NC WARN is a 35-year-old 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization tackling the accelerating crisis posed by climate change by building people power for a swift North Carolina transition to clean power, and by promoting energy and climate justice.
Mission
NC WARN is a member-based nonprofit tackling the climate crisis – and other hazards posed by electricity generation – by watch-dogging Duke Energy practices and building people power for a swift North Carolina transition to clean, renewable and affordable power generation and increased energy efficiency.
In partnership with other groups, and using sound scientific research, NC WARN informs and involves the public in key decisions regarding their health and economic well-being. Dedicated to climate and environmental justice, NC WARN seeks to address the needs of all of the public by intentionally including those often excluded from participation because of racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of oppression.
The Urgent Climate Crisis
- Climate change is devastating millions of people around the world, especially people of color and low-wealth communities who are least responsible for causing the climate crisis. Climate change is very close to moving past a point of no return, accelerating under its own momentum no matter what humans do.
- Unchecked, climate change would lead to a different planet for which human life is not adapted.
- NC-based Duke Energy is one of the world’s largest corporate electric utilities and one of its biggest polluters.
- Through legal and regulatory challenges and direct appeals for cooperation, NC WARN and allies are vigorously pressing Duke Energy to join – or at least stop impeding – the clean energy revolution.
- That shift could be pivotal in averting a runaway climate-economic-social catastrophe.
- We’re turning the tide but must quicken the pace. That’s why we need you. Join today!
Environmental Justice
NC WARN’s environmental justice work goes back to its beginnings. Watch our 13-minute video NC WARN Highlights: The First 15 Years to learn more about our early campaigns, including the successful fight against a PCB landfill in Warren County — the very campaign that gave rise to the term environmental justice.
In May 2018, NC WARN, joined by a dozen other organizations, filed a Title VI complaint with the EPA alleging that North Carolina regulators discriminated on the basis of race and income level in issuing permits and certifications for the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, the route of which would disproportionately affect low-income people and people of color.
Another Environmental Justice concern is factory farming in eastern North Carolina. We’ve cautioned Duke Energy and Duke University against unwarranted enthusiasm for the idea of using hog waste to fuel a campus gas plant and urged them to prioritize the health and safety of hog farm neighbors. We’ve told the NC Utilities Commission to quit pretending biogas from hog waste is a practical renewable energy source.
We established a Hurricane Florence Just Recovery fund and raised over $21,000 for front-line groups in eastern North Carolina (so far: Down East Coal Ash of Wayne County, Pitt County Coalition Against Racism and Peace in the Park of Robeson County). Read Organizing Director Connie Leeper’s op-ed about why.
More Environmental Justice resources:
- North Carolina Environmental Justice Network
- A Pig Issue, an 18-minute video from Farm Sanctuary describing the practice of spraying hog waste on farmland in eastern North Carolina
- Environmental Justice news items
Your Voice Matters. Become a Member!
Be part of the climate justice movement in North Carolina.