Just a few days ago, an exhaustive report by the Energy and Policy Institute revealed that public utilities have been aware of the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions and the use of coal as an energy fuel since the 1960s.
According to the study, in the 1970s, members of the Electric Power Research Institute, a group financed by the utility industry, testified before Congress that their own investigations have led them to believe that “the fossil fuels combustion will be essentially unacceptable, an important justification for expanding (...) solar energy options.” And by 1988, the same institute stated that, “There is growing consensus in the scientific community that the greenhouse effect is real.”
Frustratingly, regardless of its strong awareness of what today is humanity’s most pressing challenge, this same industry years later launched a national campaign to deny the climate crisis, and undermine any national and international efforts to fight it. Several of these companies joined forces with the fossil fuel industry in a successful push for the U.S. to renounce the Kyoto Protocol in 2001.
And today, Southern Company, the country’s third largest utility, persists on denying CO2 emissions are the main culprit in the climate crisis. Moreover, an important sector of this industry funds front groups that oppose any CO2 limits on coal-burning plants.
This kind of goes hand in glove with those discovered emails from Exxon that proved the oil giant knew full well that their product was killing the planet and then spent millions to keep that information from the public.
This shit drives me crazy, and is a strong indication of why we so desperately need the EPA.
And currently Trump's administration is in the process of dismantling it.
Source http://ift.tt/2wUsdgA
