Bloomberg Spends Big Against Coal

These days, there isn’t much good news to report about the effort to combat climate change, so when some comes along, it’s worth taking note. Today’s is that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is donating $50 million to the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign. The campaign’s aim is to stop the construction of new coal-burning power plants and to shut down—or to use the more polite term “phase out”—up to a third of the coal plants now in operation. Coal produces more carbon dioxide per unit of energy than any other fuel, so any reduction in coal use means a reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions. Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement is significant for several reasons, some of them obvious, some of them less so.

  • It’s a lot of money. One of the reasons legislative efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions never seem to get anywhere is there’s so much money and lobbying muscle opposing them. According a figures compiled last year by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the oil, coal, and gas industries spent more than $500 million dollars lobbying Congress during 2009 and the first half of 2010, the period when climate change legislation was being seriously debated in Washington. “Mayor Bloomberg’s investment is a game changer,” is how Mary Anne Hitt, the director of the Beyond Coal campaign, put it in a telephone interview. Hitt said that the Mayor’s donation would allow the campaign to roughly double its staff, from one hundred to two hundred people.

  • Mayor Bloomberg, who, according to the most recent Forbes survey, is the thirtieth richest person in the world, with a net worth of $18.1 billion, has given away scads of money to dozens of causes. His primary focus has been on public health; a decade ago, he donated a hundred million dollars to fight malaria. Bloomberg has apparently come to see climate change as a significant public-health threat, and he’s right to do so. Dengue fever, for example, has been spreading northward, an expansion that’s, at least in part, been linked to rising temperatures. Many experts see a signal of climate change in the recent surge in global food prices. It’s hard to stay healthy when you’re going hungry.

  • By putting millions of dollars into fighting coal, Bloomberg is showing that he has no interest in a career in national politics. People who spend millions of dollars to fight one of the nation’s most powerful vested interests are clearly not running for President.

  • Like a lot of people, Bloomberg has given up on the chances of getting serious action on climate change out of the federal government. In a statement put out today, he said: “The Beyond Coal Campaign has had great success in stopping more than a hundred and fifty new coal-fired power plants over the past few years, and is empowering local communities to lead from the front while Congress continues to watch from the back.”

“I think everyone that cares about the future of life on earth has been pretty discouraged by the prospects of getting anything done in Washington in the immediate term,” Hitt said. “Meanwhile the climate crisis escalates to very scary levels. This is a strategy that I think the Mayor saw that would offer some immediate, large-scale carbon reductions and some immediate large-scale public health benefits without having to wait for Congress.”

The hundred and fifty new coal plants that the Mayor alluded to are plants for which applications were filed, but later withdrawn. The “Beyond Coal” campaign has doubtless been aided by low natural-gas prices, which have made gas—a less polluting fuel—an attractive alternative to coal. Among the existing coal plants that the Sierra Club is hoping to shut down are the Potomac River Generating Station, in Alexandria, Virginia—today’s announcement is supposed to be made on a boat near that plant—the Fisk and Crawford plants in Chicago, and the Monroe plant, near Toledo. Closing existing coal plants is a lot harder than preventing new ones from being built, and we’ll see how far $50 million will go.

Bloomberg at the White House in April. Photograph by Charles Dharapak/AP Photo.