Dr. Charles Steele Jr. founded People for Fair Energy, a non-profit organization devoted to fighting for energy laws that are fair and affordable for working people and low-income families. He has served in the Alabama senate and has been inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Preachers of Morehouse College and the Tuscaloosa Civic Hall of Fame. Dr. Steele writes of his concern for a coming crisis in electrical energy…especially for those who earn the least in our society.
Dr. Steele begins with information about the recent jump in electricity cost just in the past months….electricity prices rose 3 % higher in July 2010 than in the previous month.
Now we are facing another cold winter…here and in other parts of the country which occupy the northern tiers. There are reliable forecasts this year(a La Nina year) for a much colder winter in the eastern one-third of the nation. Americans will require more electricity to heat and light their homes…adding to an already devastating economic recession.
“If the soaring electricity prices weren’t bad enough, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is on the verge of imposing burdensome regulations on electricity providers which will have an effect on everyone. Since Americans—especially low-income families, minorities, and senior citizens—-continue to experience economic hardship, the last thing the country needs are higher electricity costs and reduced electrical capacity just when families need elctricity the most.”
Jan 2, 2011: the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations will go into effect. Traditional electricity producers….coal fired plants, rewewable biofuels producers and other “emitters” as defined by the EPA…will be hit the hardest.
Come January…in just two months—we will not only face continually rising electricity prices but also be more likely to have unreliable electricity just as the winter’s worst storms come on. Then add on the expected loss of jobs that the EPA regulations will bring on …. an added burden to the already crisis-proportions of our economy….joblessness and personal family economic crises multiplied over and over.
Our state and federal representatives need to be contacted and urged to take action to ward off this crisis in electrical energy production by taking action to put the brakes on the EPA’s severe regulations it wants to impose.
Google these sites also: The Affordable Power Alliance and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.
The EPA must reverse its regulations before it is too late….especially for the Poorest among us,
The plan is to control access to energy the same way they have controlled access to healthcare and higher education. This is all by design.