Governor Cooper’s approval of fracked gas Atlantic Coast Pipeline could commit energy customers to pay for outdated technology
This decision is a loser for the people of eastern North Carolina, their economy and the urgent fight to slow climate change.
At the very time when GE, Siemens and other big energy corporations are laying off thousands due to multiple factors that are moving natural gas toward obsolescence, Duke Energy, Dominion Resources and North Carolina leaders seem oblivious to that fast-paced reality.
Of course, Duke and Dominion are largely gambling with customers’ money, although their stockholders will also get burned.
If the Atlantic Coast Pipeline survives court challenges and public resistance and ever begins pumping fracked natural gas to North Carolina, it would be a tragedy for:
- the people near the fracked gas wells in Pennsylvania who live with air and water pollution, and increased risk of earthquakes
- workers at the drilling sites exposed to the constant danger of violent gas explosions like the one killing workers in Oklahoma just days ago
- people in Virginia and eastern North Carolina whose land may be stolen through eminent domain
- and the lost opportunity to stop the spewing of super-potent methane, which heats the atmosphere far more quickly than carbon dioxide, and which a recent NASA study showed is largely responsible for driving humanity toward runaway climate chaos.
The ACP may well be stopped in the courts or on the ground, but Duke and Dominion keep wasting billions of dollars and precious years going in exactly the wrong direction – at a time when global heat and climate disruption are accelerating beyond predictions and when cheaper, clean energy technologies are outpacing dirty fuel in non-monopoly markets both in terms of cost and job creation.