Beating Big Coal at the Grass Roots

It's not a hope or a plan - it's a victory. Or rather hundreds of local victories, giving Big Coal and Big Power a death by a thousand cuts.

From The Nation:

Bloomberg’s gift will help the Sierra Club build on the biggest victory against climate change scored to date in the United States: the de facto moratorium on new coal plants achieved in recent years by local activists working under the banner of the club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign. “Since we began targeting coal in 2003, we have blocked 153 planned coal plants from being built,” Brune told The Nation. “Since January 2010, we’ve shut down ninety-one existing plants. Closing those ninety-one existing plants alone will prevent 114 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent from entering the atmosphere, which is about the same as taking 20 million cars off the road.”

With Bloomberg’s help, the Beyond Coal campaign now hopes to “revoke the social license for burning coal in this country, just like the social license for smoking cigarettes was revoked,” said Brune. Although many progressives have criticisms of Bloomberg—in fact, Brune notes, the local Sierra Club chapter did not endorse him when he ran for a third term as mayor two years ago—Bloomberg makes a logical partner for such an effort. As mayor, he has championed high-profile initiatives to ban cigarette smoking and slash greenhouse gas emissions. “Some things a modern society can move beyond,” Brune argued. “We don’t cut down old-growth redwood trees anymore to make decking material, and we don’t need to burn coal to keep our iPhones charged.”

SNIP

Both the tar sands civil disobedience and the redoubled attack against coal represent a departure from the tactics and strategies the environmental movement as a whole has pursued since Barack Obama’s election in 2008. Environmental groups spent over $100 million (some estimates run as high as $300 million) urging Congress and the administration to pass climate legislation and lead international efforts to sign an ambitious agreement limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Most of the effort was focused on inside-the-Beltway lobbying and closed-door meetings rather than on rallying popular support out in the country, and it failed miserably. By contrast, the Beyond Coal and tar sands campaigners believe that only grassroots people power can overcome corporate and right-wing resistance and secure real progress against climate change.

“We learned from [the first phase of the Beyond Coal campaign] that grassroots organizing wins almost every time,” said Brune. “So we're doubling down [on that] now, putting our faith not in Congress but in the power of local communities to protect their health and planet.”

Most of Bloomberg’s $50 million, which will be dispensed over the next four years, will go to hiring more grassroots organizers. “We will have two hundred organizers waking up every day and working on nothing else but figuring out how to shut down the remaining coal plants in this country and replace them with clean energy,” said Brune. As in the first phase of the Beyond Coal campaign, organizers will work with a wide range of stakeholders—local citizens, elected officials, public health workers, faith and youth groups—“to identify the main sources of pollution in a community and then figure out how that coal plant can be shut down and keep the lights on at the same time.”

Challenging the coal industry’s main defense, Brune argues that shutting coal plants will actually save consumers money. “Clean energy, starting with energy efficiency, is cheaper than dirty energy,” said Brune, “which is why solar and wind are growing dramatically.” In Colorado, he adds, where state law requires 30 percent of electricity to come from renewable sources by 2020, the main utility company, Xcel, recently announced that it will meet that target in 2012—eight years ahead of schedule.

Liberals always find a way to effect change. If we can't get it done locally, we'll do it nationally (voting rights, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.) If we can't get it done nationally, we'll do it locally (renewable energy, gay rights.)