In March of this year, a Midwestern power company canceled a new Missouri coal plant, and in April, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed two more for her state. Each cited rising concerns about carbon emissions and climate change in their explanations.
“We’re already a very heavy carbon state,” Sebelius told the Wichita Eagle. Benefits of low-cost electricity “are really less significant than the harm that carbon would do and potentially the financial risk that puts those ratepayers and taxpayers in.”
Sebelius is not alone, with former Utah governor Olene Walker, a Republican, protesting a proposed coal-fired power plant in Nevada, and Democratic Lt. Gov. Beverly Purdue of North Carolina (daughter of a former coal miner) calling for a moratorium on new coal-fired power in her state.
These government and company officials are simply catching up to the public.
According to a 2007 poll, nearly 90 percent of Americans surveyed said they favor a moratorium on coal plants, and agree that it’s time for “a new industrial revolution, one that is characterized by the orderly phasing out of fossil fuels and the phasing in of clean, renewable energy sources.”
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