End Coal
October 2nd, 2007 at 3:25 pm
The Rainforest Action Network is coming after the pinstripes. Today, RAN announced a campaign to target the top two banks financing the coal rush, Citi and Bank of America. Applying the journalistic rule of “follow the money,” the environmental organization bloodhounded their way from the coal fields and sooty smokestacks to the gold-plated suites of Wall Street. (Here are their findings.) Now they’ve decided to end coal by ending coal financing.
RAN discussed their plans with journalists on a telephone press conference earlier today. Citi is the top coal financier, underwriting coal-crazed utilities such as AEP and Dynegy, the latter of which now owns LS Power, the company that wants to plop a coal plant in the backyard of Waco-area ranchers Robert and Jo Cervenka. Citi is also putting up the cash for the buyout of TXU. Bank of America is giving Citi a run for their money, bankrolling strip mining and mountaintop removal heavies Peabody and Massey Energy. The irony, RAN’s Rebecca Tarbotton said, is that “both of these banks are vying for top position as the greenest and most climate-friendly” financial institutions.
Judy Bonds, a self-described “real underground coal miner’s daughter and granddaughter” from West Virginia, described Appalachia as a “warzone” where mining companies daily knock down mountains with millions of pounds of explosives, take the coal, and dump the once-proud mountains in streams. “You can’t have mountaineers without mountains,” remarked Bonds. “You can’t have hillbillies without hills. And I’m proud to be both.”
The way Bonds sees it the banks are bankrolling “domestic terrorism.” Yes, but can you negotiate with terrorists? The RAN approach - one they have been successful at - is to twist High Finance’s arm until it cries “uncle.” The tactics include street protest, shareholder activism, media outreach, and public shaming. Ending coal is the goal. Indeed, without scrapping all or most of the 150 proposed coal-fired power plants in the U.S., we can get forget about stopping run-away climate change, said author and activist Bill McKibben. The burning question in his mind is “whether coal that is currently in the ground stays there or not.”
On the other hand, Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council will, if need be, deal with the polluters in hopes of getting immediate results. The two organizations joined private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Robers and Texas Pacific Group in February to negotiate landmark environmental concessions as part of a pending $45 billion buyout of Texas utility TXU. Environmental Defense and NRDC put their imprimatur on the buyout deal, which included TXU reducing the number of new coal-fired plants from 11 to three.
The Observer asked RAN if they would go after the banks financing the TXU buyout because of the remaining three plants. “The campaign is still concerned about the three remaining plants,” said Tarbotton. Does that mean there’s a strategic split among environmentalists? “They play a very different role in this movement right now,” said Tarbotton. “Our role is to keep pushing for those plants to get shut down.”
