral, third party facilitators for this process. The first is Steve Cochran whose credentials are listed in his blog on this page. The second would be Doug Orr, past president of Warren-Wilson College, who lead the College to its position of leadership in sustainability in higher education.

The next meeting of CEAC is Friday, July 20, 8:30-11:30 a.m., Location TBA.
Stay tuned.

 PE announced a Citizens Energy Advisory Committee (CEEC) just 2 days later. Furthermore,  the ad hoc group of citizens and grass roots organizations who were instrumental in defeating PE’s proposed Woodfin oil-fired power plant formed a parallel committee called Sustainable Energy Council of Western North Carolina (SEC of WNC). To learn more about SEC of WNC log onto sustainablewnc.org/cbetf.php. More info and a website will be coming soon

PE’s CEAC has 18 members from the community, 5 who have “sustainability” credentials and come from an environmental perspective. The rest of the membership is conspicuously absent expertise from the medical community, the educational institutions, and the faith/religious community. It boggles my imagination how PE would not have included a representative from Warren-Wilson College, a national leader in sustainability or Dee Eggers, PhD. from UNCA, who serves on the State Legislative Commission on Climate Change. Likewise, we have Clay Ballantine, M.D. in our community, a national expert on the relationship between energy production and health whose expertise should be vital to CEAC’s work.

Hopefully when CEAC meets for the first time on June 20 their membership will address these fundamental inadequacies.

The Mission Statement of CEAC states that it “has been created to facilitate two-way communication, understanding and advice on the development of long-term strategies to meet the growing energy demands of the region and to promote community understanding of, and support for, a balanced approach to meeting those demands.

I beleive the community already understands the need for a balanced approach. PE generates or buys over 95% of its electricity from non-renewable sources that are either polluting, contributing to global warming, or are fundamentally unsafe. CEAC should hold PE to a “balanced approach. 

But our community would be better served if CEAC enlarged it’s mission to incorporate the fundamental idea that we cannot just allow demand to grow, but must take aggressive public policy inititatives to reduce demand even with a growing population.
The fundamental fact of rapidly accelerating climate change and ecological devastation should motivate us to evolve into a new way of thinking about our way of living.
Here are two principles of a more comprehensive and life enhancing way of thinking that I would ask CEAC to adopt.

WE MUST HOLD PROGRESS ENERGY TO ACT ON BEHALF OF THE GOOD OF THE WHOLE 

Section 2 of the NC State Constitution states “…all political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole (italics mine).” 

We must help CEAC re-contextualize the mission of PE. PE is obligated by our state constitution to work for the good of the whole and must learn to meet energy demand within the new framework of rapidly accelerating climate change and ecological degradation.  

We must not succumb to whatever the phrase “a balanced approach” means to a culture that is self-destructing. PE and most of us have become numb to the consequences of our desire to have and do whatever we wish. At some point we must realize that we are living in a dangerous time, and the consequences of our unwillingness to look deeply at the effects of our choices will kill what we love. 

Albert Einstein had the insight to recognize that “…the world that we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level at which we created them.” So far we have only given lip service to the idea of “the good of the whole.” Our task now as citizens is to engage our moral imagination to the task of going deeper into the meaning of that vision.

This brings me to the second principle. DO NO HARM Please let me explain.

“Do no harm” is another way of stating the golden rule. Don’t do unto others what you would not want them to do to you, and stated positively - do unto others as you would want them to do to you. Burning fossil fuel for energy is harmful. You know most of the reasons, so I won’t discuss them now.   I believe that we should not be afraid to articulate our message in “values” language. Burning fossil fuels for electric power is frankly killing and stealing, and we should not be participating in allowing policy that permits more of the same. This is not a “balanced approach”, it is self-destruction.If we can hold CEAC to these guiding principles then PE will understand that citizen democracy demands a safe, healthy, and sustainable energy future for WNC.