Kaine's Additions to Climate Change Commission

By: elevandoski
Published On: 1/18/2008 1:05:24 PM

Is Governor Kaine listening to us bloggers?  

A few weeks ago, we were thrilled to learn about Kaine's creation of a Climate Change Commission.  But then we looked at who he appointed to this commission.  Yikes!  Dominion, Virginia Natural Gas, Sen. Frank Wagner.  Crazy, I know!  There was nobody from the grassroots like the VA League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club, and most notably, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.  Plus no Sen. Chap Petersen, patron of Virginia's revolutionary "Clean Energy Future Act".

So, let's take a look at who Kaine has recently added...   

Alpha Natural Resources added to Kaine's Climate Change Commission


- The Honorable R. Creigh Deeds of Bath County, member of the Virginia Senate;
- The Honorable Penny Gross of Fairfax County, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors- Mason District supervisor;
- Robert F. Hemphill Jr. of Bethesda, Maryland, executive vice president of AES Corporation;
- Jagadish Shukla of Rockville, Maryland, professor and chair of the Climate Dynamics Program at George Mason University, and president of the Institute of Global Environment and Society;
- Michael J. Quillen of Washington County, president and CFO of Alpha Natural Resources

That's right! It's Alpha Natural Resources (pictured above), "a leading coal producer with significant operations in Northern Appalachia", with its 33 active underground mines, 25 active surface mines and 11 coal preparation plants located throughout Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

Now everybody on the commission can learn all about how wonderful "clean coal" is!  Go coal! Go mountain-top removal! Go flimsy sludge dams! (Cross-posted at VBDems.org.)

 

 

Flooded sludge pond

Comments



Climate action through committee meetings? (TheGreenMiles - 1/18/2008 3:29:17 PM)
I have trouble believing we're going to get the aggressive action we need from this committee. How many people are on it now, 39? "Bold leadership" and "committee meetings" are two phrases not often used in the same sentence.


A sadly stacked deck (Kindler - 1/19/2008 12:37:32 AM)
There are some good folks on here, like Creigh Deeds and Paul Ferguson, but I'm really bothered by the lack of significant environmental group representation.

There are also very few scientists in the group.  Sorry, but this is a scientific issue, and one which very few people really grasp at more than a superficial level.  How can we solve a problem that we don't understand?