[NYTr] Climate Change: US Moving Backwards

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

IPS - Oct 2, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39498


CLIMATE CHANGE:  U.S. Moving Backwards

By Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Oct 2 (IPS) - As global warming melts the Arctic, the
United States's biggest banks are investing billions of dollars in as
many as 150 new coal-fired power plants around the country.

The obvious climatic and fiscal stupidity of such investments is
staggering, say environmentalists.

"What are they (the banks) thinking?" asked Leslie Lowe, energy and
environment programme director at the Interfaith Centre on Corporate
Responsibility.

Carbon regulations are coming, and profiting from the destruction of
nature and communities is immoral in any case, Lowe told IPS at a press
conference.

"It is folly to build new coal-fired plants," she said.

And yet that is just what Bank of America and Citi (formerly Citigroup)
are doing, according to the new report "Banks, Climate Change & the New
Coal Rush" by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN).

Electricity generation from coal is the biggest source of carbon
dioxide (CO2) emissions in the world -- larger than deforestation or
the transportation sector, says Rebecca Tarbotton, director of RAN's
Global Finance Campaign

The 150 proposed new plants would add 600 million to 1.1 billion tonnes
of carbon annually into the atmosphere, Tarbotton said in an interview.
Total global emissions of carbon are currently about 8 billion tonnes.

"There is no hope of averting climate catastrophe if a significant
number of those plants are built," said Bill McKibben, author and
founder of Step It Up, the largest demonstration against global warming
in history.

"Climate change is already happening much faster than anyone expected,"
McKibben told IPS.

In the past two weeks, reports that the Arctic ice cap shrank
dramatically this summer have left scientists shocked at the speed and
extent of the melting. The Arctic Ocean may well go from white to blue
in less than a decade, some believe. The ramifications of an ice-free
Arctic on the world's weather system and the local ecology have yet to
be determined.

Coal currently supplies approximately half of the U.S.'s electricity
and produces 80 percent of the sector's CO2 emissions. Building new
coal-fired plants -- which have projected lifespans of 50 years --
would undo virtually any and all domestic efforts to reduce carbon
emissions, notes McKibben.

RAN and the coalition of environmental and faith-based groups, as well
as Al Gore, Senators John Edwards and John Kerry, and Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid, are calling for a moratorium on all new coal-fired
plants.

"I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking
bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power
plants," former U.S. vice president and prominent global warming
campaigner Al Gore was reported as saying by the New York Times last
August.

"It's (also) financially ludicrous to be backing a 19th century
technology rather than 21st century technologies," McKibben said.

Instead of investing the estimated 140 billion dollars in coal,
financial institutions should be investing in clean energy options like
solar, wind and energy efficiency, says RAN's Tarbotton.

"Investing that amount in energy efficiency improvements could reduce
U.S. electricity demands by 19 percent by 2025, eliminating the need
for new coal power plants," she said.

It should not be forgotten that digging coal out of the ground involves
mountaintop removal, enormous strip mines and millions of tonnes of
toxic waste that have devastated many parts of the country, she says.

"It's a war zone in southern West Virginia, three and half million
pounds of explosives go off every day," said Julia "Judy" Bonds,
founder of Coal River Mountain Watch.

"They are poisoning our water and our air. I want Citi and Bank of
America to realise that when they fund coal companies, they are ruining
lives and killing communities," Bonds said.

Citi is a leading financier of fossil fuel energy and the world's top
financier of coal. According to Forbes, Citi's assets of 2.2 trillion
dollars make it not just the world's largest bank, but the biggest
company, the report found. Citi is also the top source of investment
for the coal sector, providing more than 4 billion dollars in financing
to Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal mining company.

Citi has financed billions of dollars to coal mining companies that
practice mountaintop removal (MTR), including Massey Energy, Arch Coal,
Alpha Natural Resources and others. These companies are responsible for
the loss of more than a million acres of Appalachian forests and
mountains, the report notes.

In 2006, Citi underwrote more than 38 billion dollars for the energy
industry while financing just one transaction for alternative energy --
200 times more money for "dirty energy" -- despite claims of being the
United States's "greenest" bank, said Tarbotton.

There are plenty of alternative energy projects that need financing,
and the coalition's hope is that the banks would no longer fund coal
and pull their existing financing.

As for the much hyped "clean coal" technology, environmentalists say
there isn't any practical way to capture and store carbon emissions
currently, and even if the problem can be solved, solutions are one to
two decades in the future.

"There's nothing clean about coal mining," says Bonds. "It's a real
insult to the people who have to live in coal mining communities."

"The only clean coal is the coal that's left in the ground," concludes
Tarbotton.

Neither Citi nor Bank of America could be reached for comment.