{"id":2877,"date":"2013-07-29T21:35:22","date_gmt":"2013-07-29T21:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/?p=2877"},"modified":"2013-07-29T21:35:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-29T21:35:22","slug":"duke-energy-forces-north-carolina-communities-to-pay-for-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/duke-energy-forces-north-carolina-communities-to-pay-for-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Duke Energy Forces North Carolina Communities to Pay for Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Sydney Browning, Fossil Free Fellow at<\/em>\u00a0<\/i>NC WARN<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>I, like many of the other Fossil Free Fellows, have been fighting for divestment at my school for the past several months.\u00a0 I had been so focused on the harmful mining practices of coal, oil and natural gas companies that I hadn\u2019t taken the time to stop and think about where all these fossil fuels would be going after they were extracted from the earth. It\u2019s a difficult connection to make between the electricity used at my family\u2019s home and the nearby Duke Energy plant in Asheville, NC which poisons the local water supply while providing energy for thousands of families like my own. As difficult as this connection is to make, it\u2019s an important one that I\u2019ve made daily since I began my fellowship.<\/p>\n

Along with my childhood friend and fellow divestment activist, this summer I have been working in my home state of North Carolina with an environmental justice organization called NC WARN, a group who has been involved in EJ fights since the 1980s. The current fight is around Duke Energy, one of the world\u2019s biggest contributors to greenhouse gasses. The fight is focused on Duke\u2019s recent utility rate hikes. Based in North Carolina, Duke has an energy monopoly in my state. In other areas of the country, where Duke Energy doesn\u2019t have a monopoly, they\u2019re forced to keep their rates low and invest in renewable energy.\u00a0 In North Carolina, however, they\u2019re proposing rate hikes for local costumers in order to build more coal and nuclear energy plants and to expand their use of natural gas.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the best part, the energy generated from these dirty and polluting plants isn\u2019t going back to the ratepayers, instead, the energy is going to low-cost, high-energy use data centers for companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple and others. On top of all of this, Duke Energy is using\u00a0rate-rigging<\/a>\u00a0to raise household and small business rates by 14% while only raising corporations\u2019 rates by 3%, forcing the people who can least afford it to pay more for their energy.<\/p>\n

In the shadow of these rate hikes, NC WARN and other groups have sued Duke Energy.\u00a0 There have been public hearings (I\u2019ve spoken at one) and an evidentiary hearing. \u00a0The\u00a0Utilities Commission is protecting Duke Energy<\/a>, since Duke Energy is one of the largest donors to politicians in the state, giving to the Democrats, Republicans, and groups like ALEC.\u00a0 Our recently elected governor, Pat McCrory or as I call him \u201che who must not be named\u201d, was a Duke Energy employee for twenty-eight years. As Governor, he\u2019s tasked with appointing three people to the Utilities Commission. Is anyone else seeing a connection between Duke Energy and the people who run North Carolina?<\/p>\n

These rate hikes are not only perpetuating climate change, they are forcing working class communities to pay for it.\u00a0 Duke Energy is putting the health, environmental and financial safety of North Carolina citizens at risk- and these are risks we just cannot afford.<\/p>\n

Over the past weeks, I\u2019ve gone to several public hearings and heard people from across the state give testimony as to why these rate hikes are not in the people\u2019s interests.\u00a0 My work has been mostly to connect all of these issues and weave in new ones, like the introduction of fracking for natural gas. The conclusion that I\u2019ve come to is that we, as a movement, have to connect the dots.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard people explain exactly why Duke Energy is contributing to climate change and then I\u2019ve heard people speaking out because they can\u2019t afford their energy bill. What I love about NC WARN\u2019s approach is that they are connecting the dots.\u00a0 Fighting Duke isn\u2019t just about climate change, it\u2019s about the health issues caused by new dirty power plants, it\u2019s about the fact that they\u2019re raising rates on costumers who can\u2019t afford them, and it\u2019s about corporate money funding politicians. The beautiful thing about this fight against Duke Energy is hearing how everyone\u2019s stories are connected and are being woven together to create an undeniable narrative that Duke Energy\u2019s rate hikes are harming the people of North Carolina\u2019s environment, health, and pocketbooks.<\/p>\n

During our week of training in Albuquerque, we talked a lot about meeting people where they\u2019re at in terms of climate issues.\u00a0 That\u2019s advice that I\u2019ve used every day during my fellowship. I\u2019ve had to meeting people where they\u2019re at with respect to why they\u2019re fighting these rate hikes.<\/p>\n

When I say that we are connecting the dots, I do not mean that the environmental movement is an overarching movement that encompasses all other struggles. Instead, I mean that there\u2019s a network of movements and the environmental movement is just one branch.\u00a0 It\u2019s connected to other branches, more than even we have explored, but it\u2019s only one branch among many.<\/p>\n\"Browning<\/a>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Sydney Browning, Fossil Free Fellow at\u00a0NC WARN I, like many of the other Fossil Free Fellows, have been…<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}