MICHAEL BLOOMBERG GIVES $500 MILLION TO HELP SHUT DOWN ALL REMAINING US COAL PLANTS
So I have to begin this piece with the caveat: I don’t like billionaire Michael Bloomberg. It’s not that he’s a billionaire, so much as I’m a New Yorker who can’t manage to forget how he used his money to change the law on term limits for Mayor of New York City. Well, and how his first major priority in his first term was to build a fellow rich buddy a Giant’s Stadium on Manhattan’s West Side, right off the river; Michael was the last to understand that it would never work in the least. But that being said, I am happy to hear that this rich, former NYC mayor is doing all he can to shut down literally all coal plants in the United States.
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COAL PLANTS AND THEIR POISON NO LONGER A VIABLE OR ECONOMIC WAY TO MAKE POWER
And while I still don’t particularly like Michael Bloomberg, I do like this effort. Because let’s face it, coal plants weren’t a good idea when we built a lot more of them back in the 1990’s. And now, there’s very little reason to keep them operating except as a handout to the coal industry. Coal-red power plants pollute a lot. No matter what technologies you use, it’s still going to be bad. Remember the term acid rain? Coal. And the explosion of mercury levels in every person living near one? Coal. And there’s quite the long bullet list beyond those, with the final caption: coal.
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BLOOMBERG’S BEYOND CARBON CAMPAIGN ONLY HAS 150 MORE COAL PLANTS TO GO
But Michael Bloomberg, though I’d relish having a more perfect rationale to loathe him, is doing a god thing with his efforts to shut down all remaining coal plants in the US. He just announced this week that he’s investing $500 million more of his own money to do just that, as well as cut gas use in half by the year 2030. His campaign that he just super hyper funded more money to is the Beyond Carbon campaign. So far, the campaign has already managed to help shut down 70% of all American coal plants. There are only 150 more to go, though I expect the remainder will prove stubborn at a local level.
So despite my best reservations for the past: bravo, Michael Bloomberg, bravo.
