The Smooth-Talking King of Coal—and Climate Change

[wtmusic]

"When Jim Rogers introduces himself to an audience—something the president, chairman, and chief executive of Duke Energy (DUK) does many times a month in speeches and panels around the country—he likes to start by explaining how much pollution it takes to generate power for 12 million people in five states. "We're the third-largest emitter of CO2 among corporations in America because we generate 70 percent of our electricity at 20 coal-fired plants," he says. "Of all the companies in the world, we're the 12th-largest emitter of CO2. I share these numbers with you not to brag, but to give you a sense of my special responsibility, the daunting job in front of me. And for you to understand why I have such passion about confronting the climate issue."

"Rogers says these things in a disarming Kentucky drawl that quavers slightly, like any good preacher's, as his sermon takes flight. He can talk the down off a duckling, but environmental activists—especially in Charlotte, N.C., where Duke Energy is based—dismiss him as a fraud, a greenwasher, a silver-tongued huckster with world-class PR. As proof, they point to a place 50 miles west of Charlotte, called Cliffside, where Duke Energy is building a new 825-megawatt coal-fired power plant that has no chance to capture or store any of the carbon dioxide it will be sending forth over the next 40 or 50 years. Rogers calls it "the last coal-fired plant I will ever build." But for those acquainted with climate science, which has concluded that emissions reductions are necessary to avoid potentially catastrophic global warming, that isn't good enough. So activists picket Rogers' annual meetings, chain themselves to Cliffside's bulldozers, and fall to their knees at conferences where he appears, begging him not to build the plant and asking how he sleeps at night."

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_24/b4182058740829.htm

The Dick Cheney of the coal industry, Rogers has gamed the politics of coal to not only insure climate legislation will be ineffectual, but he will profit from it.

:grr: