Meech Carter with the NC League of Conservation Voters on rising energy costs and data centers
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Show Notes
Meech Carter (Photo: NCLCV)
If there’s a most egregious disconnect right now between state and national policy and what reams of scientific evidence and countless common-sense observations tell us about the world around us, it’s clearly in the realm of environmental protection and, in particular, climate change. As has been repeatedly and thoroughly documented, our planet currently faces an existential crisis that demands an urgent, all-hands-on-deck response from government at all levels, the private and nonprofit sectors, scientists, and average citizens.
Unfortunately, as Newsline learned recently in an extended conversation with North Carolina League of Conservation Voters’ clean energy campaigns director, Meech Carter, the perverse reality right now is that many corporate actors, along with the Trump administration, are moving in the opposite direction by loosening or eliminating anti-pollution rules and conservation efforts, expanding the use of expensive fossil fuels and sticking average ratepayers with the bill.
In Part One of our recent extended conversation Carter, we explored the troubling fact that new actions by North Carolina-based electricity giant Duke Energy, are poised to both raise prices on average consumers and further inhibit critically important efforts to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels that contribute to climate change.
In Part Two of our chat we dug deeper into these issues by examining the troubling growth of so-called data centers, recent actions by the Trump administration to end federal regulation of pollutants that cause climate change, the critical need to rebuild western North Carolina better and stronger 18 months after Hurricane Helene, and why its critical that caring and thinking people vote in this year’s elections if our state and nation are to return to the pursuit of sane environmental policies.