Michigan Must Heed Al Gore's Nobel Message

"We also need a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide." - from Al Gore speech accepting Nobel Prize on Dec. 10, 2007

Seven coal-fired power plants are being planned in Michigan in the next decade or less, some of them within a few years. Unless action is taken by Michigan or federal officials, the "markets" will be do nothing to alleviate the harm to Michigan and our planet and global warming will become incrementally worse.

The Michigan Sierra Club along with its national organization is working vigorously to change how coal-fired power plants are regulated and most particularly how we go about the process of deciding what our state and national energy policies should be.

Anne Woiwide, the director and chief lobbyist for the Michigan Sierra Club in Lansing, told our Democracy Matters TV show viewers that those seven coal fired plants are not needed. What is needed is a real energy conservation effort along with an effort to move quickly towards alternative and renewable energy sources including wind and solar energy.

For those readers who are not located in Isabella, Gratiot, Clare, Midland or Grand Traverse Counties in Michigan or do not have access to cable television and the public access TV channel in those areas, we have uploaded Democracy Matters #7 to Google Video. Links are to the left on this page.

For those who do not have access to either local public access or Google Video, the ICDP is offering DVD's at nominal cost of Democracy Matters #7 where Anne Wooiwode and Murray Borrello, the director of environmental studies at Alma College discuss the Michigan concerns with global warming.

For our local cable TV viewers, Democracy Matters #7 can be seen on Charter Cable Channel 3 on Tuesday at 8 p.m. and again on Friday at 8:14 p.m. and on Saturday at 8:30 p.m.

Next week, ICDP-TV presents Democracy Matters #8, "What You Can Do About Global Warming." Air times are the same as this week on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday evenings.

For more information about getting a DVD or having Democracy Matters shown on your local public access channel e-mail jbarker@isabellademocrats.org

Michigan has a major role to play in saving our planet and each of us needs to know more about how, when and what needs to be done.

For more information we also recommend this site on coal-fired power plants from the national Sierra Club and this site from our Michigan Sierra Club and their efforts.