NN15 Panel: People Power: Energy, Electricity, & Climate Justice

Dirty fos­sil fuel util­i­ties are oppos­ing pro­gres­sive change, rais­ing rates and killing the plan­et, but peo­ple across the coun­try, led by youth and First Nations activism, are tak­ing back pow­er. Cli­mate hawks and eco­nom­ic jus­tice activists are work­ing togeth­er to make our pow­er grid and pol­i­tics clean­er, and fight­ing for more afford­able and equi­table ener­gy costs. Nation­al lead­ers and Ari­zona activists share their sto­ries of how to build coali­tions and cre­ate a green­er, brighter future across polit­i­cal, class and racial boundaries.

The pan­el con­sists of most­ly Ari­zo­nans: Sandy Bahr, Lisa Hoyos, Elsa John­son, Lau­ren Kuby

The issues:

• Coal is still key in Ari­zona. There are six coal-fired pow­er plants. They are locat­ed in poor­er areas of the state and in Native Amer­i­can reservations.
• Five of the six plants are under review for gen­er­at­ing haze in the environment.
• The H. Wil­son Sundt Coal Plant locat­ed near Tuc­son affects a large pop­u­la­tion with pol­lu­tion. They are work­ing on con­vert­ing to nat­ur­al gas, but that is not enough. There is a need to con­vince them to start con­vert­ing to solar.
• There are mil­lions of dol­lars of “Dark Mon­ey” invest­ed in elect­ing coal friend­ly commissioners.
• There is col­lab­o­ra­tion between com­mis­sion­ers and the Koch brothers.
• Ads are run against roof top solar to stop the move­ment away from coal.
• Solar adopters are pay­ing the high­est ener­gy rates when con­nect­ed to the grid.
• Per­mit­ting is expen­sive to install solar.
• Util­i­ties look at solar as destroy­ing their busi­ness practices.
• Ari­zona has the most solar capac­i­ty in the nation, but obsta­cles are put in the way to pro­hib­it or slow adoption.
• Offi­cials down­play the solar suc­cess in Ger­many by try­ing to claim (false­ly) that Ger­many has a lot of black­outs and brownouts.
• Coal mines do not gen­er­ate enough jobs.
• Right wing politi­cians are try­ing to block cli­mate change edu­ca­tion in schools.

Actions:

• Ari­zona cit­i­zens are orga­niz­ing, protest­ing and com­ment­ing around clean pow­er and reduc­ing haze.
• What can we do? Speak up and tell your sto­ry; write blogs, opin­ion pieces; write to pub­lic offi­cials; attend EPA/ACC ADEQ pub­lic hear­ings, speak at pub­lic hearings…
• Con­trary to what you might hear from media and politi­cians, solar ener­gy is very impor­tant to the local home own­ers. Many are inter­est­ed in adopt­ing solar.
• Solar pro­duc­tion has gone up as the price the price of solar sys­tems have come down.
• IINA Solu­tions Rur­al Renew­able Ener­gy Ini­tia­tive works to install 2 kW solar sys­tems and 1 kW wind gen­er­a­tors in rur­al areas and reser­va­tions, and work to make hous­ing energy-efficient.
• We need to grow the cho­rus of cli­mate change activists.
• When talk­ing about the effects of poor cli­mate deci­sions, it is impor­tant to stress the safe­ty of our chil­dren, because they must live in the cli­mate that we are cre­at­ing today.

Ren­nie Sawade