They should explain to the people of southwest Georgia why they blocked construction of a coal-fired power plant there — a plant that would have brought $2 billion and 125 high-paying jobs to one of the poorest counties in the state.
They should explain to homeowners across Georgia why they will be forced to swallow ever-higher energy costs — because the only energy sources Georgia can now develop will add hundreds of dollars to their monthly power bills.
And they should explain to businesses, hospitals, churches and schools why they will be required to waste months or years getting a Clean Air permit the next time they want to build a sizable new building anywhere in Georgia. Perhaps they can even explain why companies should still build those buildings in Georgia instead of other states, none of which impose such onerous regulations.
Instead, the Sierra Club and others have spent enormous amounts of time and money claiming that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, such as those the plant in Early County would produce, are regulated under the federal Clean Air Act.
Apparently, they convinced Fulton County Superior Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore to buy that argument as well. On June 30, she tossed out the plant’s emissions permit for failing to include CO2 limits, claiming she was simply enforcing existing Clean Air law.
In actuality, she made up the law as she went.
The U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled that CO2 is not now and has never been subject to Clean Air regulation. The court directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, not an activist judge in Atlanta, to determine how to regulate it. The issues of global climate change clearly can’t resolved in a few hours in a Fulton County courtroom.
But this is about far more than one new power plant that could provide energy for half a million homes. Our state’s population jumped 60 percent since the last plant was built 20 years ago, and its energy needs are on the rise.
The Sierra Club’s “solution” to our looming energy crisis is to use Judge Moore’s ruling to stop any conventional coal, oil or natural gas plants — all of which emit CO2 — from being built in Georgia.
That leaves our state with very few options.
The Georgia Chamber of Commerce has long supported alternative energy sources, but the ones these activists would like you to believe can save the day aren’t yet ready for prime time. And whether we like it or not, our population growth will soon outstrip even the 30 percent energy savings they estimate we can achieve.
If we ignore the proven, affordable energy sources available to us today, we will — without question — experience the outages that have plagued other states in just a few short years.
Of course, we could always return to living in caves and burning candles for light. Then again, those also produce CO2.
For that matter, so does just about any building over 100,000 square feet, even those that use natural gas for heat. Those new shopping centers, offices, industrial parks and schools we mentioned earlier? They won’t be built any time soon — maybe not at all, if Judge Moore’s ruling stands.
That’s why the Georgia Chamber and more than 100 businesses and organizations have asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to overturn her ill-considered edict.
The Sierra Club considers it sacrilegious to draw attention to the very real threat to our prosperity and quality of life they have created. That’s ironic, coming from the same alarmist group that claims the Early County plant — which would be the cleanest ever built in Georgia — will blacken the skies and afflict elderly citizens with soot-induced heart attacks.
Incredibly, their attorneys have actually referred to the date of Judge Moore’s decision as “the day the lights came on in Georgia.”
We hope the appellate court will act before the lights go out.
George Israel, former mayor of Macon, is president and CEO of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.