By Bruce Henderson
Greenpeace and NC WARN, a Durham advocacy group, attacked Duke Energy’s environmental record Wednesday in a full-page Observer ad the day before Duke’s annual shareholder meeting.
Protests focused on Duke’s contributions to global warming are expected at Thursday’s meeting. Duke is the nation’s second-largest utility emitter of carbon dioxide
The newspaper ad blames Duke, the largest U.S. utility, for not investing more in wind and solar energy and spending on “nuclear quagmires and coal and gas plants that poison the communities they are meant to serve.”
The groups claim CEO Jim Rogers, who will retire by year’s end, has talked about the need to address climate change but done too little to alter its trajectory.
“Jim Rogers has seven months to determine how history will remember his eight years as the CEO of one of the world’s largest electric utilities: a leader who helped start a clean energy revolution or a laggard who talked about global warming but never acted to stop it,” says the ad, which pictures Rogers.
