BETWEEN THE LINES Q and A with Mary Anne Hitt

Between the Lines Q&A

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for release APRIL 23, 2010

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Campaign Seeks to End U.S. Dependency on Coal

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Interview with Mary Anne Hitt,
director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign,
produced by Melinda Tuhus

coal

The explosion earlier this month at the Big Branch mine owned by Massey Energy in southern West Virginia -- which claimed the lives of 29 miners, the worst mining disaster in almost 40 years -- has drawn attention to the dangers of coal production. But mining coal is just the start of a long list of dangers and destructive impacts on the land, water, air and human health both at the site of extraction and for those downwind of the coal-fired electricity plants. Burning coal produces at least 45 percent of America's electricity and 30 percent of the emissions, which cause global warming in the U.S.

The Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign was motivated by the Bush/Cheney administration's advocacy for the construction of over 100 new coal plants to provide energy, rather than moving toward renewables and energy efficiency, which Vice President Cheney famously declared a meaningless "lifestyle choice."

In the week commemorating the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22, Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign. She spoke about the successes the campaign has achieved thus far and the challenges which remain.

MARY ANNE HITT: The Coal Campaign of the Sierra Club started as a very small effort back around 2002 with some activists in the Midwest who started seeing proposals for new coal plants pop up in their backyards. And it was very much a volunteer, grassroots-driven effort. And around that same time, Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force proposed 150 new coal plants all across the country, so the Sierra Club's small Midwest coal campaign grew to a national effort and decided to take on all 150 of these proposed coal-fired power plants. And we've done that work with lots and lots of partner organizations and grassroots allies all across the country for many years, and I'm very proud to say we've defeated 128 of those proposed coal-fired power plants.

BETWEEN THE LINES: So can the proponents of those 128 plants make a few changes and come back again?

MARY ANNE HITT: Well, the 128 coal plants we've defeated are likely gone for good. There's always a remote chance, I suppose, that one of them could pop back up again. But the developers have dropped the permit applications, they've walked away from the projects, and those proposals are dead. And for those we haven't been able to defeat, we continue fighting until we feel there's no more chance of stopping it. Some are under construction, and others we continue to fight to this day, but the rush to build new coal plants is quickly coming to an end. And the reason we made that such a priority is because, if you think about one coal-fired power plants, it's a massive source of global warming pollution, of mercury pollution, of toxic coal ash -- which is what's left over after you burn coal -- and a huge new consumer of coal that's mined using destructive techniques like mountaintop removal. Every single one of these has been a huge priority fight for us, and those that are still viable proposals, we're still fighting.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Did you use a variety of strategies or a one-size-fits all magic bullet?

MARY ANNE HITT: We've used a wide variety of strategies. One of the things that I think has made us successful is that every single one of these proposed coal plants is like an incinerator or any other sort of big facility that's proposed for your community. The conditions are different; you have a different state regulator; you have a different community. And so every one of these is like a massive campaign in and of itself. So we have attorneys we work with, who were involved in the permitting process and challenging permits we thought should not be issued. We had grassroots activist volunteers involved in every one of these fights. A lot of times we reached out to political leaders and tried to persuade them that coal was not the right direction for the energy future of their state. And different things worked in different places. In some states, like Florida and Kansas, the governors decided that building a new coal plant was not the right energy direction for their states. In other places, the permits did not stand up to a legal challenge, and in other places it was just the local community that managed to stop it because they didn't want it in their backyard.

The latest statistics I've seen is that coal produces about 45 percent of our electricity and about 30 percent of our global warming pollution. It's the single biggest source, not only of global warming pollution, but of mercury pollution. It's the source of soot and smog pollution that causes tens of thousands of premature deaths and heart attacks and hospitalizations every year.

So the Sierra Club's coal campaign is not only trying to stop the construction of new coal-fired power plants, but we are actually trying to solve the problems that coal is causing along the whole lifecycle from mining and techniques like mountaintop removal to the burning of coal and all the pollution associated with it to the toxic coal ash that's left over after you burn coal.

BETWEEN THE LINES: If you stopped all these coal plants that would have produced so much electricity, what if anything is being built instead? I've had so many conversations lately with people who say we need to build nuclear plants...

MARY ANNE HITT: There are places where we've stopped coal plants where they are pursuing wind, solar or natural gas, as an alternative, which is obviously a fossil fuel that's far cleaner than coal, but it's still a fossil fuel and there's still pollution associated with the extraction and burning it. So there definitely are very viable alternatives, and one of the things we've seen is that as long as we have this amount of coal-fired power in our baseload capacity -- in our energy mix in this country -- there's really not that much market share for clean energy, because through energy efficiency we've managed to bring the demand for electricity in this country under control in recent years. So opening up the market share for clean energy is going to involve transitioning away from coal, and every time we've stopped a coal plant, we've seen time and time again, renewable energy come in and fill the breach. So, it is a long way to go in this country until we are getting the majority of our power from clean energy, but we think, through the work we're doing in the coal campaign and working with our partners across the country, we're starting to head in the right direction.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Is it true that of the 128 plants you've stopped, nobody's talking about substituting a nuke plant?

MARY ANNE HITT: Not to my knowledge, and that may be because nuclear power is a very expensive proposition and a lot of these coal plants were eventually defeated because in and of themselves they were pretty expensive and they ultimately couldn't get their financing together, but that's definitely something that I think is a real possibility, given the politics around nuclear power right now.

For state-by-state information about the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign challenging the nation's continuing dependence on coal, visit the organization's website at www.sierraclub.org/Coal

Related links:

Coal River Mountain Watch at www.CRMW.net or call (304) 854-2182.

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Melinda Tuhus is a producer of Between The Lines, which can be heard on more than 45 radio stations and in RealAudio and MP3 on our website at http://www.btlonline.org. This interview excerpt was featured on the award-winning, syndicated weekly radio newsmagazine, Between The Lines for the week ending April 30, 2010. This Between The Lines Q&A was compiled by Melinda Tuhus and Anna Manzo.

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